Based on the first law of thermodynamics (energy cannot be created or destroyed) and the fact that matter and energy are the same thing, it follows that the only "thing" that exists is the universe--composed of all of the energy within it that makes up literally everything. Nothing else actually "comes into existence" within our universe, the energy/matter just shifts and changes form. So, the only thing your question really applies to is the universe itself--did it come into existence or has it "always" just existed? I lean heavily towards the Reductionism view of time, which means that time does not exist independently of the events that occur in time. In other words, if there is no matter/energy, there is no time. This means that before the universe existed, there was no time. The beginning of time was the beginning of the universe, which is another way of saying that the universe has "always" existed.

TL;DR : No.

Is it safe to assume that for something to exist it has to come into existence first? — Daniel

It seems a good assumption just looking around at the evidence. When things exist, we mean that they persist. They hang about in an individuated and stable fashion. But we also can see that things change. Individuation is the result of development. Stability is what can survive lability or corruption.

So what we see is a reality that is stretched between two tendencies. Things persist. And things also develop and perish.

So if that is what we see everywhere we look, then that is what would be safe to assume. Reality is a process in which things can both change and stay the same. Our metaphysics then has to be directed to the "how" of that duality.

So what if I say that "for existence to exist it must have not existed before?"... and for existence I mean a state that allows for things to exist. If I make no sense to you please tell me where I might be making a mistake in the previous statement... I am glad to hear any opinion you have about the previous statement.

So what if I say that "for existence to exist it must have not existed before? — Daniel

This is a very standard line of thought of course. We believe in deterministic cause and effect. We believe in Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason.

And yet we also we realise that while this can explain existence in terms of particular individuated entities - a world full of objects - there is a problem when it comes to applying the same simple cause and effect logic to "existence as a whole".

You are talking about the central problem of metaphysics. And we know that simple cause and effect stories can't work.

And that is why you would have to start to step back and see what reality is actually composed of. In talking about "existence", you are already presuming individuation and stability ... in the face of an equal amount of development and decay. So "non-existence" looks like that other bit - the change, the possibility, the flux.

The question has to become about why anything might develop and persist in the face of so much action in the other direction. This thing that you presume - existence - then drops out of the picture. There isn't any such thing as "simple existence". That is simply a label you were slapping on the most stable and enduring part of everything that is always changing.

But likewise, "coming into existence", is a problematic idea because it is also true that things do have the tendency to stabilise and find concrete forms that endure. Everything might be changing, but pattern or regularity also can't seem to help emerging.

So to get anywhere on this obvious poser - how could existence first exist? - you have to be prepared to unpick the notion of existence itself.

To me, it makes more sense to understand existence as where the "coming into being" has finally arrived at some stable rest point. So it is not about where existence starts. It is about where coming into being stops.

Our attention can focus on why flux or chaos settles into something stable and persisting. And we have a lot of mathematical-strength models that can speak to that kind of metaphysics.

If the meaning of a name is the particular it refers to, then the name won't possess meaning until after the particular has been created, and the name will become meaningless if the particular is destroyed.

In which case, suppose "Luna" refers to the rock we know of as "the moon". Then to say "Luna no longer exists" or that "Luna will one day exist" is meaningless. Which in turn implies that "Luna exists" is at most vacuously true and says nothing.

Of course, this isn't how our existential predicate works when we use names. This implies that the meaning of names are not the particulars they refer to. Rather, names like "the moon" refer to roles that particulars play in a language-game. And the meaning of these roles is atemporal.

I see you started a similar thread just before this one. But I will quote a bit of that here...

Beyond the limit of existence we said its opposite must lie. This opposite again has a limit, for it is only what it is and therefore exists. As you might be able to see, nothingness is that from which existence comes but that never gets to be per se for when it is it becomes something that exists and therefore never exists and IS nothing. Now this nothingness before the origin must not necessarily be 0 of everything. As I said, it could be everything except the ability to change. I dunno it is as if change were what we call god. Change that arises because the limitation of things forces their existence. It is as if we exist because we have to exist. Makes sense? — Daniel

So I would say you are asking the right questions. Now what suitable answers have some philosophers offered?

One approach is that of metaphysicians like Anaximander in Ancient Greece or CS Peirce in modern times.

