I recently described a thought-experiment regarding space, time, and matter [1]. That essay was the first in a series that will address some related ideas I have had. These essays are not intended a serious theory, but simply as food for thought.

After receiving feedback from the previous essay, I realized that there were several topics I could expand upon. I decided to next write about some thoughts I’ve had on existence. That is what I'll do here:

I believe that the concept of objective existence is a stumbling block that impedes our understanding of nature. It can be easily understood that existence is, and must be, expressed in terms of relationships. However, despite this inseparable quality of existence, the notion that some 'thing' could exist without relationship (or even before relationship), is difficult to clear from the mind.

This contradiction of concept and evidence is reinforced due to the way that we operate in our world. In our day-to day experience, when we interact with something new, we understand that it existed before we interacted with it. We then understandably extrapolate this experience onto our overall concept of nature. In addition to this, I believe the logical conundrum of ‘boot-strapped existence’ makes the concept of objective existence somehow attractive.

The boot-strapped concept of existence considers that all things that do exist do so through a self-sustained closed cycle of relationship. It is the notion of boot-strapped existence that leads to the questions: "What is outside the Universe?" or "What came before the Universe?" Boot-strapped existence is not an alternative to the concept of objective existence. A boot-strapped concept of existence simply moves the contradiction of existence without relationship, it does not eliminate it.

Instead, to have a more useful view of existence, we should consider how existence is determined.

Defining existence is a process of describing relationships. Existence and relationship are inseparable. For this reason, it is worth considering that existence may not be a state to be described by relationships, but is a quality of relationships, and nothing more. To use an analogy: it might be useful to consider that our notions of existence and non-existence are akin to our notions of hot and cold.

Colloquially, we often speak of hot and cold as if they are states or opposing entities. This is hot. That is cold. We know they are not. Temperature is the kinetic energy of molecular motion. Hot and cold are relative descriptions comparing multiple temperatures. In fact, when we consider the possibility of an absolute zero state, the notions of hot and cold become meaningless. With absolute zero, we need only to provide the Kelvin to describe an object's temperature.

Similarly, it may be useful to view existence and non-existence, not as two possible and opposing states, but to consider that existence is itself a description of relative relationships. Or, to further extend the analogy: existence is a relative abundance of relationships, as hot is a relative abundance of molecular energy, and non-existence is a relative paucity of relationships, as cold is a relative paucity of molecular energy.

It is interesting that zero Kelvin may be unattainable. The same might be true of non-existence, -the absolute lack of relationship.

In my next essay, I will discuss what might constitute a ‘relationship’.

[1] http://hubski.com/pub?id=837