RE: The Principle of Contingent Causation: The Impossibility of Infinite Regress.
July 13, 2023 at 10:29 pm
(July 13, 2023 at 9:51 pm)Bucky Ball Wrote: Can you show your work, totaling it up, and if "nearly all of it is clearly contingent", what is the small part that isn't contingent, and how do you know ?
If a thing is contingent, it depends for its existence on the existence of something else.
So for example, life on earth is dependent, directly or indirectly, on the sun.
The sun depends for its existence on the existence of hydrogen.
Hydrogen depends for its existence on the existence of sub-atomic particles.
Sub-atomic particles depend for their existence on the laws of nature being what they are.
All of this depends for its existence on the existence of space/time. If there was no space/time, none of this would exist.
If you know of anything which is NOT dependent for its existence on space/time or the laws of nature, I would be interested to hear about it.
Whether space/time and the laws of nature are dependent for their existence on some further thing, or whether they "just exist," is the subject of this thread.
