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Single Idea 14028
[filed under theme 7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 1. Nature of Existence
]
Full Idea
Nothing comes into being from what is not.
Gist of Idea
Nothing comes to be from what doesn't exist
Source
Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 38)
Book Ref
Epicurus: 'The Epicurus Reader', ed/tr. Inwood,B. /Gerson,L. [Hackett 1994], p.6
A Reaction
King Lear puts it better: Nothing will come of nothing [1.i]. There seems to be an underlying assumption that coming into being out of nothing is much weirder than just existing, but I am not convinced about that. It's all equally weird.
Related Ideas
Idea 14029
If disappearing things went to nothingness, nothing could return, and it would all be gone by now [Epicurus]
Idea 14030
The totality is complete, so there is no room for it to change, and nothing extraneous to change it [Epicurus]
The
21 ideas
with the same theme
[what it means for things to exist]:
14874
|
Anaximander saw the contradiction in the world - that its own qualities destroy it
[Anaximander, by Nietzsche]
|
481
|
Nothing is created or destroyed; there is only mixing and separation
[Anaxagoras]
|
14028
|
Nothing comes to be from what doesn't exist
[Epicurus]
|
14029
|
If disappearing things went to nothingness, nothing could return, and it would all be gone by now
[Epicurus]
|
23634
|
Accepting the existence of anything presupposes the notion of existence
[Reid]
|
4475
|
Saying a thing 'is' adds nothing to it - otherwise if my concept exists, it isn't the same as my concept
[Kant]
|
11008
|
Existence is not a first-order property, but the instantiation of a property
[Frege, by Read]
|
8643
|
Affirmation of existence is just denial of zero
[Frege]
|
14463
|
Existence can only be asserted of something described, not of something named
[Russell]
|
13133
|
The world is facts, not things. Facts determine the world, and the world divides into facts
[Wittgenstein]
|
16434
|
Some say what exists must do so, and nothing else could possible exist
[Stalnaker]
|
16439
|
A nominalist view says existence is having spatio-temporal location
[Stalnaker]
|
15532
|
'Allists' embrace the existence of all controversial entities; 'noneists' reject all but the obvious ones
[Lewis]
|
6070
|
Existence is a primary quality, non-existence a secondary quality
[McGinn]
|
12214
|
'Exists' is a predicate, not a quantifier; 'electrons exist' is like 'electrons spin'
[Fine,K]
|
10279
|
Can we discover whether a deck is fifty-two cards, or a person is time-slices or molecules?
[Shapiro]
|
8321
|
All possible worlds contain abstracta (e.g. numbers), which means they contain concrete objects
[Lowe]
|
9427
|
For Humeans the world is a world primarily of events
[Mumford]
|
19659
|
The absolute is the impossibility of there being a necessary existent
[Meillassoux]
|
18740
|
If 'exist' doesn't express a property, we can hardly ask for its essence
[Horsten/Pettigrew]
|
19034
|
The world is either a whole made of its parts, or a container which contains its parts
[Vetter]
|