By "an infinite series of contingent beings" is meant a beginningless succession of modally contingent beings, such that the succession of beings occupies an infinite number of equal-lengthened temporal intervals (e.g. an aleph-zero number of past years).

The problem of why something exists rather than nothing is doubtless as old as human philosophising. Of comparable antiquity is the observation that one cannot hope to explain why something exists rather than nothing by appealing to the existence of something else, on pain of vicious circularity.In this paper, I distinguish between the question of why anything exists, and the question of why particulars exist. These two questions are equivalent only if the only things that exist are particulars. Certainly many (...) have held that universals as well as particulars exist. I take it here that there is a prima facie distinction between universals and particulars. It follows that the former question is prima facie more general than the latter. I will initially concentrate on the latter, taking a hint from some recent theorising about the physics of the Big Bang. (shrink)

Why is there something rather than nothing? Apparently many people regard that question as a challenge to naturalism because they think it’s too fundamental or too sweeping for natural science to answer, even in principle. I argue, on the contrary, that the question has a simple and adequate naturalistic answer: ‘Because there are penguins.’ I then diagnose various confusions underlying the suspicion that the question can’t have such an answer and, more generally, that the question, or else some variant of (...) it, can’t have a naturalistic answer at all. (shrink)