Is Existence a Property of Something?
Immortalist
essential defining property of a bachelor. Now, if I were to say
'bachelors exist', I would not be giving a further property of
bachelors. Existence is not the same sort of thing as the property of
being unmarried: for anyone to be unmarried they must first exist,
though the concept of a bachelor remains the same whether or not any
bachelors do happen to exist.
If we apply the same thinking to the Ontological Argument, we see that
the mistake it makes is to treat the existence of God as if it were
simply another property, like omniscience, or omnipotence. But God
could not be omniscient or omnipotent without existing, so by giving a
definition of God at all we are already assuming that he or she exists.
Listing existence as a further essential property of a perfect being is
making the mistake of treating existence as a property rather than as
the precondition of anything having any properties at all.
But what about fictional beings, such as unicorns? Surely we can talk
about the properties of a unicorn, such as having one horn and four
legs, without unicorns actually having to exist. The answer is that
what a sentence like 'Unicorns have one horn' really means is 'If
unicorns were to exist, they would have one horn'. In other words,
'Unicorns have one horn' is really a hypothetical statement. So the
non-existence of unicorns is not a problem for the view that existence
is not a property.
Philosophy - The Basics
by N. WARBURTON
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415146941/
Sir Frederick
The situation is most likely a construct or projection
out of higher dimensions.
(Analogous to a two dimensional painting constructed
out of our three dimensions.)
Of course our time and meaning and subjective experiences
would be parts of that construct or projection as well.
S2
I remember Descartes had an apriori proof of the existance of god. It
was based on the fact that the very definition of a perfect being
included the property of existance. After all a perfect being couldn't
have the property of non-existance.
Later Hume (or someone like him) argued that existance is not a
property - but part of the very nature of being. This was the
refutation of Descartes proof.
I am sure immortalist can find an article about this that will explain
it better then me and my poor memory from college philosophy.
S.
Paul Holbach
> Listing existence as a further essential property of a perfect being is
> making the mistake of treating existence as a property rather than as
> the precondition of anything having any properties at all.
Even if "exists" is considered a normal property of objects, all
ontological arguments fail, because if God is conceived of as the
necessarily existent being, the question remains whether there is any
necessarily existent being.
#PH
Don H
news:1147281370.2...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
demons, fairies, goblins, etc - can be a vital matter, and has been down the
ages.
To deny the existence of God can be seen as heresy, and involve burning at
the stake or similar lethal punishment.
However, an objective study of the Bible indicates gods were tribal
entities, but with no empirical existence - they "exist" only in the minds
of believers. Did the God of Abraham, etc, appear, as such, to a multitude?
Or did he only appear to individuals, or in other form - as a burning bush,
or on a mountain top - to Moses?
"Existence" is a given in most circumstances, and it is the properties of
the given which the standard proposition "All swans are white" deals with.
A mythical beast, such as the Unicorn, may involve us in a hypothetical
realm of discussion - unless it is assumed the Unicorn was actually the
Rhinoceros, but described in an age before photography; thus not really
mythical after all.
A bachelor is an unmarried man, but this needs to be qualified - he is a
man who has never married, as a widower or divorcee is also an unmarried
man.
But when talking of bachelors we are dealing with the Real World, where
such examples actually exist; hence there's no need to reduce all universals
to hypotheticals - and, granting a mythical "universe of discourse",
"existence" is then a basic "given", so no need for further hypothesising.
The Universal and Existential Quantifiers of Formal Logic are something
which only philosophers could invent - or should we blame the
Mathematicians?
God as "a Perfect Being" is a nonsense unless further attributes are made,
and some proof of empirical existence offered. Reason alone, gets us
nowhere.
SNeelak...@zaplet.com
> the mistake it makes is to treat the existence of God as if it were
> simply another property, like omniscience, or omnipotence. But God
> could not be omniscient or omnipotent without existing, so by giving a
> definition of God at all we are already assuming that he or she exists
Existence IS simply another property.
Statement 1: YOU have all attributes of you AND you exist.
Statement 2: YOU have all attributes of you AND you don't exist.
The statement in Case 2 is not a contradiction. Even if you didn't
exist, you could still possess all your current attributes (or
properties) -- the entity 'you' would just be fictional.
(Like you could dream about wearing a blue turban and yellow coat and
floating in the sky. In your dream, the attributes are present in you,
but you don't exist -- it is just fiction).
If statement 1 is correct, then God must exist because God by
definition is greater than every other entity and an existing God is
greater than a non-existing God. If statement 2 is correct, then it
makes it possible for God to be greater than you by possessing superior
attributes and still remain non-existent. But because you do exist, God
must exist.
-SN
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
Immortalist wrote:
> But God
> could not be omniscient or omnipotent without existing,
On the contrary, it couldn't exist if it were.
Omnicient is necessitated by omnipotence, however if everything about
everything is known, therefore fated and predetermined, sooooo,
thinking thinking thinking, it cant be changed, so much for
omnipotence.
Michael Gordge
ZerkonX
>Re: Is Existence a Property of Something?
Maybe existence is the prerequisite to property.
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
Don H wrote:
> Reason alone, gets us
> nowhere.
Prove it.
Michael Gordge
Robert J. Kolker
> I remember Descartes had an apriori proof of the existance of god. It
> was based on the fact that the very definition of a perfect being
> included the property of existance. After all a perfect being couldn't
> have the property of non-existance.
That was Anselm, not Descartes. His proof fails, because existence is
not a predicate.
Bob Kolker
Robert J. Kolker
> God as "a Perfect Being" is a nonsense unless further attributes are made,
> and some proof of empirical existence offered. Reason alone, gets us
> nowhere.
If God were a perfect being It would have the attribute of ominipotence
which means It could make a stone so big It could not move the stone.
Also a perfect God would more likely be female than male.
Bob Kolker
Robert J. Kolker
>>Re: Is Existence a Property of Something?
>
>
> Maybe existence is the prerequisite to property.
No so. Then predicates would not have (in general) negations.
Bob Kolker
Sean
If it;s a thing, it has existence .. existence may have properties, seems
more logical to me.
Robert J. Kolker
> How can something not exist to start with?
What is your opinion of empty sets?
