This is the preview to the partially examined life of episode 267 Part 2 where Dylan and I

talked of Peter Adamson about Avacena, whose name in Arabic is Ibn Sina, the 11th century

Persian philosopher, talking about his argument for the existence of God and his argument

that the soul is immaterial.

You're going to hear an edited section from right at the beginning of the discussion where

we get into some of the metaphysical and epistemological views that lurk behind these two arguments.

Hope you like it.

So I think we can reflect more, for instance, on this metaphysical pitch-corder behind

the necessary and sufficient distinction that he makes because it's not just that there's

one necessary being and everything else could or couldn't have happened because as you've

said, Peter, God had to make the universe.

So in a sense, everything is necessary.

It's just that it's not necessary, considered in itself, it's only necessary because it

was necessitated by a necessary thing.

That's right.

So another way he expresses that is by saying that things other than God are necessary through

another, whereas God is necessary through himself, like the universe as a whole, is something

that by its very nature could have failed to exist or could exist.

Both the options are open for it.

It has to be preponderated to exist or not exist.

This by the way, and this is a mistake people often make, they think that things left to

their own devices will fail to exist.

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