If everyone had all the money they wished for, than money would be worthless. It would be ubiquitous and lose all meaning.
Likewise, if God equated to “all existence” than God would be perfectly ubiquitous and therefore would have no meaning. God would not exist.
If existence is defined as “all things” - from quarks, to galaxies, and to space itself - than the individual constituents of existence lose meaning when viewed as a whole, because they are really “One” perfectly ubiquitous unit.
Perfect ubiquity leads to non-existence. Existence itself is perfect ubiquity. Existence does not exist.
I think this is merely a linguistics problem. We use words to distinguish between things that are different. If something is ubiquitous, and therefore is everything, then there is no longer any need for differentiation and thus the word itself become pointless and meaningless
Take your money example. If everyone in the world had all the money they wanted, THAT money would become meaningless. People would still need some way of deciding who gets what property, or else they would have to change the system of resource distribution among people, but the underlying principle behind money, or at least its causes, would not go away.
It is arguable that thought itself - or at least any thought relevant to human behavior - is impossible without language. Since we think in some type of language, wouldn’t the heart of most all problems be linguistically related?
But what if there is no differentiation? The Big Bang exploded a sea of quarks that formed all of existence. Everything is still the same energy it always was, however, as humans we are only seeing a miniscule snapshot of it. Existence is all things we know and all things we do not know - perfect ubiquity.
Does this render existence - or at least the word “existence” - pointless and meaningless? If so, when we replace the word with another - say, “reality” - would this not immediately, by those requirements, render this word meaningless as well?
If this is the case than:
Since we use words to describe anything perfectly ubiquitous - such as existence itself - and since language plays such an essential role in thought, any word used to describe existence would be void of all meaning. The thought of existence would be impossible. All logic must stem from thought, so therefore existence would be a logical impossibility.
So when the thing that is believed to exist becomes ubiquitous, and therefore loses all practical meaning and reality, than that which gives rise to its existence still exists and brings about a new form?
In your analysis of the money example, this seems very much to be the case. However, in the money example, there are alternatives. That which gives rise to money, will birth a new form of currency.
Existence = All Things.
The only way this explanation would hold true for existence itself, is if there were something that gives rise to existence. And that thing , by all logical means, would have to exist - a contradiction.
Well, some would say (camus for example) that the contradiction itself is the very definition existence. In that sense, the contradiction is still there, even if existence as you have described loses meaning. Wow, this is making my head spin.
Within the universe, the illusion of reality is created by the supposed disconnection between parts. These ‘disconnections’ are all in balance with one another, allowing us to perceive ‘things’ as real or experiential.
Now, assume that all the parts are actually a whole, and this is what you call ‘Existence’. How is this any different than the reality of existence through ‘things’-as-parts? It’s different, because ‘Existence’ as a whole is not real. It is not a possible reality to the human mentality, because the human mind registers ‘things’-as-parts only. Thus, ‘Existence’ as a whole is an impossible existence. At the very least, you cannot use the same words to describe the transition. When all ‘things’ seem to merge together into one uniform ‘All Things’, then it goes beyond the human faculties and must be redefined. Is it then ‘Existence’? You can label it that, but it’s misleading; humans don’t register existence in this way due to how language is formed (ie. the fragmentation of ‘All Things’).
Perhaps it is truly ubiquitous like you said, but the definition as you’ve stated it has already lost all of its meaning before being posited.
EDIT:
The problem is this (restated):
Before we are born there is only ‘Existence’. → We are born and learn of ‘existence’ through ‘things’-as-parts. → We cannot restructure ‘existence’ as ‘Existence’, because it does not follow a logical path. We learned of ‘existence’ first, before ‘Existence’. ‘Existence’ as a whole is a metaphysical preposition as a backward step. It cannot hold a definition unless it is made sense of through ‘existence’ as-we-know-it. And of course, we only know ‘existence’ through what we have learned of it after being born and developing our language to comprehend it.
When you say this, I am assuming that you do not believe that there is a true disconnection of “parts” within the universe. In order for a “part” to fulfill its definition, doesn’t there have to be a true, logical disconnectiveness to it? And if there is a true, logical disconnectiveness to fragments (aka: parts) of existence (aka: reality) than where would these parts go? In order for existence to have “parts” these parts must have at least the potential to be disconnected from reality - to become non-existent.