Bob Kolker
Sean
<mikeg...@xtra.co.nz> wrote in message
news:1147351485....@q12g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
ok
Reason alone gets us somewhere ..... now YOU prove it.
Sean
Paul Holbach
> Even if "exists" is considered a normal property of objects, [...].
Actually, everything has the property of existence, and essentially so,
since nothing can exist without existing.
In free logic there is the axiom:
AxE!x
"Everything exists"
This is equivalent to
~Ex~E!x
"Nothing does not exist"
#PH
SleepyHeed
"Unicorns have one horn" is not a hypothetical statement, it's a
predicative statement. It's only a hypothetical if you add the words
"If" and "then" to the sentence to give: "If unicorns exist then they
would have one horn". In other words the predicative statement
"Unicorns have one horn" only becomes hypothetical if you change it to
become a hypothetical statement.
If I had to explain "Unicorns have one horn" to someone who wasn't a
philosopher I'd say "A Unicorn is an imaginary creatures that looks
like a horse and has one horn in the middle of its head". To the
question "Do Unicorns exist?" I would say "No - they're imaginary". And
to the question "How can you predicate properties of something that
doesn't exist?" I would say "The same way you can say Churchill smoked
a big cigar", or (if I wanted to be less obtuse):
People who are dead don't exist;
But we refer to them in our talk;
And we don't say that such talk is simply meaningless;
We play a game with words such that the bearer of a name can be
referred to when they aren't there.
Once that game is established we can play a different game - we can
name things that have never 'been there'
In the same way as we say talk about dead people isn't meaningless, so
we also say that talk about fictional entities isn't meaningless - it's
just different.
The problem comes when one tries to construe talk about things which
are not present / not in existence along exactly the same lines as we
construe talk about things which are present / in existence.
This problem is simply one of failing to realise that although all
symbolic communication looks on the whole quite similar to the eye /
sounds the same to the ear, the same symbol can be used in many
different ways.
This problem is inherent in philosophy because we are told that
philosophy deals with the 'most general' of things - thus we try to
gloss over important differences without realising that simply by doing
that we have eradicated the differences that would enable us to solve
the problem.
To sum up:
All this talk of existence simply muddies the water and confuses the
issue. If talking about dead people / predicating things of them isn't
a problem, then talking of fictional entities isn't a problem either.
SleepyHeed
So what do 'existence' statements mean? Well, how would you explain it
to someone?
"It exists" =
"It's not fictional"
"It's not bogus"
"I could take you and show it you"
"It's not imaginary"
(Although sometimes "It exists" can be uttered by someone who's
convinced 'it' isn't fictional when 'it' is.)
So (to return to the original point) "batchelors exist" is to be
construed along the lines just hinted at ... as an affirmation that
despite appearances to the contrary batchelors are not imaginary
entities, but can be pointed at as they walk past.
Immortalist
This is the now lost article from which I quoted the first paragraph,
second paragraph of the original post. This is about ten paragraphs
after that paragraph;
Descartes has a problem of authorship. That he exists and that he
conceives of his existence are synonymous according to the cogito
postulate. Furthermore, the existence of anything outside of his mind
depends on his own existence. He is assured of the existence of the
rest of the Universe by his perception of thinking of it. If the
observer stops observing himself, he ceases to exist, however. Thus the
reality of the Universe within Descartes's system depends on his
ability to conceive of it, which in turn requires that he exist. This
introduces a rather interesting problem in to his philosophy.
By the time he has completed his proof of the existence of God,
Descartes concludes that his own existence is dependent of the
existence of God. Because he creates a foundationalist philosophy,
Descartes must believe that the laws of the Universe are deriveable
from the cogito postulate. After attempting to establish the existence
of God, however, he admits that "I have observed certain laws which God
has so established in nature and of which he has impressed such notions
in our souls". According to his postulates, all that is in Descartes's
mind is the result of the fact that he thinks, yet here he seems to be
adding yet another subject to the set of actors upon which his
philosophy rests. The validity of the claims he has already made are
again questioned by further doubt over the author of existence:
"And who can give me the assurance that this God has not arranged that
there should be no earth, no heaven, no extended body, no figure, no
magnitude, or place, and that nevertheless I should have the perception
of all these things, and the persuasion that they do not exist other
than as I see them?"
Clearly, Descartes would not want to add dependency on a second subject
to his philosophy but he nonetheless accepts the notion that not all
existence can be attributed to his thoughts alone. God, he qualifies,
must also have authorship:
"if the objective reality of any one of my ideas is such that I know
clearly that it is not within me, either formally or eminently, and
that consequently I cannot myself be its cause, it follows necessarily
from this that I am not alone in the world, but that there is besides
some other being who exists, and who is the cause of this idea."
It is illogical that such a being, whose existence in the Universe is
dependent on the thoughts and observations of an observer could also be
the author of the same observer's thoughts. Surely Descartes realized
this but he seems to ignore its significance. He declares "God is
necessarily the author of my existence" and so falls into a circular
dependency, where his own existence is dependent on a God whose
existence in the Universe is dependent on Descartes's ability to
conceive of God and to determine the truth of such a perception.
Because the observer is thus permanently trapped within Descartes's web
of logic, the entire foundation of the structure is unsound.
With the foundation of Descartes carefully laid structure crumbling in
front of close examination, it appears, a philosophical failure. Such
an evaluation is made strong if it comes from within the logical
structure that Descartes presents. The job is easy, however, because
Descartes establishes such a dependent, recursive structure that his
entire fabrication falls under its own twisted weight.
http://www.stanford.edu/~bwark/papers/circle_game.html
> S.
Immortalist
We start, then, with nothing, pure zero. But this is not the nothing of
negation. For not means other than, and other is merely a synonym of
the ordinal numeral second. As such it implies a first; while the
present pure zero is prior to every first. The nothing of negation is
the nothing of death, which comes second to, or after, everything. But
this pure zero is the nothing of not having been born. There is no
individual thing, no compulsion, outward nor inward, no law. It is the
germinal nothing, in which the whole universe is involved or
foreshadowed. As such, it is absolutely undefined and unlimited
possibility -- boundless possibility. There is no compulsion and no
law. It is boundless freedom.
