Why is There a World AT ALL, Rather Than Just Nothing?

The titular question here "Why is There A World AT ALL, Rather Than Just Nothing?" is a fusion of two successive queries posed by Leibniz in 1697 and 1714. He did so to lay the groundwork for his explanatory theistic answer. But the present paper offers (i) A very unfavorable verdict from my critical scrutiny of the explanatory demand made by Leibniz, and (ii) My argument for the complete failure of his interrogative ontological challenge as a springboard for his and Richard Swinburne's creationist theistic answer. I argue under (i) that Leibniz's explanatory demand is an ill-conceived non-starter which poses a pseudo issue. Thus, his and Swinburne's case for divine creation miscarries altogether. My collateral conclusion: The philosophical enterprise need not be burdened at all by Leibniz's ontological query, because it is just a will-o'-the-wisp.La pregunta "¿Por qué hay un mundo, en lugar de nada?" Es una fusión de dos preguntas sucesivas planteadas en 1697 y 1714 por Leibniz para sentar las bases de su explicación. El presente documento ofrece (i) un veredicto muy desfavorable de mi examen crítico de los motivos de la reivindicación formulada por Leibniz, y (ii) mi argumentación del fracaso total de su desafío ontológico interrogativo como trampolín para su respuesta teísta, y la creacionista de Richard Swinburne. Yo sostengo en (i) que la demanda de motivos de Leibniz es una idea imposible abocada al fracaso que plantea un pseudo tema. Por lo tanto, su caso y el de Swinburne abortan completamente la tesis de creación divina. Mi conclusión colateral: La empresa filosófica no tiene que cargar con la pregunta ontológica de Leibniz, ya que es sólo una mala concepción

David Malament and the Conventionality of Simultaneity: A Reply

In 1977, David Malament proved the valuable technical result that the simultaneity relation of standard synchrony with respect to an inertial observer O is uniquely definable in terms of the relation of causal connectibility. And he claimed that this definability undermines my own version of the conventionality of metrical simultaneity within an inertial frame. But Malament's proof depends on the imposition of several supposedly "innocuous" constraints on any candidate for the simultaneity relation relative to O. Relying on Allen I. Janis's 1983 challenge to one of these constraints, I argue that Malament's technical result did not undermine my philosophical construal of the ontological status of relative metrical simultaneity. Furthermore, I show that (a) Michael Friedman's peremptorily substantivalist critique of my conception, which Malament endorses, is ill-founded, and (b) if Malament had succeeded in discrediting my own conventionalist version of metrical simultaneity, he would likewise have invalidated Einstein's pioneering version of it

Pseudo-creation of the Big Bang

John Maddox has rejected the Big Bang model of the Universe as "philosophically unacceptable" and Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond has replied, "it need not be as 'philosophically unacceptable' as he contends." But Maddox expects, and Levy-Leblond allows, that scientific evidence will turn out to justify the abandonment of the model