Necessary Thing

[Ignorant]

It serves as much as an adjective as a verb.  To say it is is to say it is existing.  Notice that it is all word play at any rate.  We're no closer to knowing something essential about the universe by examining the way we use our language.

I'm not sure I am "playing" the same game of words as you. I'm not sure that this claim has any real meaning for me: "It serves as much as an adjective as a verb." <= You will have to help me understand what that means, if you care to. Either way, words are the only thing we have on an INTERNET DISCUSSION FORUM with which to discuss our ideas with each other. If you claim that "to be" or "to exist" are just as much adjectives as they are verbs, then we have a fundamental miscommunication which needs addressing.

But I'm not arguing that nothing is contingent, only that everything is contingent. The contingency isn't inherently hierarchal. Rather it is a function of the words and concepts we deploy to describe things. What we call Helium depends on a molecule's having two protons because of the definitions we employ. Hydrogen is no less contingent than Helium by virtue of having one few protons. We live in a state of mutual contingency. 

Whether we call it helium or we call it aunt-mae's-apple-pie is irrelevant, whatever you call it, that word becomes a placeholder for the thing... but a few things about the words you've chosen. Helium is an atom (I would also have accepted element), not a molecule. We don't define helium a certain way and then go look for it. Instead, we discover a certain thing existing, and then certain things about the way that thing exists as a result of scientific investigation. Then we name the thing, and define it according to what we have discovered about its way of existing. The definition comes from what we learn about it, not the other way around.

As for hydrogen being no less contingent than helium, I couldn't agree more. Is it logically possible for hydrogen to have an infinity of increasingly more fundamental conditions for existence? I don't see how it is, but just saying, "you're just playing word games" or "but it could be possible" doesn't help me understand the reasons for why it would be possible.

Suppose we found something for which we could find no dependency upon anything else. Would that for sure be a non-contingent thing...?

Obviously not.

Is there any reason to think that we as human beings have the capacity to understand everything?

No.

I doubt that our ability to describe it verbally or understand it is the final arbiter of the way things stand in the world. We are part of the world, not its judge.

I never claimed otherwise.