Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Existence

  • Is Natural Causation Existence-Conferring?

    When I reported to Peter Lupu over Sunday breakfast that Hugh McCann denies that natural causation is existence-conferring, he demanded to know McCann's reasons.  He has three. I'll discuss one of them in this post, the third one McCann mentions. (Creation and the Sovereignty of God, p. 18) The reason is essentially Humean.  Rather than…

  • The Two Opposites of ‘Nothing’

    It is interesting  that 'nothing' has two opposites.  One is 'something.'  Call it the logical opposite.  The other is 'being.'  Call it the ontological opposite.  Logically, 'nothing' and 'something' are interdefinable: D1. Nothing is F =df It is not the case that something is F D2. Something is F =df it is not the case that nothing…

  • Allan Gotthelf on Ayn Rand on the Existence of God

    In January and February of 2009 I wrote a number of posts critical of Ayn Rand.  The Objectivists, as they call themselves, showed up in force to defend their master.  I want to revisit one of the topics today to see if what I said then still holds up.  The occasion for this exercise is…

  • Could God and the Universe be Equally Real?

    Not by my lights.  God is self-existent.  The universe is not.  As Hugh McCann puts it, unexceptionably, "the universe is directly dependent on God for its entire being, as far as time extends." (Creation and the Sovereignty of God, Indiana UP, 2012, p. 27.) God is a sustaining causa prima active at every moment of the…

  • A Tension in My Thinking: Hume Meets Parmenides

    I recently wrote the following (emphasis added): According to David Hume, "Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent." (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)  I've long believed Hume to be right about this.  I would put it this way, trading Latin for plain Anglo-Saxon: Our minds are necessarily such that, no matter what…

  • Dallas Willard on Being and Modes of Being

    How do we best honor a philosopher, especially one who has passed on?  By taking him seriously as an interlocutor and re-enacting his thoughts, sympathetically yet critically. What follows is pp. 37-42 of my article, "The Moreland-Willard-Lotze Thesis on Being," Philosophia Christi, vol. 6, no. 1 (2004), pp. 27-58. Willard on Existence: The Question of…

  • The Sense of Contingency and the Sense of Absurdity

    The parallel is fascinating and worth exploring. According to David Hume, "Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent." (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)  I've long believed Hume to be right about this.  I would put it this way, trading Latin for plain Anglo-Saxon: Our minds are necessarily such that, no matter what…

  • Actualist and Presentist Ersatzism and Arguments Against Both

    For the actualist, the actual alone exists: the unactual, whether merely possible or impossible, does not exist.  The actualist is not pushing platitudes: he is not telling us that the actual alone is actual or that the merely possible is not actual.  'Merely possible' just means 'possible but not actual.' The actualist is saying something non-platitudinous, something…

  • Presentism and Existence Simpliciter: Questions for Rhoda

    For Alan Rhoda, "Presentism is the metaphysical thesis that whatever exists, exists now, in the present. The past is no more.  The future is not yet.  Either something exists now, or it does not exist, period." Rhoda goes on to claim that presentism is "arguably the common sense position."  I will first comment on whether…

  • Common Ground Between Presentist and Anti-Presentist?

    What the presentist affirms, roughly, is that only (temporally) present items exist: there are no nonpresent existents.  The anti-presentist denies this, maintaining that there are nonpresent existents.  Now there is no genuine dispute here unless the identity of the presentist thesis is perfectly clear and the anti-present is denying that very thesis. Following some earlier suggestions of…

  • Five Time-Related Senses of ‘Is’

    I dedicate this post to that loveable rascal Bill Clinton who taught us just how much can ride on what the meaning of 'is' is. Credit where credit is due: Some of the inspiration for this post comes from a conversation with Peter Lupu and from an article he recommended, S. Savitt, Presentism and Eternalism…

  • Abstracta: Omnitemporal or Timeless? An Argument from McCann

    Is everything in time? Or are there timeless entities?  So-called abstracta are held by many to be timeless.  Among abstracta we find numbers, (abstract as opposed to concrete) states of affairs, mathematical (as opposed to commonsense) sets, and Fregean (as opposed to Russellian) propositions, where a Fregean proposition is the sense of an indexical-free sentence…

  • Presentism and Actualism, Tenseless Existence and Amodal Existence

    John of the MavPhil commentariat drew our attention to the analogy between presentism and actualism.  An exfoliation of the analogy may prove fruitful.  Rough formulations of the two doctrines are as follows: P. Only the (temporally) present exists. A. Only the actual exists. Now one of the problems that has been worrying us is how…

  • Defining Presentism

    I concede to London Ed that it is not clear what exactly the thesis of presentism is.  There is no point in considering objections to it until we are sure what the thesis comes to.  The rough idea is of course easy to convey: only temporally present items exist.  This is more plausible under restriction to…

  • Time and Tense: Remarks on the B-Theory

    What is time?  Don't ask me, and I know.  Ask me, and I don't know. (St. Augustine)  This post sketches, without defending, one theory of time.  On the B-Theory of time, real or objective time is exhausted by what J. M. E. McTaggart called the B-series, the series of times, events, and individuals ordered by…