I can imagine a room, a country or a whole world that is devoid of electricity (these are hypothetically possible things of existence to bring about). I cannot imagine the whole of existence as having being always devoid of electricity or becoming entirely devoid of electricity (not hypothetically possible of existence). Negation is a thing our minds can do. For example, I take my phone out of the room, the room is no longer with my phone in it. I have negated the phone out of the room. When you apply negation to existence, logical problems occur. For example, try negating a phone from existence. You cannot because it is absurd for something to come in or go out of existence. So people who claim they can imagine these kinds of negations are mistaken about what it is they are actually imagining. It’s like when someone claims they can imagine something coming from nothing. The “nothing” that they are imagining is not truly nothing. It is something. So it only looks as though they are imagining something coming from nothing.
You can imagine a world or a particular reality wherein which the kind of supernatural powers or magic you speak of don’t exist. Shooting lasers out of one’s eye is sufficiently and clearly meaningful. Therefore, this is something that existence can bring about.[/u]In other words, whilst I can credit you with imagining a world or reality that is devoid of such supernatural powers, I cannot credit you with imagining the whole of existence as being devoid of such supernatural powers. I can credit you with imagining existence as being devoid of square circles.
My focus is not on one particular reality. If it was, your point would hold. I am referring to the whole of existence. Existence encompasses all realities.
But I’m not equivocating between those two meanings. We don’t know if such a thing as a time machine is possible or not because a time machine is not clear and sufficient in meaning and logical implications. We don’t know all the logical implication regarding it. So we cannot say time machines are a possible feature of existence. But for example, if you said something like flying cars, then clearly, flying cars are a possible feature of existence. We don’t know if our human race will ever build flying cars, but we know that flying cars are a possible feature of existence.
We don’t know if a 6th dimension is a possible feature of existence or not. So we don’t know if it’s a hypothetical possibility. But we know that flying cars, unicorns, humans, omnipotence…and all other sufficiently and clear meaningful terms are features of existence. I am not equivocating between these two uses of the word possible. If what I say is wrong, then you should be able to give me something sufficiently clear in meaning and logical implications (that is not absurd) that has never existed and can never exist.
But logically speaking, omnipotence (like omnipresence/existence) is not a matter of possibility. Nothing can become omnipotent from a non-omnipotent state. For any given thing, when we don’t have all the premises, it’s possible that x is the case or x is not the case. When we have all the relevant premises, it’s no longer a matter of possibility. It is a matter of necessity:
It is necessarily the case that unicorns are possible
It is possibly the case that time machines are possible
It is necessarily the case that square circles are impossible
It is possibly the case that existence has a 6th dimension
It is necessarily (not just possibly) the case that becoming omnipotent is impossible
It is necessarily (not just possibly) the case that omnipotence is a feature of existence or that existence is omnipotent
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The “we know it can or can’t happen” is clear when the matter at hand is sufficiently meaningful and clear in its logical implications.
Can you give me something that is sufficient in meaning and logical implications (not absurd) that has never existed and can never exist?