From what we understand of physics, this is not possible. Reality, as best we can see, consists of varying concentrations of energy which cannot be destroyed (aka: become non-existent), but only redistrubuted in one way or another.
Yes, I’m not sure, but we may be saying the same thing: “disconnectiveness is illusory”. I don’t think it is possible for reality to have true disconnectiveness. We have evolved mental constructs that allow us to have a “working knowledge” of the world around us and allow for our survival. Part of this cognitive construct is the ability to differentiate and categorize. The distinction between parts is a human perceptual phenomenon and not a true property of reality.
If the definition has lost all meaning than how are you able to give a coherent reply? I do not mean to be facetious, but I see this as a very unique situation. There must be some meaning in order for communication or understanding to take place. Even though it is cognitively impossible to concieve of a “whole” Existence, we must recognize the conceptual difference in order to make any distinctions - even if those distinctions are illusory. Otherwise the words themselves (or writing style) are conveying information in a way that we can not yet understand.
While typing this reply, I believe that I have hit upon an answer:
Our perception of reality forces us to view the world as units which create a whole. However, this is our perception - along with all of its cognitive limitations.
We have already determined that when any of these units (aka: parts) becomes ubiquitous, it loses meaning and for all logical purposes ceases to exist. It has also been posited that we percieve other units to arise and take the place of that which became ubiquitous and ceased to exist.
The way our minds work, these parts, in order to exist, make up a whole - this whole we refer to is Existence itself. We can also refer to Existence as the universe. The problem, as stated earlier:
Within our current paradigm, science has shown us many things about the universe. One of the most amazing discoveries is this - the universe is expanding.
There is never a whole. Existence can only be maintained without perfect ubiquity. The universe must expand in order to maintain its existence.
A whole existence truly is impossible.
P.S. - This is very interesting and coincides with a thought I had a few years ago. I would like to respond to this later.
Since money is the proposition, we’ll use economics 101.
Money is of value, has ‘meaning’, because it represents something: a car, a house, food, vacation, yacht, butler, education, etc. If everyone had an infinite supply of money then the system would break down. It’s a supply and demand problem. An infinite supply of money and no demand for money renders it valueless. You would have to go back to trading or else nothing would get done.
Now, let’s look at existence. There’s an almost limitless supply of existence. In the words of the Trump, it’s hooooge. Supply is infinite, if not in actuality then at least for all intents and purposes of this conversation. Except when we look at humans.
One aspect of existence is time. Even if you don’t believe in time as a natural phenomenon, you admit that our time here is limited; we’re gonna die. This severely limits our supply of existence.
Supply = 1 lifetime
What’s the demand? I dunno, do you like life?
Demand = variable
If humand demand for existence is any positive number, then existence has value or meaning.
Now, this is subjective meaning. Supply and demand problems, kind of the way you posited your question, are always subjective. We can glean nothing from this about any objective meaning of existence…as always.
Yes, there is a logical disconnection between parts in the form of ‘some X’ versus ‘all X’. However, the parts don’t “go” anywhere. I don’t believe anything is necessarily being destroyed in how the human mind breaks down a whole into parts. So, I’m not sure what you mean by, “In order for existence to have “parts” these parts must have at least the potential to be disconnected from reality - to become non-existent.” How can a part be destroyed to become non-existent, or disconnected from reality? Reality is defined by the fragmentation of the whole into parts; the process creates the illusion of reality.
You’re right to think we may be saying the same thing; I think we are too.
Yes, it is cognitively impossible to conceive of a “whole” Existence, but it is still a metaphysical possibility. That is how we are talking about Existence anyway, through your metaphysical prepositions. The “illusory distinctions” is exactly how we are talking about existence. When we talk about ‘Existence’ (as a whole), then we can only talk about its supposed characteristics through our understanding of the parts.
I agree with the points you made in this answer, but I don’t know how we’ve posited that “units [parts] become ubiquitous”, or even that we have? It is not the part that becomes ubiquitous, it was Existence that became ubiquitous due to our necessary lack of understanding concerning its existence-without-parts. We could say that the Whole = All Parts, but what we are representing is still not ‘wholeness’, our mind continues to latch onto ‘All Parts’ instead. If anything were truly or definitively real, we would state that it should be Existence. Oddly enough, we can’t. We’ve defined reality based on the parts already.
“There is never a whole. Existence can only be maintained without perfect ubiquity. The universe must expand in order to maintain its existence.”
Very interesting statement. I’ll have to think about that one…
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