On 3/9/2021 3:03 PM, Tomas Pales wrote:
The law of identity determines what can possibly exist, namely that which is identical to itself. But what is the difference between a possibly existing object and a "really" existing object? I see no difference, and hence all possible objects exist, necessarily.
So everything that does not exist is something that cannot possibly exist. But does that mean in the future or just now. If it means /just now/ then it's a trivial tautology, equivalent to "It is what it is." and has no useful content. But if it means now and the future, even confined to the near future, it's false.
To which someone might say something like: "But there is a red car parked in front of my house. Isn't it possible that, at this moment, a blue car would be parked there instead? Then the blue car would be a possible object that obviously doesn't exist." Um, no. A red car can't be blue; that would be a contradiction, a violation of the law of identity, and hence impossible. A blue car might be parked in front of my house in a different possible world but then we are talking about a different world, and not really about my house either but rather about a copy of my house in that other world - and the fact that you can't see that other world is not a proof that it doesn't exist.
c.f. Russell's teapot. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/416e7979-5646-6d08-622c-8cea368dab6d%40verizon.net.
