Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Greene on Nozick on nothing

The problem of multiverses to explain anything (the end of the article is also good): Edward Feser: Greene on Nozick on nothing:
"Now, the proposal that every possible universe exists does not, by itself, actually explain anything. In fact -- again, at least by itself -- it makes things more mysterious rather than less. Suppose I ask “Why is there a cup on the table?” It is no good to answer “Actually, there are in fact two cups on the table; hence there is no special reason to ask where the one cup came from!” This hardly defuses the original question; indeed, there is now more to explain than there was originally. And the problem would rather obviously only be made worse if it turned out that ten or twenty cups were on the table, and certainly if every possible cup were on the table. Similarly, that every possible universe exists hardly explains why anything exists at all; it just adds to the explanandum rather than providing an explanans."

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