(April 20, 2016 at 2:20 pm)Whateverist the White Wrote: As to that, I find it much more intuitively appealing to suppose that contingent things which begin to exist owe that existence to the interaction of pre-existing things. I believe that is true far beyond the range of our ability to ever verify.
Agreed. But I bet it's more than intuitive supposition, I'm sure you are drawing a conclusion from your observations and interactions with reality. That makes it a rational conclusion. Pretty good start if you ask me.
Quote:For example, my hunch is that what we understand as our universe is but one of many such greatly dispersed phenomena. We will likely never know whether the 'verse is uni or multi for there is no way to peak behind that curtain. It doesn't mean that there isn't an answer. It just means we're not privileged to it.
Is it possible that there are an infinity of universes and big bangs which led to our own? Certainly. Is it possible that an infinity of conditions were simultaneously satisfied in order for any one of them to exist? That is much less clear, and probably not the case. If you think otherwise, that is fine with me, but I'd like to hear why.
Quote:I suspect that at some very grand (and unverifiable) level of description, the emergence of big bangs makes perfect sense .. just not to us. That, it seems to me, is more likely than that a unitary, eternal, non contingent, non-caused cause arbitrarily decides one day that it is bored with nothing so let there be everything. (That doesn't mean I think anyone who thinks otherwise is a moron however.)
Fair enough. I agree actually. My question does not regard the particular contingency of cosmological history. I am not interested in "what" caused the big bang. I am interested in how it is that things are existing. How is it that here an now things are able to be what they are? What does a particular thing's manner of existing depend on? An infinity of other things, or a finite number of conditions?
