Volume 12, Issue 2, Fall/Winter 2009
Theism and Naturalism
John Leslie
Pages 172-187
A Cosmos Existing Through Ethical Necessity
The paper develops a Platonic and Spinozistic metaphysics. With an unprovable yet absolute necessity, the cosmos exists just because of the ethical need for it. We, and all the intricate structures of our universe, exist as intricately structured thoughts in a divine mind. This mind could contain infinitely many other universes as well, and minds of the same kind could exist in infinite number. Evidence for this is supplied by the finely tuned orderliness of our universe, and by the sheer fact that any universe exists.