[extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles

[Max More]

At 02:26 PM 11/8/2003, Damien wrote:

>----- Original Message -----
>
>The question, then, looks like a cognitive optical illusion, and one that
>has no counterpart we can readily draw upon for analogy. Pants on fire isn't
>it. Why am I here rather than in another galaxy, why am I now rather than at
>the end of time--these are locational or deictic questions with, perhaps,
>anthropic answers. But being and nothingness isn't like that. It really
>isn't. It's *sui generis*, and blows away when you think hard about it
>into... nothing.


Much like the question:

What caused the first event?

This always comes up in discussing the "cosmological argument" in 
philosophy of religion. Students were always puzzled at first why it was 
that, if you assume that there *was* a first event, it makes no sense to 
ask "what caused it?"

"You mean: What came before the first thing to make it happen?"

"Yeah, exactly."

"You mean: What came before the FIRST thing to make it happen?"

"Right, right."

[Pregnant pause]

"You mean: What came BEFORE the FIRST thing to make that FIRST thing happen?"

"Yeah, yeah... oh, wait... ahhh"

That's how it usually went.


Max


_______________________________________________________
Max More, Ph.D.
max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org
http://www.maxmore.com
Strategic Philosopher
Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org <more at extropy.org>
_______________________________________________________