RE: Existence must exist at all times.
November 7, 2016 at 10:31 pm
(This post was last modified: November 7, 2016 at 10:38 pm by Edwardo Piet.)
(May 21, 2016 at 10:31 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: If existence did NOT exist at all times, we'd need another word for it. Just as had been pointed out, an elephant is always an elephant, but things which are not elephant cannot logically be called 'elephant'. By the same token, that which exists must definitionally be in an existant state at all times. 'Non-existant' is semantically equivalent to 'non-elephant'.
Boru
This.
Everything that existed existed, everything that exists exists, and everything that will exist, whatever it will be, will exist.
The slightly more difficult question, perhaps, is... did existence have to be existent? Did the totality of all things have to be the totality of all things? I think yes... they didn't have to be the way they are but they had to exist. Because what's the alternative to the totality of all things being the totality of all things? Them not being themselves? The alternative would be for all things to not be all things but all things have to be all things.
Why is there something rather than nothing? Because there can't be nothing. Why did the big bang happen? Now there's a question.
Could there have been nothing but emptiness? Only if emptiness is something.
The problem is with defining "existence". I fully agree with this from Wikipedia's article on existence:
Wikipedia Wrote:The two terms are joined by the verb "is" (or "is not", if the predicate is denied of the subject). Thus every proposition has three components: the two terms, and the "copula" that connects or separates them. Even when the proposition has only two words, the three terms are still there. For example, "God loves humanity", really means "God is a lover of humanity", "God exists" means "God is a thing".
My emphasis.
Likewise: "God doesn't exist" means "God is not a thing". (More commonly expressed as "there's no such thing as God").
So, all things had to exist because every thing that exists is a thing that is a thing. For something to not exist you'd have to define existence more narrowly so as to have non-existent things and existent things... but that would mean that the "nothing" that would exist if nothing had existed would actually be a thing... that doesn't cut it for me. "An existent thing" is a tautology. It's the same as "a thing."
