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Single Idea 19659

[filed under theme 7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 1. Nature of Existence ]

Full Idea

We maintain that it is absolutely necessary that every entity might not exist. ...The absolute is the absolute impossibility of a necessary being.

Gist of Idea

The absolute is the impossibility of there being a necessary existent

Source

Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 3)

Book Ref

Meillassoux: 'After Finitude: the necessity of contingency', ed/tr. Brassier,R [Bloomsbury 2008], p.60

A Reaction

This is the main thesis of his book. The usual candidates for necessary existence are God, and mathematical objects. I am inclined to agree with Meillassoux.

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]