Comment on Wrong Questions

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:23:09 GMT

The question certainly feels dissolved.

Huh. Fair enough.

Maitzen's basic argument reads like a reasonable one to me: either the questioner supplies some actual semantic content for the word "anything" in "Why is there anything?", or they don't. If they do, the question presumably has a naturalistic answer (even if science don't know that answer). If they don't, the question's ill-posed, and dissipates in a cloud of underspecification. (Strictly speaking, only the latter counts as dissolving the question, but then it's only the latter form of the question that ties people up in philosophical knots, so I'm counting it.)

Well, here's my counter-dissolution rephrasing: "Why is there everything? Including the things you assume exist when providing a naturalistic explanation of, say, penguins?"

Of course, the argument might be really terrible even though it passes my smell test. I'll keep an eye out in Discussion for your counterargument.

As you know, I actually ended up posting a pared-down version here, but I would have posted a link here anyway.

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