Nothing is an awe-inspiring yet essentially undigested concept, highly
esteemed by writers of an existentialist tendency, but by most others
regarded with axiety, nausea, or panic. Nobody seems to know how to
deal with it (he would, of course), and plain persons generally are
reported to have little difficulty in saying, seeing, hearing, and
doing nothing. Philosophers, however, have never felt easy on the
matter. Ever since Parmenides laid it down that it is impossible to
speak of what is not, broke his own rule in the act of stating it, and
deduced himself into a world where all that ever happened was nothing,
the impression has persisted that the narrow path between sense and
nonsense on this subject is a difficult one to tread and that
altogether the less said of it the better.
This escape, however, is not so easy as it looks. Plato, in pursuing
it, reversed the Parmenidean dictum by insisting, in effect, that
anything a philosopher can find to talk about must somehow be there to
be discussed, and so let loose upon the world that unseemly rable of
centaurs and unicorns, carnivorous cows, republican monarchs and
wife-burdened bachelors, which has plagued ontology from that day to
this. Nothing (of which they are all aliases) can apparently get rid of
these absurdities, but for fairly obvious reasons has not been invited
to do so. Logic has attempted the task, but with sadly limited success.
Of some, though not all, nonentities, even a logician knows that they
do not exist, since their properties defy the law of contradiction; the
remainder, however, are not so readily dismissed. Whatever Lord Russell
may have said of it, the harmless if unnecessary unicorn cannot be
driven out of logic as it can out of zoology, unless by desperate
measures which exclude all manner of reputable entities as well. Such
remedies have been attempted, and their effects are worse than the
disease. Russell himself, in eliminating the present King of France,
inadvertently deposed the present Queen of England. Quine, the
sorcerer's apprentice, has contrived to liquidate both Pegasus and
President Truman in the same fell swoop. The old logicians, who allowed
all entities subsitence while conceding existence, as wanted, to an
accredited selection of them, at least brought a certain tolerable
inefficiency to their task. Of the new it can only be said that
solitudinem faciunt et pacem appellant--they make a desert and call it
peace. Whole realms of being have been abolished without warning, at
the mere nonquantifying of a variable. The poetry of Earth has been
parsed out of existence--and what has become of its prose? There is
little need for an answer. Writers to whom nothing is sacred, and who
accordingly stop thereat, have no occasion for surprise on finding, at
the end of their operations, that nothing is all they have left.
The logicians, of course, will have nothing of all this. Nothing, they
say, is not a thing, nor is it the name of anything, being merely a
short way of saying of anything that it is not something else.
"Nothing" means "not-anything"; appearances to the contrary are due
merely to the error of supposing that a grammatical subject must
necessarily be a name. Asked, however, to prove that nothing is not the
name of anything, they fall back on the claim that nothing is the name
of anything (since according to them there are no names anyway). Those
who can make nothing of such an argument are welcome to the attempt.
When logic falls out with itself, honest men come into their own, and
it will take more than this to persuade them that there are not better
cures for this particular headache than the old and now discredited
method of cutting off the patient's head.
The friends of nothing may be divided into two distinct though not
exclusive classes: the know-nothings, who claim a phenomenological
acquaintance with nothing in particular, and the fear-nothings, who,
believing, with Macbeth, that "nothing is but what is not," are thereby
launched into dialectical encounter with nullity in general. For the
first, nothing, so far from being a mere grammatical illusion, is a
genuine, even positive, feature of experience. We are all familiar
with, and have a vocabulary for, holes and gaps, lacks and losses,
absenses, silences, impalpabilities, insipidities, and the like. Voids
and vacancies of one sort or another are sought after, dealt in and
advertised in the newspapers. And what are these, it is asked, but
perceived fragments of nothingness, experiential blanks, which command,
nonetheless, their share of attention and therefore deserve
recognition? Sartre, for one, has given currency to such arguments, and
so, in effect, have the upholders of "negative facts"--an improvident
sect, whose refrigerators are full of nonexistent butter and cheese,
absentee elephants and so on, which they claim to detect therein. If
existence indeed precedes essence, there is certainly reason of a sort
for maintaining that nonexistence is also anterior to, and not a mere
product of, the essentially parasitic activity of negation; that the
nothing precedes the not. But, verbal refutations apart, the short
answer to this view, as given, for instance, by Bergson, is that these
are but petty and partial nothings, themselves parasitic on what
already exists. Absence is a mere privation, and a privation of
something at that. A hole is always a hole in something: take away the
thing, and the hole goes too; more precisely, it is replaced by a
bigger if not better hole, itself relative to its surroundings, and so
tributary to something else. Nothing, in short, is given only in
relation to what is, and even the idea of nothing requires a thinker to
sustain it. If we want to encounter it an sich, we have to try harder
that that.
Better things, or rather nothings, are promised on the alternative
theory, whereby it is argued, so to speak, not that holes are in
things, but that things are in holes or, more generally, that
everything (and everybody) is in a hole. To be anything (or anybody) is
to be bounded, hemmed in, defined, and separated by a circumambient
fram of vacuity, and what is true of the individual is equally true of
the collective. The universe at large is fringed with nothingness, from
which indeed (how else?) it must have been created, if created it was;
and its beginning and end, like that of all change within it, must
similarly be viewed as a passage from one nothing to another, with an
interlude of being in between. Such thoughts, or others like them, have
haunted the speculations of nullophile metaphysicians from Pythagoras
to Pascal and from Hegel and his followers to Heidegger, Tillich and
Sartre. Being and non being, as they see it, are complementary notions,
dialectically entwined, and of equal status and importance; although
Heidegger alone has extended their symmetry to the point of equipping
Das Nichts with a correlative (if nugatory) activity of noth-ing, or
nihilating, whereby it produces Angst in its votaries and untimely
hilarity in those, such as Carnap and Ayer, who have difficulty in
parsing "nothing" as a present participle of the verb "to noth."
Nothing, whether it noths or not, and whether or not the being of
anything entails it, clearly does not entail that anything should be.
