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 we think of as existing, we can just as easily think of as not existing.  This includes God.  Now God, to be divine, must be a necessary being, indeed a necessary concretum. (God cannot be an abstract entity.)  Therefore, even a necessary being such as God is conceivable or thinkable as nonexistent. 

Try it for yourself.  Think of God together with all his omni-attributes and then think of God as not existing.  Our atheist pals have no trouble on this score.  The nonexistence of God is thinkable without logical contradiction.

Note the ambiguity of 'conceivable.'  It could mean thinkable, or it could mean thinkable without (internal) logical contradiction.  Round squares are conceivable in the first sense but not in the second.  If round squares were in no sense conceivable, how could we think about them and pronounce them broadly logically impossible?  Think about it!

Now try the experiment with an abstract necessary being such as the number 7 or the proposition *7 is prime.*  Nominalists have no trouble conceiving the nonexistence of such Platonica, and surely we  who are not nominalists can understand their point of view.  In short, absolutely everything can be thought of, without logical contradiction, as not existing.

Humius vindicatus est.

But doesn't the bolded sentence contradict what I said in earlier posts about the impossibility of there  being nothing at all, that there must be something or other, and that this can be known a priori by pure thought? 

On the one hand, I tend to think that I can attain positive rational insight into the necessity of there being something or other, and thus the impossibility of there being nothing at all.  On the other hand, I tend to think that everything is conceivably nonexistent, which implies that no such positive rational insight is possible.

Consider the following reasoning.

It is actually the case that something exists.  The question is whether there might have been nothing at all.  If the answer is in the negative, then it is necessarily the case that something exists.  But don't confuse the following two propositions:

Necessarily (Something exists)

Something (necessarily exists).

The first says that every possible world is such that there is something or other in it; the second says that some one thing is such that it exists in every possible world.  The second entails the first, but the first does not entail the second.  I need only show that the first proposition is true, though I may end up showing that the second is true as well.

Moreover, I am concerned to show that we can attain positive rational insight into the first proposition's truth by sheer thinking.  But now it appears that the tension in my thinking is a bare-faced contradiction.  For the following cannot both be true:

(H) Everything is conceivably nonexistent.
(P) There is something the nonexistence of which is inconceivable.

And what is that thing whose nonexistence is inconceivable?  What is the case.  For if something exists, then that is the case.  And if nothing exists, then that is the case.  Either way, there is what is the case. Either way, there is the way things are.  The way things are is not nothing, but something: a definite state of affairs.

The thought that there might have been nothing at all is the thought that it might have been the case that there is nothing at all.  But if that had been the case, then something would have existed, namely, what is the case.  Therefore, the thought that there might have been nothing at all refutes itself.  By sheer thinking I can know something about reality, namely, that necessarily something exists.  By pure thought I can arrive at a certain conclusion about real existence. 

The argument can be couched in terms of possible worlds.  A merely possible world is a total way things might have been.  There cannot be a possible world in which nothing exists, for a possible world is not nothing, but something.  Think of a possible world as a maximal proposition.  Could there be a maximal proposition that entails that nothing exists?  No, for that very proposition is something that exists.

So there has to be at least one thing, the proposition that nothing exists.  And it has to be that that proposition is necessarily false, in which case its negation is necessarily true.  So it is necessarily true that something exists.

Or one can argue as follows.

We have  the concept true proposition. This concept is either instantiated, or it is not. If it is not instantiated, then it is true that it is not instantiated, which implies that the concept true proposition is  instantiated. If, on the other hand, the concept in question is instantiated, then of course it is instantiated. Therefore, necessarily, the concept true proposition is instantiated, and there necessarily exists at least one truth, namely, the truth that the concept true proposition is
instantiated.

This is a sound ontological argument for the existence of at least one truth using only the concept true proposition, the law of excluded middle, and the unproblematic principle that, for any proposition p, p entails that p is true. By 'proposition' here I simply mean whatever can be appropriately characterized as either true or false. That there are propositions in this innocuous sense cannot be reasonably denied.

So here too we have a seemingly knock-down proof of the necessary existence of something by sheer thinking.  Thought makes contact with reality 'by its own power' without the mediation of the senses.  (For future rumination: Does this refute the Thomist principle that nothing is in the intelect that is not first in the senses?)

See also: An Ontological Argument for Objective Reality

Parmenides vindicatus est.

The apparent contradiction is this:

(H) Nothing is such that its existence can be seen to be necessary by thought alone.

(P) Something is such that its existence can be seen to be necessary by thought alone.

 I don't know how to resolve this.  I am of two minds.  Parmenides and Hume are battling for hegemony in my shallow pate.

Can I conceive (think without internal logical contradiction) the nonexistence of what is the case, or the way things are?  The Humean part of my mind says Yes:  you are conceiving an absolute Other to discursive thought, a realm in which the laws of logic do not hold.  You are conceiving the Transdiscursive! 

The Parmenidean part of my mind says No:  there is no Transdiscursive; Thought and Being are 'the same.'  

Related articles

The Sense of Contingency and the Sense of Absurdity

From the Laws of Logic to the Existence of God

Being is Said in Many Ways: On the Uses of 'Is'

Could the Universe Cause Itself to Exist?

Comments

[David Brightly]

Bill,

You say

In short, absolutely everything can be thought of, without logical contradiction, as not existing,

and

But doesn't the bolded sentence contradict what I said in earlier posts about the impossibility of there being nothing at all, that there must be something or other, and that this can be known a priori by pure thought?

Your worry appears to be that

1. Everything is contingent,
2. Necessarily, there exists something,

are inconsistent. But is that so? A library of N books might operate with a maximum of N-1 books out on loan at any one time. At any time, any given book may possibly be on loan, yet necessarily at least one book remains on the shelves.