There Must Be Something (In Reference to the Paper by Peter van Inwagen Why Is There Anything at All?)

Abstract

The article presents and discusses different answers to the modal version of the question „why is there anything at all?” :
(I) - thesis of necessity (E. G. Lowe): there must be something (it is impossible for there to be nothing);
(II) - thesis of maximal probability (P. van Inwagen): it is maximally probable for there to be something (it is as improbable as anything can be for there to be nothing);
(III) - nihilist hypothesis (T. Baldwin): there might be nothing (it is possible for there to be nothing).

Thesis (I) has two versions:
(A) there is a necessary being, i.e. a being which exists in all possible worlds;
(B) something esists in every possible world, i.e. each possible world is non-empty, though (A) is not true.

According to van Inwagen, there are two arguments for (A): the ontological and the cosmological argument. These arguments are formally correct, but we do not have an ultimate demonstration of their premises (the possibility of a necessary being and the Principle of Sufficient Reason). An argument for (B) is given by Lowe, but it requires a controversial account of universals and sets (for example a thesis that the empty set is „a purely fictional entity” ). The same problem concerns the „subtraction argument” for nihilist hypothesis (III) (formulated by Baldwin), which has three controversial ontological premises and assumes abstract conception of possibility. One must also reject the argument for (II) (constructed by van Inwagen). because its consequence claims that our world is as improbable as „the null (empty) world" (Baldwin) or „a world consisting purely of pink elephants floating in custard” (Lowe). In the final part of the paper I try to argue pragmatically (psychologically) that there must be something: our way of thinking is actualist and all possibilities are made of actual data.