Like Spinoza's substance, it is causa sui; nothing (except more of the
same) can come of it; ex nihilo, nihil fit. That conceded, it remains a
question to some why anything, rather than nothing, should exist. This
is either the deepest conunddrum in metaphysics or the most childish,
and though many must have felt the force of it at one time or another,
it is equally common to conclude, on reflection, that it is no question
at all. The hypothesis of theism may be said to take it seriously and
to offer a provisional answer. The alternative is to argue that the
dilemma is self-resolved in the mere possibility of stating it. If
nothing whatsoever existed, there would be no problem and no answer,
and the anxieties even of existential philosophers would be permanently
laid to rest. Since they are not, there is evidently nothing to worry
about. But that itself should be enough to keep an existentialist
happy. Unless the solution be, as some have suspected, that it is not
nothing that has been worrying them, but they who have been worrying
it.
> #PH
Immortalist
Don H wrote:
> "Immortalist" <reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1147281370.2...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> > A bachelor can be defined as an unmarried man.
> > Philosophy - The Basics
> > by N. WARBURTON
> > http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415146941/
> >
> A bachelor is an unmarried man, but this needs to be qualified - he is a
> man who has never married, as a widower or divorcee is also an unmarried
> man.
> But when talking of bachelors we are dealing with the Real World, where
> such examples actually exist; hence there's no need to reduce all universals
> to hypotheticals - and, granting a mythical "universe of discourse",
> "existence" is then a basic "given", so no need for further hypothesising.
> The Universal and Existential Quantifiers of Formal Logic are something
> which only philosophers could invent - or should we blame the
> Mathematicians?
> God as "a Perfect Being" is a nonsense unless further attributes are made,
> and some proof of empirical existence offered. Reason alone, gets us
> nowhere.
But reason and empiricism (science based upon experiments) leads us to
believe that we have god instincts and I suppose the religious could
use these neural structures as some support for their religions (weak
though)
...people who are not especially religious often suppose that some
monocausal story will account for religious belief and its prevalence.
It can be traced to sex or class-conflict or fear of death. For that
matter, religious people also tend to favor monocausal stories, with
the difference that their 'one cause' is the real existence of and
transactions with supernatural beings.
By contrast, Boyer says that there are many things that fit together to
generate religious thought and practice and that the short answer to
why there is religion is that it is the normal product of normal human
minds, functioning in the normal way, and that the normal way is the
normal way because of the evolutionary design of the human mind.
==================================
evolutionary reasons for humans to
be "over-sensitive agency-detectors"
==================================
Now, an agent is just some entity that is moved or guided by its own
awareness and goals; for humans, other human beings are among the most
important agents in our environments, but there are also the various
non-human animals. Given that the presence of other agents (and what
they are doing) matters to our prospects for survival and reproduction,
why would we be over-sensitive to their presence? Consider predators.
'Detecting' a predator that is not there is not a terribly bad thing;
failing to detect a predator that is there is much more serious. And
something very similar goes for prey: Detecting lunch that isn't there
is much less serious than failing to detect lunch when it is there. In
both direction, our capacities for agency detection should be tuned to
generate more false positives than false negatives. For evolutionary
reasons, we should expect to 'detect' some agents which are not there.
Is the perception of (accidental) patterns of cues in our environment
at the root of the detection of supernatural agents, of gods? That
cannot be the whole story (and Boyer does not claim that it is), for
there would be no general evolutionary pay-off for over-sensitive
agency detection unless we could rapidly drop mistaken conclusions
about the presence of predators or prey as new evidence comes in. (You
can starve while looking for the lunch that is not there or while
cowering in hiding from the predator that is not there.) Even if
initial detection of supernatural agents is a function of
over-sensitive agency detection routines, something else is needed to
explain what stabilizes belief in such agents. Suffice it to say that
Boyer has much of interest to say about that as well.
http://personal.bgsu.edu/~roberth/log2002.html
Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought
Pascal Boyer
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465006965/
Immortalist
SNeelak...@zaplet.com wrote:
> > we see that
> > the mistake it makes is to treat the existence of God as if it were
> > simply another property, like omniscience, or omnipotence. But God
> > could not be omniscient or omnipotent without existing, so by giving a
> > definition of God at all we are already assuming that he or she exists
>
> Existence IS simply another property.
>
> Statement 1: YOU have all attributes of you AND you exist.
> Statement 2: YOU have all attributes of you AND you don't exist.
>
> The statement in Case 2 is not a contradiction. Even if you didn't
> exist, you could still possess all your current attributes (or
> properties) -- the entity 'you' would just be fictional.
> (Like you could dream about wearing a blue turban and yellow coat and
> floating in the sky. In your dream, the attributes are present in you,
> but you don't exist -- it is just fiction).
>
> If statement 1 is correct, then God must exist because God by
> definition is greater than every other entity and an existing God is
> greater than a non-existing God. If statement 2 is correct, then it
> makes it possible for God to be greater than you by possessing superior
> attributes and still remain non-existent. But because you do exist, God
> must exist.
>
> -SN
>
by James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, George Sotiros Pappas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872201244/
The Ontological Argument: St. Anselm's Version; Gaunilo's Objection:
The Greatest Island Possible; Reply to Gaunilo: A Being Greater Than
the Greatest Island Possible; Another Objection: The Dirtiest Being
Possible
2) The Ontological Argument:
St. Anselm's Version
Let us turn to St. Anselm's version, which, as we shall see, is not so
intimately reliant on the thesis that existence is a perfection. St.
Anselm starts by saying that we understand the concept of supreme
being.
And whatever is understood, exists in the understanding. And assuredly
that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the
understanding alone. For suppose it exists in the understanding alone:
then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater.
Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists
in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater
can be conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived. But,
obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there
exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived. . . .
Although it may not be historically accurate, we can untangle some of
the complexity of Anselm's argument by replacing 'can be conceived'
with 'is possible' and 'does not exist in the understanding alone' with
'exists.' We can then state the core of the argument as follows:
1. If the greatest being possible does not exist, then it is possible
that there exists a being greater than the greatest being possible.
2. It is not possible that there exists a being greater than the
greatest being possible.
Therefore
3. The greatest being possible exists.
It should be noted that this argument claims neither that existence is
a perfection nor that statement (3) is a necessary truth. Consequently,
it seems to be open to none of those objections that we have seen
launched against Descartes's version. However, Gaunilo, a contemporary
of Anselm, offered a different objection, which we must consider.
