Necessary Thing

[Whateverist]

If something stops or starts existing, that would by definition be contingent.  I'm not familiar enough with QM to suggest we have any examples of such, but it is commonly claimed that we do have such examples.   Stating whether ordinary matter ever stopped or started existing is above my paygrade.

Also fair enough. I am not asking which thing is necessary or if ordinary matter is contingent. I am asking if you think that any thing is necessary. The question might be put: Does it make more sense to you that every thing is contingent, OR does it make more sense to you that at least one thing is non-contingent? If you simply don't have enough information to form a judgment, that is also fair.

If something starts or stops existing, that is the same as it being contingent or conditioned upon some other thing. However, "starting" or "stopping" places, for me, an undue temporal boundary on contingency. My immediate and present existence is still contingent on the existence of other things (like organs, cells, tissue, molecules, atoms, etc.) even though it started long ago and has yet to stop. Conditions must be met here in the present for my existence to be real, which means I am also contingent without respect to my beginning to exist or my stopping to exist. At least that's how I see it.

Read the previous few pages and you will see that I have no intention of evolving this into an argument, much less an argument for the existence of a god. I am honestly interested in how different people approach an answer to this question.

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.  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.  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.)

And that brings me to the end of page 6 and a well deserved break from propositional thinking.

[Ignorant]

It serves as much as an adjective as a verb.  To say it is is to say it is existing.  Notice that it is all word play at any rate.  We're no closer to knowing something essential about the universe by examining the way we use our language.

I'm not sure I am "playing" the same game of words as you. I'm not sure that this claim has any real meaning for me: "It serves as much as an adjective as a verb." <= You will have to help me understand what that means, if you care to. Either way, words are the only thing we have on an INTERNET DISCUSSION FORUM with which to discuss our ideas with each other. If you claim that "to be" or "to exist" are just as much adjectives as they are verbs, then we have a fundamental miscommunication which needs addressing.

But I'm not arguing that nothing is contingent, only that everything is contingent. The contingency isn't inherently hierarchal. Rather it is a function of the words and concepts we deploy to describe things. What we call Helium depends on a molecule's having two protons because of the definitions we employ. Hydrogen is no less contingent than Helium by virtue of having one few protons. We live in a state of mutual contingency. 

Whether we call it helium or we call it aunt-mae's-apple-pie is irrelevant, whatever you call it, that word becomes a placeholder for the thing... but a few things about the words you've chosen. Helium is an atom (I would also have accepted element), not a molecule. We don't define helium a certain way and then go look for it. Instead, we discover a certain thing existing, and then certain things about the way that thing exists as a result of scientific investigation. Then we name the thing, and define it according to what we have discovered about its way of existing. The definition comes from what we learn about it, not the other way around.

As for hydrogen being no less contingent than helium, I couldn't agree more. Is it logically possible for hydrogen to have an infinity of increasingly more fundamental conditions for existence? I don't see how it is, but just saying, "you're just playing word games" or "but it could be possible" doesn't help me understand the reasons for why it would be possible.

Suppose we found something for which we could find no dependency upon anything else. Would that for sure be a non-contingent thing...?

Obviously not.

Is there any reason to think that we as human beings have the capacity to understand everything?

No.

I doubt that our ability to describe it verbally or understand it is the final arbiter of the way things stand in the world. We are part of the world, not its judge.

I never claimed otherwise.

[Ignorant]

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.

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.

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?

[GrandizerII]

It's almost self-evident, don't you think?

We're clearly not in a non-reality nor could we have come about from a literal "nothing".

Well I don't know about its self-evidence, but most if not all things I encounter only exist on the condition that other things exist. How is it self-evident that reality exists without conditions?

Because reality is not the same as this particular universe. It encompasses everything that exists one way or another. That would include even an ultimate entity like God.

[Ignorant]

Well I don't know about its self-evidence, but most if not all things I encounter only exist on the condition that other things exist. How is it self-evident that reality exists without conditions?

Because reality is not the same as this particular universe. It encompasses everything that exists one way or another. That would include even an ultimate entity like God.

Fair enough. Is reality a thing, or does it merely signify all things which exist? If it signifies all things which exist, do all of those things exist on the condition of other things?

[Whateverist]

Because reality is not the same as this particular universe. It encompasses everything that exists one way or another. That would include even an ultimate entity like God.

Fair enough. Is reality a thing, or does it merely signify all things which exist? If it signifies all things which exist, do all of those things exist on the condition of other things?

Maybe they're (we're) all in it together.  Mutual contingency.

[The Valkyrie]

Does anything exist necessarily? In other words, is there anything that simply cannot NOT exist?

Hippies.

No matter how hard we work to eliminate them, they just keep turning up.

[Whateverist]

Does anything exist necessarily? In other words, is there anything that simply cannot NOT exist?

Hippies.

No matter how hard we work to eliminate them, they just keep turning up.

I think it may be the granola bowl at happy hour.  That's got to go.

[Ignorant]

Fair enough. Is reality a thing, or does it merely signify all things which exist? If it signifies all things which exist, do all of those things exist on the condition of other things?

Maybe they're (we're) all in it together.  Mutual contingency.

In a certain sense, we are certainly all in it together, mutually dependent on each other. However, in a different, more precise and formal sense, it does not seem to me that mutual contingency is actually possible. Consider and example:

Helium exists on the condition that two protons exist bound together. Mutual contingency would mean: Two protons bound together exist on the condition that helium exists. <= Doesn't this one seem logically backwards/circular?

[robvalue]

I was thinking of the simple case that everything that exists is made of energy, and if any amount of energy got destroyed, all energy ceases to exist. Now that's a fictional scenario, of course, similar to what I was drivelling on about previously. But it's logically consistent with reality as we observe it. And then everything remains contingent on everything else.

I'm not suggesting energy can actually be destroyed, but in this hypothetical scenario, it can. We just don't know how yet. Further research needed boffins!