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Nothing, Everything, Something!

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The Meaning of Something

Part of the book series: Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning ((LARI,volume 29))

Abstract

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 competitors, Everything and Nothing, when it comes to answering the ontological question, “What is there?”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Achille C. Varzi

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  1. Achille C. Varzi
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Correspondence to Achille C. Varzi .

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  1. University of Tours, Tours, France

    Fosca Mariani Zini

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Varzi, A.C. (2022). Nothing, Everything, Something!. In: Mariani Zini, F. (eds) The Meaning of Something. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, vol 29. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09610-5_8

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