---------------------------------
- Gaunilo's Objection:
The Greatest Island Possible
Gaunilo asks Anselm to consider an island that is the most excellent of
all islands and to consider the following argument:
And since it is more excellent not to be in the understanding alone,
but to exist both in the understanding and in reality, for this reason
it must exist. For if it does not exist, any land which really exists
will be more excellent than it; and so the island already understood by
you to be more excellent will not then be more excellent.
Gaunilo's point here is that Anselm's argument proves too much, so that
it is surely unsound. We can prove by this argument that the greatest
possible object of any kind, whether it be island or scholar or athlete
or dinner or whatever, exists, and this is surely mistaken. Anselm's
reply was merely to say that the logic of his argument applies only to
the greatest being possible and to no other.
----------------------------------
- Reply to Gaunilo: A Being Greater
Than the Greatest Island Possible
Was Anselm's reply to Gaunilo justified? To see what both men were
driving at, let us use variables in the premises instead of constants.
However, there are two ways we can do this: (A) we can let 'being' be
what replaces the variable X, or (B) we can let 'greatest possible
being' be the substitute for X. The premises will differ accordingly.
The premises of argument form A will be the following:
1a. If the greatest X possible does not exist, then it is possible that
there exists an X greater than the greatest X possible.
2a. It is not possible there exists an X greater than the greatest X
possible.
And the premises of argument form B will be the following:
1b. If X does not exist, then it is possible that there exists a being
greater than X.
2b. It is not possible there exists a being greater than X.
We can substitute innumerable terms for X in A (la) and (2a), so that
we could prove that the greatest possible object of any kind exists.
Surely something is wrong with this argument, as Gaunilo claims.
However, the second argument form, B, supports Anselm's claim that his
argument works only for 'the greatest being possible.' Premise (2b) is
true when the greatest being possible' is substituted for X, but there
is no reason to think it true for anything else such as 'the greatest
island possible' because be statement:
It is not possible there exists a being greater than the greatest
island possible.
seems to be false. Many beings, especially gods, are certainly greater
beings than any piece of earth. Consequently, it would seem that Anselm
had something like the second argument form in mind, and thus, as he
claimed, his argument is not open to Gaunilo's objections.
-----------------------------------
- Another Objection:
The Dirtiest Being Possible
Can we accept this version of Anselm's argument? It has avoided all the
objections we have examined, and therefore we have found no reason to
reject either premise. Furthermore, premise (2) is certainly
acceptable. We can, however, find some reason for rejecting premise (1)
when interpreted as (1b), a reason similar to Gaunilo's. Consider
argument from C:
1c. If X does not exist, then it is possible that there exists a being
more Y than X.
2c. It is not possible there exists a being more Y than X.
Here we have replaced 'great' in argument form B by the variable Y. In
order for (2c) to be true X would have to equal 'the most Y being
possible.' But we can substitute any adjective at all for Y and thus
prove not only that the most great of any kind of being exists, as
Gaunilo tried to prove, but also that a being that is superlative in
any way at all exists. Thus we could prove by this argument that the
happiest or saddest or cleanest or dirtiest, or fattest, or thinnest,
or most absurd, or most evil being possible exists. In this case the
two premises would be the following:
If the most (dirty, absurd, evil, and so on) being possible does not
exist, then it is possible that there exists a being more (dirty,
absurd, evil, and so on) than the most (dirty, absurd, evil, and so on)
being possible.
and:
It is not possible that there exists a being more (dirty, absurd, evil,
and so on) than the most (dirty, absurd, evil, and so on) being
possible.
We can even prove that the being whose description involves the most
contradictions possible exists. But it is not possible that a being
whose description involves even one contradiction exists. Thus many
arguments of the form C are unsound. But because the argument form is
valid and the relevant premises of the form (2c) are true, it follows
that the premises of form (1c) are false. Furthermore, because (1b) is
(1c) with one less variable mis surely casts doubt on premise (1) when
taken as an instance of (1b). If at this point Anselm were to reply to
us, similarly to the way he replied to Gaunilo, that his argument
applies only to the one adjective 'great,' we could reply in turn that
there seems to be no difference between the adjective 'great' and many
others relevant to existence. If a defender of the ontological argument
thinks that there is, then it is up to him to show it. It may be
possible to do so, but so far no one has. Once again we have reached a
point where we are unable to justify a premise. Thus, although the
premise may be true, we are unable to use it in an argument to justify
a conclusion. We should, then, reject the ontological arguments, as we
have the others, as being inadequate to justify the belief that God
exists.
Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction
by James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, George Sotiros Pappas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872201244/
Immortalist
SleepyHeed wrote:
> "Unicorns have one horn" is not a hypothetical statement, it's a
> predicative statement. It's only a hypothetical if you add the words
> "If" and "then" to the sentence to give: "If unicorns exist then they
> would have one horn". In other words the predicative statement
> "Unicorns have one horn" only becomes hypothetical if you change it to
> become a hypothetical statement.
>
> People who are dead don't exist;
>
If unicorns exist and one is dead then if it died it had property P and
the dead people had P?
False Analogy
In an analogy, two objects (or events), A and B are shown to be
similar. Then it is argued that since A has property P, so also B must
have property P. An analogy fails when the two objects, A and B, are
different in a way which affects whether they both have property P.
Examples:
Employees are like nails. Just as nails must be hit in the head in
order to make them work, so must employees.
Government is like business, so just as business must be sensitive
primarily to the bottom line, so also must government. (But the
objectives of government and business are completely different, so
probably they will have to meet different criteria.)
Proof:
Identify the two objects or events being compared and the property
which both are said to possess. Show that the two objects are different
in a way which will affect whether they both have that property.
Bo
levels... :)
Immortalist wrote:
> A bachelor can be defined as an unmarried man. Being unmarried is the
> essential defining property of a bachelor. Now, if I were to say
> 'bachelors exist', I would not be giving a further property of
> bachelors. Existence is not the same sort of thing as the property of
> being unmarried: for anyone to be unmarried they must first exist,
> though the concept of a bachelor remains the same whether or not any
> bachelors do happen to exist.
