Zijian Du

Few questions probe as deeply into the root cause of existence as ‘why is there anything at all’. In Peter van Inwagen and E. J. Lowe's 1996 work Why is There Anything at All?, the two philosophers offer different proposals on this thought-provoking question based on the framework of possible worlds theory: Peter van Inwagen's proof bypasses ‘proving the existence of necessary beings’ and instead proves that ‘there is a world that contains no beings out of an infinite number of possible worlds in logical space, and that the probability of its being actual is zero’; ‘E. J. Lowe proposed two theoretical paths, the first of which was used to disprove Peter van Inwagen's premise 3 that there is a world without beings in logical space.[2] The second path argues that Peter van Inwagen's inquiry into the probability of any possible world being actual is meaningless because, in the absence of well-defined identity conditions for the division of possible worlds, we cannot divide the logical space into unique, exhaustive, and mutually exclusive alternatives. In this regard, my thought is that E. J. Lowe's second theoretical path does not seem to take into account the definition of fact and thus loses explanatory power. This paper will begin with Peter van Inwagen's view on the probability of a world in which no beings exist. Immediately afterwards, this paper will discuss E. J. Lowe's objections to it. Finally, this paper will explain why I think E. J. Lowe's second theoretical path is problematic and give my view of Peter van Inwagen's logic space.

existence, modal metaphysics and nothingness, proposition and probability

[1] Sorensen, R. (2023) 'Nothingness', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2023 Edition), E.N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (eds.), available at: https://plato.st- anford.edu/archives/spr2023/entries/nothingness/ [April 25th] [2] Van Inwagen, P., Lowe, E. J. (1996). Why Is There Anything at All? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 70, 95–120.

点击下载PDF