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Articles

A Dialogue on Metaphysics

Dale Jacquette listens in on an argument about what can be deduced from the fact of our experience of a complex world.

Adam: Why is there something rather than nothing?

Brenda: By ‘something’, do you mean what you can see and hear, and experience by your other senses in the world around you?

Adam: Yes that, and our awareness of things.

Brenda: Ah, then the answer to your question is that in the past there has been nothing – no separate, individuated things – and eventually there will be a return to the oblivion of nothingness. You are also asking why there is consciousness. But consciousness has not always been, and in the future it will undoubtedly again cease to exist. With the last spark of thought, the only world we know will be extinguished like a snuffed candle.

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