First off, the author strains to lump two different notions of "to be"
together that are fundamentally different. This error of equivocation,
while understandable in most circumstances, is hardly forgivable in an
educated philosopher. As others have said in this thread, it is
permissable to discuss the meaning of a Linguistic Term regardless of
whether the term reflects an existing thing. "Unicorns have one horn."
"Martian Pink elephants can usually transcend quantum universes",
etc.. are not necessarily about existant things, but are meaningful
statements in the sense that you are discussing properties and essences
of terms -- trying to understand and define meaning apart from or
regardless of existence.
He makes the switch when he says "for anyone to be unmarried they must
first exist". The trick there was the way the first few words are
phrased: "for anyone to be...", because that phrase implies the he is
explicitly referring to the people of our memory and experience, and we
only have memory and experience of real things (or at least we believe
we do). By switching from a discussion of the property of
bachelorhood to the essential properties of existing people, he makes
his error.
>
> If we apply the same thinking to the Ontological Argument, we see that
> the mistake it makes is to treat the existence of God as if it were
> simply another property, like omniscience, or omnipotence. But God
> could not be omniscient or omnipotent without existing, so by giving a
> definition of God at all we are already assuming that he or she exists.
> Listing existence as a further essential property of a perfect being is
> making the mistake of treating existence as a property rather than as
> the precondition of anything having any properties at all.
>From the first error the second becomes clear. It is false to say we
can not discuss possible ways of being and terms without there first
being an existant subject. That's just false.
However, for what it's worth, he also misunderstands Scholasticism when
he says flatly that "mistake it makes is to treat the existence of God
as if it were simply another property". St. Thomas Aquinas wrote
volumes examining precisely the fundamental difference between "esse"
(being or existence per se) and "essencia" (ways of being/properties).
That difference is at the very heart of his metaphysics, and the only
way to understand his own ontological treatments. So that part is a
plain olde every-day straw man.
>
> But what about fictional beings, such as unicorns? Surely we can talk
> about the properties of a unicorn, such as having one horn and four
> legs, without unicorns actually having to exist. The answer is that
> what a sentence like 'Unicorns have one horn' really means is 'If
> unicorns were to exist, they would have one horn'. In other words,
> 'Unicorns have one horn' is really a hypothetical statement. So the
> non-existence of unicorns is not a problem for the view that existence
> is not a property.
No, it does not mean "if unicorns were to exist".. it DOES mean "we
understand the word Unicorn to mean..."
>
> Philosophy - The Basics
> by N. WARBURTON
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415146941/
Someone needs to teach poor Mr. Warburton the basics of philosophy,
methinks.
- Bo
(Thomist, at large..)
Wordsmith
A perfect being, to me, is one which would be devoid of matter. If
that is indeed the case,
then God would transcend gender, rendering moot your "more likely
female than male"
statement.
W : )
Paul Holbach
> What is your opinion of empty sets?
There is only one empty set, and this exists.
#PH
Paul Holbach
> > But what about fictional beings, such as unicorns? Surely we can talk
> > about the properties of a unicorn, such as having one horn and four
> > legs, without unicorns actually having to exist.
...and without unicorns actually having to have properties.
The properties (predicates) we ascribe to nonexistent objects are not
(really) possessed by these.
#PH
Paul Holbach
> So what do 'existence' statements mean? Well, how would you explain it
> to someone?
>
> "It exists" = ?
>
> "It's not fictional"
> "It's not bogus"
> "I could take you and show it you"
> "It's not imaginary"
In ordinary language we usually mean something like "x is real", "is
not imaginary", etc.
In classical logic, where there is no first-order predicate "exist", "x
exists" means "There is something/somebody that is (identical to) x".
> So (to return to the original point) "batchelors exist" is to be
> construed along the lines just hinted at ... as an affirmation that
> despite appearances to the contrary batchelors are not imaginary
> entities, but can be pointed at as they walk past.
There are two kinds of existential statements:
(1) "x exists" (e.g. "George W. Bush exists")
and
(2) "Xs exist" (e.g. "Presidents of the USA exist")
The logical meaning of (2) is perfectly clear:
"The number of Xs is not zero"
In other words:
"There is at least one thing that is X"
or
"There is something that has the property of being X"
or
"There is something that falls under the concept /X/"
or
"There is something to which the predicate '(is a) X' applies"
In classical logic (1) = "x exists" is interpreted like sentences of
type (2) as follows:
"x exists" = "Things identical to x exist"
So "George W. Bush exists" is true iff there is somebody who is
(identical to) George W. Bush.
(If there is at least one person identical to George W. Bush, then
there is necessarily at most one such person, since nobody could be
identical to two different persons.)
Regards
PH
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
Sean wrote:
>
> ok
>
> s
> Reason alone gets us somewhere ..... now YOU prove it.
Your answer is proof that I did just by asking you to prove, your
claim, that it doesn't, you couldn't because you cant prove a negative
without contradicting yourself.
Reason is man's only means of gaining his knowledge, you cant have my
knowledge for me, reason is the faculty of man which identifies the
material of his senses, eyes, ears, nose, feel, touch reason therefore
logically demands the applictaion of non-contradictory identification
and integration of that information obtained from our senses, into our
knowledge in its contextual and hierarchical order, it is a process or
art called, wait for it, *logic* have you ever heard of it? Your silly
accusation is evidence that you haven't, or at best a good example of
the fact you haven't perfected it
Michael Gordge
Sean
<mikeg...@xtra.co.nz> wrote in message
news:1147378085.3...@q12g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Sean wrote:
>>
>> ok
>>
>> s
>> Reason alone gets us somewhere ..... now YOU prove it.
>
>
> Your answer is proof that I did just by asking you to prove, your
> claim, that it doesn't, you couldn't because you cant prove a negative
> without contradicting yourself.
>
what is " your claim" ru talking to me ? what claim?
when did you ask me to prove anything?
> Reason is man's only means of gaining his knowledge, you cant have my
> knowledge for me, reason is the faculty of man which identifies the
> material of his senses, eyes, ears, nose, feel, touch reason therefore
> logically demands the applictaion of non-contradictory identification
> and integration of that information obtained from our senses, into our
> knowledge in its contextual and hierarchical order, it is a process or
> art called, wait for it, *logic* have you ever heard of it? Your silly
> accusation is evidence that you haven't, or at best a good example of
> the fact you haven't perfected it
>
>
> Michael Gordge
>
"my silly accusation"??? what silly accusation is that mr smarty pants?
