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JohnH comments on Wrong Questions - Less Wrong
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Comments (126)
That's not exactly a confusion, that's a paradox. And a faulty one; something might (somehow) "explain itself" or, more likely, we could discover a logical reason things had to exist. Or we might have some unknown insight into rationality and dissolve the question, I suppose, but that's not really helpful. The point is it's still an open question; the good Mr. Maitzen has not helped us.
Applying Greek thought to "Ehyeh asher ehyeh" is an attempt to get at something that "explain(s) itself", I am sure you are familiar with St. Thomas Aquinas and his five ways.
I suppose you are also familiar with Divine Sophia in Gnosticism? Saying we have a logical reason for things existing seems to be on that same level of reasoning and appears to just add another turtle to me.
Yup. Being a theist, I suspect God is in some way the cause of everything, although I'm not really smart enough to understand how that could be. I leave the answer to some future genius (or, more likely, superintelligent AI.)
Really? But logic, as a mathematical construct, "exists" (in the sense that it exists at all) independently of physical objects; a calculator on mars will get the same result as one on Earth, even if they have no causal connection. Logic seems like it can explain things in terms of platonic mathematical structure, not contingent physical causes.
Logic is independent of particular objects (multiply realisable), but there is is no evidence that it exists immaterially
Not entirely sure what "exists" even means in cases like this, but yeah, then I guess you're restricted to self-causing entities in that case, whatever that might mean.