The Existence Puzzles

Melinda A. Roberts introduces the newcomer to population ethics and investigates the key issues in a way that will be of interest to professional philosophers, economists, lawyers, and students in all those areas who seek to understand what a cogent, intuitively plausible theory of population will look like. To that end, Roberts presents five perplexing but telling existence puzzles that already are or shall soon become important parts of the population ethics literature: the Asymmetry Puzzle, the Pareto Puzzle, the Addition Puzzle, the Anonymity Puzzle, and the Better Chance Puzzle. Roberts develops solutions to the puzzles that together form a partial theory of population, a collection of principles grounded in intuition but highly sensitive to the formal demands of consistency and cogency.

This groundbreaking volume investigates the most fundamental question of all: Why is there something rather than nothing? The question is explored from diverse and radical perspectives: religious, naturalistic, platonistic and skeptical. Does science answer the question? Or does theology? Does everything need an explanation? Or can there be brute, inexplicable facts? Could there have been nothing whatsoever? Or is there any being that could not have failed to exist? Is the question meaningful after all? The volume advances cutting-edge debates in metaphysics, philosophy of cosmology and philosophy of religion, and will intrigue and challenge readers interested in any of these subjects.

This groundbreaking volume investigates the most fundamental question of all: Why is there something rather than nothing? The question is explored from diverse and radical perspectives: religious, naturalistic, platonistic and skeptical. Does science answer the question? Or does theology? Does everything need an explanation? Or can there be brute, inexplicable facts? Could there have been nothing whatsoever? Or is there any being that could not have failed to exist? Is the question meaningful after all? The volume advances cutting-edge debates in metaphysics, philosophy of cosmology and philosophy of religion, and will intrigue and challenge readers interested in any of these subjects.

"This book introduces newcomers to population ethics, the inquiry into how changes in how many people, and just who, will exist bear on moral law. It also proposes a new way of thinking about the hard cases and questions population ethics is so widely known for. An intuitive first pass at what moral law has to say about choices to bring additional people into existence comes from Narveson. We are "in favour of making people happy." Or so says what this book calls the basic maximizing intuition. But we are "neutral about making happy people." Or so says what this book calls the basic existential intuition (itself a distant and more credible cousin of the person affecting intuition). Ever since questions relating to population variability gained attention in the late 1960s or so, the dominant narrative among population ethicists, including Parfit, has been that Narveson unwittingly contradicted himself-and that as between the two intuitions it's the basic existential intuition that must go. We must, the argument has been accede to a traditional total form of maximizing consequentialism. Leaving us with a (somewhat terrifying) obligation to procreate. Tying our hands in addressing climate change, disapproving of the constitutional rights of contraception and early abortion and giving credence instead to Dobbs v. Jackson and demanding grave sacrifices from vast numbers of people who do or will exist in exchange for the tiniest chance that the human species can multiply indefinitely over the very, very long term. It's a poor story. This book proposes a better story. Hard population cases generate not counterexamples disproving the basic existential intuition but rather a series of puzzles it's our job to solve under the governance of the puzzle-solving rules we all know well: we fit the pieces together without throwing any of them out and within the formal requirements of consistency, cogency and the conceptual principles we seem to have no choice but to accept. Reconciliation, and not refutation, is thus the aim, with each chapter concluding with principles-together, person based consequentialism-that allow us to retain, not the basic maximizing intuition in a careless or unfettered form, but rather in a form that is constrained in very precise ways by the basic existential intuition"--

The New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically goes on a rollicking journey to understand the enduring power of puzzles: why we love them, what they do to our brains, and how they can improve our world. “Even though I’ve never attempted the New York Times crossword puzzle or solved the Rubik’s Cube, I couldn’t put down The Puzzler.”—Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project and Better Than Before What makes puzzles—jigsaws, mazes, riddles, sudokus—so satisfying? Be it the formation of new cerebral pathways, their close link to insight and humor, or their community-building properties, they’re among the fundamental elements that make us human. Convinced that puzzles have made him a better person, A.J. Jacobs—four-time New York Times bestselling author, master of immersion journalism, and nightly crossworder—set out to determine their myriad benefits. And maybe, in the process, solve the puzzle of our very existence. Well, almost. In The Puzzler, Jacobs meets the most zealous devotees, enters (sometimes with his family in tow) any puzzle competition that will have him, unpacks the history of the most popular puzzles, and aims to solve the most impossible head-scratchers, from a mutant Rubik’s Cube, to the hardest corn maze in America, to the most sadistic jigsaw. Chock-full of unforgettable adventures and original examples from around the world—including new work by Greg Pliska, one of America’s top puzzle-makers, and a hidden, super-challenging but solvable puzzle—The Puzzler will open readers’ eyes to the power of flexible thinking and concentration. Whether you’re puzzle obsessed or puzzle hesitant, you’ll walk away with real problem-solving strategies and pathways toward becoming a better thinker and decision maker—for these are certainly puzzling times.

The Existence By: Theodore Ihejieto The Existence is a book of love and life that talks about the world as the existence of human beings, and tells human beings to understand that the world is the love and the life. It is a book of Planet Earth, which the Planet Earth gave to the author, because the author asked the Planet Earth for the book of the world. The author is a human being who lost faith in God and called on Planet Earth to do work and save human beings from evil and death in the world. This is a book of a human being who was challenged by evil and death in the world, and the human being called on his existence for help and protection. The author did not like to die in the world and told his existence that he did not want to die, because the author believed that Planet Earth has the power to save human beings in the world. The Existence is the faith, the hope, and the charity that God challenged human beings to find and tell the mountain of evil and death to move away from human beings.

Contributions of important researchers working in empty names, fiction, and the puzzles of non-existence.

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Forbes • Lit Hub • Electric Lit A gorgeous graphic memoir about loss, love, and confronting grief When Kristen Radtke was in college, the sudden death of a beloved uncle and the sight of an abandoned mining town after his funeral marked the beginning moments of a lifelong fascination with ruins and with people and places left behind. Over time, this fascination deepened until it triggered a journey around the world in search of ruined places. Now, in this genre-smashing graphic memoir, she leads us through deserted cities in the American Midwest, an Icelandic town buried in volcanic ash, islands in the Philippines, New York City, and the delicate passageways of the human heart. Along the way, we learn about her family and a rare genetic heart disease that has been passed down through generations, and revisit tragic events in America’s past. A narrative that is at once narrative and factual, historical and personal, Radtke’s stunning illustrations and piercing text never shy away from the big questions: Why are we here, and what will we leave behind? (With black-and-white illustrations throughout; part of the Pantheon Graphic Novel series)