Pot Kettle Black it seems today ...... :)
----
Now back to my one and only query if you'd like to addresss it was:
" Reason alone gets us somewhere "
I'm assuming you believe this, so can you prove it?
Over to you now .... <smile>
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
Sean wrote:
>
> what is " your claim" ru talking to me ? what claim?
>
> when did you ask me to prove anything?
Oh yes I see what you mean, it wasn't you, I'd say sorry, but you just
sound and look just like him, so I forgive myself.
> I'm assuming you believe this, so can you prove it?
What would you call *proof* of the fact that reason is man's only means
of gaining knowledge?
Answer that and you should have proven the claim all by yourself, thats
if you answer it without a contradiction of course.
Michael Gordge
SleepyHeed
Paul Holbach wrote:
> > SleepyHeed schrieb:
>
> > So what do 'existence' statements mean? Well, how would you explain it
> > to someone?
> >
> > "It exists" = ?
> >
> > "It's not fictional"
> > "It's not bogus"
> > "I could take you and show it you"
> > "It's not imaginary"
>
> In ordinary language we usually mean something like "x is real", "is
> not imaginary", etc.
>
> In classical logic, where there is no first-order predicate "exist", "x
> exists" means "There is something/somebody that is (identical to) x".
Hang on a mo - I spot some sleight of hand going on. If there /is/
somebody that is identical to x, doesn't that just say "somebody exists
whos the same as X"?
A classical logic - a hard way to say an easy thing!
SleepyHeed
Paul Holbach wrote:
> > SleepyHeed schrieb:
>
> > So what do 'existence' statements mean? Well, how would you explain it
> > to someone?
> >
> > "It exists" = ?
> >
> > "It's not fictional"
> > "It's not bogus"
> > "I could take you and show it you"
> > "It's not imaginary"
>
> In ordinary language we usually mean something like "x is real", "is
> not imaginary", etc.
>
> In classical logic, where there is no first-order predicate "exist", "x
> exists" means "There is something/somebody that is (identical to) x".
Hang on a mo - I spot some sleight of hand going on. If there /is/
somebody that is identical to x, doesn't that just say "somebody exists
whos the same as X"?
Ah! Classical logic - a hard way to say an easy thing!
SleepyHeed
Immortalist wrote:
> SleepyHeed wrote:
>
> > "Unicorns have one horn" is not a hypothetical statement, it's a
> > predicative statement. It's only a hypothetical if you add the words
> > "If" and "then" to the sentence to give: "If unicorns exist then they
> > would have one horn". In other words the predicative statement
> > "Unicorns have one horn" only becomes hypothetical if you change it to
> > become a hypothetical statement.
> >
> > People who are dead don't exist;
> >
>
> If unicorns exist and one is dead then if it died it had property P and
> the dead people had P?
Huh!?
Oh! Do you mean "What happens when unicorns die"?
Well - whatever you like - they're imaginary.
This is not the case with dead people - they stop moving and won't
start again no matter how hard you try.
But do dead unicorns and dead people possess the same quality - that of
being dead?
Well sort of. From the point of view of syntax the sentences look the
same, that is they're predicative statements which predicate deadness
of the object in the sentence. Thing is - traditional English grammar
isn't necessarily a great way to go about analysing English for
philosophical purposes, seeing as it's mostly cobbled together from
classical Greek and Latin grammar, grammars which are not necessarily
brilliant when it comes to analysing English because of the huge
irregularity of our verbs, and the relative complexity of the language
compared to ancient Latin and/or Greek. All you'll do is end up tying
yourself in knots wondering how two very different things can possess
/the same / quality.
If you want to make a distinction between the two sorts of properties
you might, I suppose, say that unicorns possess the quality of being
imaginarily dead, and that real people are really dead, but even that
don't get you out of the woods because we can imagine real people to be
dead when they're not and that might justify our saying that real
people can possess the quality of being imaginarily dead.
But are the imaginarily dead in the same way as an imaginarily dead
unicorn? Well again - yes and no. We say "Imaginarily dead person",
"Imaginarily dead unicorn". Same sentence structure, but different
games played with the resulting sentences: No-one except the mad or the
stoned are going to try to bury a dead, imaginary unicorn.
So what's the difference between the two sentences?
Between the two sentences - the difference is between 'person' and
'unicorn'. Between the sorts of games we play - the difference is that
we're not playing the "imaginary" game when we're talking about real
people, but we are when we talk about unicorns. (Although there are, no
doubt, cases of confusion between the two - a child who doesn't know
unicorns are pretend may fully expect to see a unicorn one day)
SleepyHeed
The properties we ascribe to non-existent objects follow the same
English grammar as
anything else in English, but that doesn't make the non-existent object
any more or less real.
Whether you want to say that non-existent objects don't /really/
possess quality ascribed to them depends on what you mean by the word
'really'. If you mean "makes the thing exist" then I agree:
non-existent objects don't /really/ possess qualities ascribed to them
(i.e. qualities ascribed to imaginary creatures don't make the
creatures non-imaginary).
But that doesn't mean that predicative statements involving imaginary
or non-existent things stop being predicative statements: the quality
of being predicative has to do purely with the English grammar of a
statement.
Paul Holbach
> > Paul Holbach wrote:
> > In classical logic, where there is no first-order predicate "exist", "x
> > exists" means "There is something/somebody that is (identical to) x".
> Hang on a mo - I spot some sleight of hand going on. If there /is/
> somebody that is identical to x, doesn't that just say "somebody exists
> whos the same as X"?
Yes, here "is" and "exists" are synonymous so that you could write
"there exists" instead of "there is". But I wouldn't call this a
"sleight of hand", because what it merely shows is that "there is" and
"exists" are virtually indefinable. We all know how to use this words
properly, but we seem unable to define them explicitly in a
non-circular way. They appear to be what a linguistic school calls
"semantic primes" (see:
http://www.une.edu.au/arts/LCL/nsm/nsmpage1.htm). Nevertheless, some
have tried to find a substantial definition of "exist" (as a
first-order predicate):
"We require that [ontological] posits be independent of any
psychological or linguistic process whatsoever -- whether ours or
someone else's. The latter does supply necessary and sufficient
conditions for what exists. I call such posits 'ontologically
independent' (not just ontologically independent of us)."
