If something exists, does everything exist?

Question

Has anyone argued this? I haven't formulated a coherent argument, so I'm just throwing this out there to see if anyone has thought about this already.

Intuitively, I think it makes sense that everything must exist, that reality is an infinite multiverse. If true, this offers an explanation for why we exist in this universe with these specific physical laws, because we must exist in this universe with these specific physical laws if reality is infinite. Furthermore, if reality is not only infinite but also eternal, with all time occurring simultaneously, this solves the problem of the infinite regress; there is no time before our universe existed, if all moments of time are always occurring simultaneously. In short - all things, and all time, always.

Are there any arguments why everything must exist for something to exist? Are there any arguments for why something could exist without everything existing? For some reason, I can't help but assume that the reason why there is something rather than nothing requires infinity. Why would some things exist instead of nothing, unless all things exist? I'm interested to hear if anyone is familiar with arguments for or against this intuitive thought I hold.

Answer 1

You did not provide an argument for why we can deduce that everything exists from the claim that something exists, and this is not really intuitive, tho intuition is quite subjective. Why must the existence of something rather than nothing only be solved by claiming that all things exist? That's not necessary at all. I also would like to comment on the view that all moments of time exist simultaneously (because you mentioned it on your text), because it strikes me not only as extremely unintuitive, but it also seems to completely miss the very notion of moments of time (in the plural form). If everything exists simultaneously, then there is no such as multiple moments of time, for moments of time are differentiated precisely by relations of priority (before-ness) and posteriority (after-ness). If we have "two" moments x and y, such that x is not prior to y nor is y prior to x, then it is absurd to say that x and y are different moments at all, they are, on the contrary, the very same moment. Although simultaneous events do not collapse into a single event, simultaneous moments collapse into a single moment, precisely because simultaneity is just occuring at the same moment/time. That is, there is no such thing as all moments existing simultaneously, that just collapses to there existing a single moment in all of existence. But to answer the general question that u posted, i would say that one can easily see how it is not the case that all things exist. For this, we need to look for a thing which does not exist, and this can be done by yourself without even requiring the external world. There does not exist a being who is you, but has an animalistic consciousness. You might in thesis acquire an animalistic consciousness, such as when u were a baby, but now your mind is absolutely sure that you are not an animalistic consciousness. This seems to be the most intuitive way to show that not all things exist.

Answer 2

"If anything exists, everything must exist." This must be true if we look at the alternative, which is that not everything exists, i.e. only a part/parts exist. But a part/parts of what? Of everything. Everything must exist for there to be parts of it in the first place. To me, this seems to at least explain the intuitive part about the statement.

Answer 3

I don't see how you conclude that if something exists, everything exists.

If we look at it from the angle of skepticsm, then you could argue that maybe you are in a dream, maybe you are just a mental projection in someone else's dream, maybe you are in a simulation, etc, you could make endless possibilities excluding the possibility that there is nothing, because nothing means being literally no thing, not even a void of space, so thus you must be something but you cannot be sure what something are you, but that doesn't mean everything or rather every possibility exists.

Also, the concept of an infinite multiverse is itself a possibility

Answer 4

There are in fact many variations of this idea, and it's actually more popular than you might think. It's an intuition that I share.

If you want two relatively well-formulated elucidations of the idea, see Max Tegmark's Mathematical Universe and Stephen Wolfram's Ruliad. These are both (arguably isomorphic) different interpretations of the idea. Max Tegmark's idea is that every mathematical structure exists, and that our universe is in fact a mathematical structure. Stephen Wolfram's idea is quite similar, except instead of centering on Mathematical Structures he focuses on Computation - all computations "exist", all algorithms "exist", everything computable "exists", and this universe is one of the infinite structures in that realm.