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  1. Nothing, Everything, Something!Achille C. Varzi - 2022 - In Fosca Mariani-Zini (ed.), The Meaning of Something: Rethinking the Logic and the Unity of Metaphysics. Springer.
    Universalist and nihilist answers to philosophical questions may be extreme, but they are clear enough. Aliquidist answers, by contrast, are typically caught between the Scylla of vagueness and indeterminacy and the Charybdis of ungroundedness and arbitrariness, and steering a proper middle course—saying exactly where in the middle one is going to settle—demands exceptional navigating powers. I myself tend to favor extreme answers precisely for this reason. Here, however, I consider one sense in which Something may claim superiority over its polar (...)
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  • It's not the end of the world: when a subtraction argument for metaphysical nihilism fails.A. Hoffmann - 2011 - Analysis 71 (1):44-53.
    Metaphysical nihilism is the thesis that there could have been no concrete objects. Thomas Baldwin (1996) offers an argument for metaphysical nihilism. The premisses of the argument purport to provide a procedure of subtraction that can be iterated until we reach a world where no concrete objects exist. Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (1997) finds fault with Baldwin’s argument, modifies it, and claims to have proved metaphysical nihilism. My primary aim is to show that Rodriguez-Pereyra’s alleged proof rests on a false assumption. The (...)
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  • Metaphysical Nihilism and Necessary Being.Tyron Goldschmidt - 2012 - Philosophia 40 (4):799-820.
    This paper addresses the most fundamental question in metaphysics, Why is there something rather than nothing? The question is framed as a question about concrete entities, Why does a possible world containing concrete entities obtain rather than one containing no concrete entities? Traditional answers are in terms of there necessarily being some concrete entities, and include the possibility of a necessary being. But such answers are threatened by metaphysical nihilism, the thesis that there being nothing concrete is possible, and the (...)
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  • Much Ado About Nothing: A Study of Metaphysical Nihilism.Ross P. Cameron - 2006 - Erkenntnis 64 (2):193-222.
    This paper is an investigation of metaphysical nihilism: the view that there could have been no contingent or concrete objects. I begin by showing the connections of the nihilistic theses to other philosophical doctrines. I then go on to look at the arguments for and against metaphysical nihilism in the literature and find both to be flawed. In doing so I will look at the nature of abstract objects, the nature of spacetime and mereological simples, the existence of the empty (...)
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  • Nothing.Naomi Thompson - 2010 - Dissertation, University of Birmingham
    In this dissertation I suggest an answer to the famous question ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ I argue that there is something because there could not have been nothing. The focus of my discussion is the empty possible world of metaphysical nihilism, and the first chapter is a rejection of the only prominent argument for that position; the subtraction argument. In the second part of my discussion I construct a positive argument against metaphysical nihilism, I assume, as is (...)
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