Existential Inertia in general is the metaphysical thesis which claims that a concrete contingent object once in existence will persist in existence until its' existence is destroyed or impugned by an external cause. Recently, Existential Inertia thesis has been modified by some of its pundits to admit the causal interplay of ontologically necessary primitives or an ontologically necessary primitive which would be both nomically necessary and metaphysically necessary, and would through its own existential inertia support the temporal existence of any causally contingent agent. This article will present four arguments against EIT(existential inertia thesis) thereby revealing the metaphysical and ontological inconsistencies of the existential inertist's claims.
Argument 1: Diachronic Identity
Since, the EIT pundit must rely on natural causal closure or an ontic structural realist ontology to appeal to identity preservation over time then it would seem that such a pundit would grant an A-theory appraisal or interpretation of time. Under A-theory objects such as contingent concrete beings would move through time as mermeric wholes without temporal parts. However the problem the inertist would encounter in maintaining a consistent appeal to parts to explain the whole would be the probem of the sorites paradox or Heraclitus' River. Since, an object changes through time its parts never remain the same, therefore an object at tn-1 is not the same parted out object at tn where tn=time now, and tn-1=time now - one moment prior, which would be formally stated:
(∀x) [Cxtn-1=Cx1tn≡(∀z)
(Pzxtn-1≡Pzx1tn)]
This formula is saying for all x if contingent object at t n-1 = contingent object now where x=me if and only if for all z z is a part of x at t n-1 if and only if z is a part of x1 at time now.
However, the inertist cannot depend on parts to maintain identity since parts change through time under A theory. This is notoriously evident under Heisenberg uncertainty, which states that a position of a particle cannot be known with certainty unless we have high energy introduced into the system. However, if we introduce high energy into the system we reach a limit where the point in space would collapse into a blackhole. Therefore we cannot have certainty about which parts belong to which system unless we appeal to a contingent being's Bekenstein bound. Therefore we can see that the inertist cannot offer an adequate account of identity over time without begging the question and assuming that a sustaining cause is ontologically expedient to maintain an information boundary, thereby undermining the inertist claim.
Argument 2: Mereologic Nihilism
If the existential inertist adopts a B theory perdurantism, and admits a contingent concrete being has temporal parts yet has no intrinsic grounding principle but only ontological simples arranged in causal relations objectwise. We can quickly see that no such concrete contingent being exists, hence there are no contingent beings under ontic structural naturalism. The inertist must admit only many ontologically necessary beings which are not existentially contingent. However this presents an aporia since an ontologically necessary being in itself would be omnipotent since it would not have any potency to go out of existence. Yet, analytically speaking there can only be one ontologically necessary of itself omnipotent being,since being has no genus, which implies that there cannot be many ontologically necessary primitives. Now we see the inertist has to do alot of juggling to navigate the puzzles of diachronic identity as well as foiling the implications of mereologic nihilism. If we do grant a stolen concept from classical theism that contingent beings exist we can run an argument from the axiom of separation which we will see in the next section. The implication here is that the set has no inertia since the axiom of separation demands we maintain consistency by setting a condition for membership to the set which sets up a vicious circular regress. Since, the set separates out all contingent beings we are left with one ontologically necessary being in itself which could correspond to the ground of Being itself or the God of Classical Theism. We also have an example from String Theory that the ontologically necessary being cannot be temporally contingent or both nomically necessary in every world and metaphysically necessary since string theory posits 10 to the 500 worlds with different laws of nature and so the nomically necessary being would have different attributes and intrinsic nature in each world which would impugn metaphysical necessity.
Argument 3: The Avicennian Axiom of Separation
This argument runs from common sense and applies the axiom of separation to the set of all concrete beings. Thereby, we are separating out the concrete contingent beings from the set of all concrete beings. Since, we have argued earlier that there can only be one ontologically necessary metaphysically necessary omnipotent being in itself we will see that no contingent being has existential inertia since the set or conjunct itself would be a contingent being, and so would not come into existence nor persist in existence since it does not exist through itself or its members but relies on a higher order cause. In the argument below accidental existence means modally accidental and essential existence means modally essential.
1. For all x if x is a contingent being then x has existence accidentally premise
2. For all z , z is a contingent being and z equals the conjunct of x premise
3. Either there exists some y that has existence essentially entails y is not a contingent being, or for all z ,z does not have existence accidentally. premise
4. If there exists some y that has existence essentially, then y is not a contingent being entails for all z, z does not have existential inertia and z equals the conjunct of x. premise
c. For all z, z does not have existential inertia and z equals the conjunct of x
lexicon:
Cx= x is a contingent being
A!x= x has accidental existence
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