Sankara and Colin McGinn on Existence and Possibility

 It’s analogous to the long cycle on the dishwasher, the one I never use.  Philosophy has its long cycles which never get things quite clear.

"If seven maids with seven mops

     Swept it for half a year,

Do you suppose,' the Walrus said,

      That they could get it clear?'

I doubt it,' said the Carpenter,

      And shed a bitter tear.

Ex nihilo nihil fit as the panpsychist motto, the impossibility of change of Parmenides, sat and asatkaryavada (non-difference of cause and effect and v.v.) and now from Colin McGinn:

is existence possible

The vanes of my brain are spinning.

McGinn’s tourbillon comes from the chilling quarter of paradox.  Existence is not possible because ..... Here I must recommend reading it for it is certain that my understanding of it is flawed.  He pauses on the brink of radical contingency, looks into that abyss and spies William Blake having tea with Nobodaddy.

To Nobodaddy

Why art thou silent & invisible,
Father of Jealousy?
Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds
From every searching Eye?

Why darkness & obscurity
In all thy works & laws,
That none dare eat the fruit but from
Thy wily serpent's jaws?
Or is it because Secrecy
Gains females' loud applause?

  He questions the endless series of entities that spawn each other:

"The first is that these entities come from nothing at all: they simply spring into existence de novo. Not even God plays a role, since he is an existent being (allegedly) for whom the same question arises: what explains God’s existence?

Introduce the Ontological argument into the cycle and we will never have a clean plate.  Just:

“O good looking one, in the beginning this was Existence alone, One only without a second.  With regard to that some say, “In the beginning this was non-existence alone, one only, without a second.  From that non-existence issued existence." ‘

He said, ‘O good looking one, by what logic can existence verily come out of non-existence?  But surely, O good looking one, in the beginning all this was Existence, One only, without a second.’ Chandogya Upanisad VI.2.1/2

McGinn writes:

“The first is that the same question will arise for the antecedent realm of existence: where do these possibilities come from? If possible worlds really exist, where do they come from—do they pop into existence from nothing? But second, and more decisive, possibilities have no tendency to turn into actualities; so they cannot play the role of existence generators.”

The word ‘pop’, if I’m not being captious, is an indication of the missing factor: time.  The acorn does not pop into an oak.   A possibility is not an actuality it is part of the process or a power.  The acorn falls on the ground.  Add time and the cosmos.  Voila!

Sankara’s commentary on the Chandogya text cited is suggestive:

“As in the world someone, who in the forenoon had seen a lump of earth spread by a potter desirous of making pot, plate etc., he, on perceiving in that very place different products like pot, plate, etc. while returning in the afternoon after visiting a village would say, ‘those pots, plates, etc. were but earth in the forenoon’, so also it is said even here, ' In the beginning this was Existence alone.’

That existence is existence now dense with duration a la Bergson.  McGinn discusses eternal elementary particles:

“Let’s assume they exist eternally: we still need to know why they exist at all, given that they don’t have to. Is their existence simply a brute fact with no explanation? But why these entities and not others—why the particular types of particles that populate our universe?”

That doesn’t quite work for him.  Interesting discussions on this and other topics on his blog.