(December 22, 2015 at 4:12 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: As noted, a maximally great leprichaun would also be self-consistent and necessary. If all that is required for the rest to follow (number two onward) is that the entity be necessary and self-consistent, then a necessary unicorn also follows.
Not necessarily (pun intended). No contingent thing could satisfy the necessary being requirement. It comes directly from Aquinas’s Third Way. Here is how I explained the concept elsewhere:
“Either something is possible, capable of either being or not being, or it must be of necessity. Anyone can see that many things could possibly exist that do not. Meanwhile other things that could possibly exist do. Therefore the existence of any possible thing is contingent on the existence of either something else that is possible or something that is necessary. The chain of contingency linking possible things that do exist is an essentially ordered sequence for which a possible thing cannot serve as the first member. That is because if that thing were possible it might not have been and so now there would be nothing. But there is something. As such those things that are possible to exist and do so rely for their existence on something that is necessary. That something is a Necessary Being.”
(December 22, 2015 at 4:12 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: I noticed that you could substitute a necessarily existing universe in place of his necessary "being". You can substitute an infinite number of things.
Yours is a fair critique. Your substitution of the “entire universe” works if the universe must be as it is and could be no other way. To say so means that no reason accounts for the universe being as it is, i.e. a ‘brute fact.’ It also means without explanation an unexplained and particular collection of many ultimately fundamental particles must exist in just the number it does and in all permutations that have been, are now, and ever will be. That makes just about everything a ‘brute fact’. You suggest as much when you give the missed put example.
(December 22, 2015 at 4:12 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: …if there is only one set of dimensions, is it "possible" in the real world sense for the hole and the ball to be in separate dimensions? No, it is not. There is a difference between logically possible worlds and real existent worlds.
This position may be a legitimate. It just isn’t interesting, especially when your only response when challenged with the PSR is “bollocks”.
