Abstract

Many believe that the world exists without a cause or reason. Most of them reject an explanation for the whole concrete world because they accept the traditional idea that concrete existence comes only from things that concretely exist. But I provide reasons for thinking that the world might be actual as a result of a feature that is not concrete but abstract. I begin by outlining ideas that some followers of the Platonic Theory of Forms have developed about whether actuality of something can be explained by its possibility. Next, I show that many who think they reject all paths for explaining actuality by abstract facts about possibilities in fact follow such paths. The question of why there exists anything concrete might be answered not by saying that the world exists reasonlessly, but by following some such paths: Having a certain nature for something concrete can turn its possibility into its actuality. Still, we might in the end be forced to accept that the world exists without any reason.