Where things begin is in a vagueness or a pure unbroken potential. This is neither a state of change nor stability. Being the unlimited or the indefinite, it has no division in either of these possible directions. It is only the possibility for such a division to manifest.

We are talking of metaphysical qualities that are dichotomous. Each is the limit of the other. So the limit on changing is to be stable. The limit on stability is to be still changing. Thus you need both to “exist” to have either as something that definitely applies in the world. The existence of each secures the existence of the other. We can point to the lack of change when things are stable. And we can point to lack of stability when things change.

But back when things were primally vague, there could be no fact of the matter either way. There was no change to measure stability by, and no stability to measure change by. All you have is mute indeterminacy in regards to either possible question.

So apply that to existence in general. Non-existence must exist to stand as a definite limit on existence. And vice versa. Existence must limit non-existence.

Fine. But note how non-existence is not yet defined in its own way. Are we talking about absolute nothingness. Is it the nothingness that stands outside the somethingness in some spatial sense, or temporal sense, or even a spatiotemporal sense?

We can see that the notion of “existence” does have some inherent problems. Is it properly opposed to nothingness, to flux, to development, to decay, or what? Again, that is why we would want to start by deconstructing the term, discover what we actually think we mean by it. What actually is the limit that makes existence exist. Across that limit must lie its other. But we need to give that other some more concrete definition than saying “it is whatever existence is not”. It must be given a positive character to secure existence as a well defined metaphysical concept.

So anyway, the story would go that everything begins just in an undifferentiated vagueness. Then your key metaphysical polarities are what could emerge in a mutually definitional fashion from that. You get a dichotomy like flux and stasis which describes existence in terms it’s two logical extremes.

So now your reality is bounded by standing within a pair of limits.

You want to draw a circle on a page. That marks off an inside from an outside. And then you want the inside to be existence, the outside to be non existence. Yet that doesn’t really work. You have only marked off a region of a plane in arbitrary fashion. The outside of the circle also actually exists in this tale.

A better conception is a page with a mark, an ink dot. Now there are two opposed extremes. A figure and a ground. An event and a context. The reality goes in two complementary directions. Either it contracts towards the black speck of ink, or it expands outwards to the general blankness of the page. You can’t get more black and inky in one direction, or more unmarked and blank in the other. However neither without the other can properly claim to have its chief characteristic.

A dot of ink without the page it blemishes can be a mark. And a page can’t be definitely unblemished as a definite thing unless there is at least some mark to blemish it and so betray its general presence.

So metaphysically, existence is what we find between two complementary limits on being. The essential relationship is hierarchical rather than spherical. Reality is to be found between upper and lower bounds on possibility. The relation is not between an inside and an outside, but a triadic one where reality is the spectrum of intermediate possibilities that two countering limits definitely create.

So first there is just a potential. Then there is the possibility of some mutually definitional division. And thirdly there is the final outcome of a spectrum of possibilities that those two limits on being can manage to define.

So what if I say that "for existence to exist it must have not existed before?"... and for existence I mean a state that allows for things to exist. — Daniel

None of that makes sense, though. The definition of "state" is "the particular condition that someone or something is in at a specific time." There has to be an object for the state to be a condition of, so if nothing exists there are no states because there are no objects to be in states. You're still looking at nothingness or non-existence as if it is the same as "something" or existence.

What I said in my original comment really covers this, though. If time is dependent on objects, then when there are no objects there is no time, meaning there is no such thing as "before" the universe, meaning there was never a time where there was nothingness or non-existence. The universe has always existed.

Is it safe to assume that for something to exist it has to come into existence first? — Daniel

No. It might have always "been there".

Yes.

Is it safe to assume that for something to exist it has to come into existence first? — Daniel

Sure: My wooden chair did not exist when the material was in tree form, nor will it exist after it has rotted away.

Does Excalibur exist? In terms of a role within literature, yes - hence the reason the question is meaningful and can be answered in spite of the absence of any particular sword being baptised with the name "Excalibur".

The question is, does thinking of names as designating roles rather than particulars resolve anything? For can't roles also be destroyed? and if they can, for example by burning all literature referring to Excalibur and through cultural amnesia, then isn't to say that "Excalibur exists as a role" also meaningless?