Necessary Thing

[Whateverist]

I agree that words don't contain any real magic, but they are the best we've got when it comes to expressing ideas. Some ideas even correspond to real things. At least that's how I see it.

Existence, at least for me, isn't a thing, but it is the most fundamental aspect which a thing does. Existence is a verb. If a thing is actually a thing, then (whatever it is) that must mean it is existing. Existence, therefore, is the nominal way by which we can describe the most fundamental "act" of any real thing. It is existing. If it isn't existing, then it can only be an idea of a thing rather than a thing actually existing.

It may well be a verb but existence is certainly not an act which a thing does. No doing required. Existence is being, not doing. We don't do the be, we be the be. So a verb, yes. But an act? No.

One more thing. I don't agree that being "just an idea" makes their existence any less real. Ideas exist as ideas. Some map onto the world of objects it is true but the others still have their existence in the life of the mind even without that mapping. Case in point: love.

I am not really interested in trying to conceive of what this necessary thing might be, at least not in this thread. I start with the dichotomy: either a thing is existing on the condition that another thing is also existing, or it is not.

Well how are you going to do that? How do you separate out correlation from causation on such a basic and general level?

(1) Most things I observe and experience exist on the condition that some other thing is also existing => If that is true (and I am pretty sure it is), then EITHER (2) ALL things are existing on the condition that some other thing is existing OR (2) Some things are existing without the condition that some other thing exists. This thread is aimed at examining those 3 propositions.

True, proposition (1) is a bunch of words, but it more or less adequately expresses an idea which I think corresponds to reality. Either (2) or (3) follow from (1) when combined with some other observation or proposition.

On the face of it, it would seem that everything is contingent at some level. Do you have an exemplar of something whose existence is not contingent at all on anything in any conceivable manner? What makes you think such a thing exists? I question whether the category you've constructed may in fact be entirely empty.