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📌 **SUMMARY: What Exists?
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality. Ontology addresses questions of how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exist on the most fundamental level.**
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KEYWORD
configurations that have a minimal fitness. Below a certain fitness threshold, phenomena are so variable, or fleeting that they cannot be observed in any objective manner, and have no causal influence on anything else, so we might as well say that they don't exist. Examples are "virtual particles" in quantum field theories.
RELEVANT QUESTION
Notes
- .https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/
- Ontological arguments are arguments, for the conclusion that God exists, from premises which are supposed to derive from some source other than observation of the world—e.g., from reason alone. In other words, ontological arguments are arguments from what are typically alleged to be none but analytic, a priori and necessary premises to the conclusion that God exists.
- The first, and best-known, ontological argument was proposed by St. Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th century C.E. In his Proslogion, St. Anselm claims to derive the existence of God from the concept of a being than which no greater can be conceived. St. Anselm reasoned that, if such a being fails to exist, then a greater being—namely, a being than which no greater can be conceived, and which exists—can be conceived. But this would be absurd: nothing can be greater than a being than which no greater can be conceived. So a being than which no greater can be conceived—i.e., God—exists.
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