[Azzouni. Jody | 2004 | Deflating existential consequence: A case for
nominalism | New York / Oxford UP. (113)]
So, in Azzouni's opinion
"x exists" means "x is ontologically independent"
Azzouni's definition may not be perfectly obvious, but I think he is on
the right track.
There is a very close semantic relationship between "exists" and "is
real".
Azzouni would surely agree with the following definition by Charles S.
Peirce:
"Reality is that mode of being by virtue of which the real thing is as
it is, irrespectively of what any mind or any definite collection of
minds may represent it to be."
[Source: http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/real.html]
In this respect existence is always real existence, that is, what
exists is real, and what is not real does not exist.
> > "x exists" = "Things identical to x exist"
> >
> > So "George W. Bush exists" is true iff there is somebody who is
> > (identical to) George W. Bush.
> > (If there is at least one person identical to George W. Bush, then
> > there is necessarily at most one such person, since nobody could be
> > identical to two different persons.)
In the classical second-order interpretation "x exists" means "The
property of being (identical to) x is instantiated by exactly one
thing"
Regards
PH
Owen
E!x, x exists, means:
x=x, Ey(x=y), Ey(Az(x=z <-> y=z)), EG(Gx), etc.
E!(ix:Fx) means:
(ix:Fx)=(ix:Fx), Ey((ix:Fx)=y), Ey((ix:Fx)=z <-> y=z), EG(G(ix:Fx)).
E!{x:Fx} means:
{x:Fx}={x:Fx}, EG({x:Fx}=G), EG((iF:Fx) =G)...etc.etc..
Paul Holbach
> > Paul Holbach wrote:
> > > SleepyHeed schrieb:
> > > But what about fictional beings, such as unicorns? Surely we can talk
> > > about the properties of a unicorn, such as having one horn and four
> > > legs, without unicorns actually having to exist.
> > ...and without unicorns actually having to have properties.
> > The properties (predicates) we ascribe to nonexistent objects are not
> > (really) possessed by these.
> The properties we ascribe to non-existent objects follow the same
> English grammar as anything else in English, but that doesn't make the non-existent object
> any more or less real.
Yes, statements about existents and ones about nonexistents do have the
same grammatical form. But their respective logical interpretations are
different.
> Whether you want to say that non-existent objects don't /really/
> possess quality ascribed to them depends on what you mean by the word
> 'really'.
Strictly speaking, I mean that they do not possess any properties at
all -- period.
As a motto: No instantiation (of properties) without existence!
"'Real' is a word invented in the thirteenth century to signify having
properties, i.e. characters sufficing to identify their subject, and
possessing these whether they be anywise attributed to it by any single
man or group of men, or not."
[Source: http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/real.html]
This is precisely what I mean by "Nonexistents do not really have
properties".
We meaningfully ascribe properties to nonexistents in sentences such as
"Chewbacca is a wookiee", even though neither Chewbacca nor any other
wookiee exists.
The meaning of a statement does not depend on whether what it is about
exists.
Regards
PH
juan...@gmail.com
>Existence IS simply another property.
>Statement 1: YOU have all attributes of you AND you exist.
>Statement 2: YOU have all attributes of you AND you don't exist.
>The statement in Case 2 is not a contradiction. Even if you didn't
>exist, you could still possess all your current attributes (or
>properties) -- the entity 'you' would just be fictional.
>(Like you could dream about wearing a blue turban and yellow coat and
>floating in the sky. In your dream, the attributes are present in you,
>but you don't exist -- it is just fiction).
>If statement 1 is correct, then God must exist because God by
>definition is greater than every other entity and an existing God is
>greater than a non-existing God. If statement 2 is correct, then it
>makes it possible for God to be greater than you by possessing superior
>attributes and still remain non-existent. But because you do exist, God
>must exist.
in particular he/she wrote :
> ... and an existing God is "greater" than a non-existing God ...
it is an assumption wich leads to God existence (and without put in
discussion what "greater" means here). but assumption it is not
necessary true.
Using this kind of assumption we could prove anything.
Juan.
Sean
<mikeg...@xtra.co.nz> wrote in message
news:1147417439.8...@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the reply. You're forgiven.
This couple of posts, imho, actually *proves* my pov on the subject of the
discussion you were initially challenging the other person with, ie Don H.
Let's recap and I'll show you what I mean by this::
> Don H wrote:
>> Reason alone, gets us nowhere.
>
> Prove it.
>
>
> Michael Gordge
>
[[ note: I assumed by your challenge that you believed Don was "wrong" in
this view. So I replied with a reverse challenge ................... ]]
ok
Reason alone gets us somewhere ..... now YOU prove it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
You then responded with:
Your answer is proof that I did just by asking you to prove, your
claim, that it doesn't, you couldn't because you cant prove a negative
without contradicting yourself.
Reason is man's only means of gaining his knowledge, you cant have my
knowledge for me, reason is the faculty of man which identifies the
material of his senses, eyes, ears, nose, feel, touch reason therefore
logically demands the applictaion of non-contradictory identification
and integration of that information obtained from our senses, into our
knowledge in its contextual and hierarchical order, it is a process or
art called, wait for it, *logic* have you ever heard of it? Your silly
accusation is evidence that you haven't, or at best a good example of
the fact you haven't perfected it
Michael Gordge
----------------------------------------------
OK, so you now realize that who you thought you were responding to, Don, was
in fact me.
Somehwere along the line here, you became confused about what was being
said, and who was saying it. As a result you continued on in your line of
"reasoning", which led you to several *false* conclusions.
Now often times this is referred to as being based upon a false "premise".
Well ok that sort of works as an explanation, but I think it goes deeper
than that.
My point is this : Reasoning is great and useful Yes it must follow good
logic in order to be useful. Man's progress is in many wasy dependent on
this high degree of reasoning that animals do not possess the same degree
of. It sets us apart from all other species.
But there is another aspect that we have that is far more important, because
without this then reason has no solid foundation upon which to operate
effectively or accurately.
It is called AWARENESS.
Without awareness, reasoning is useless and will alsways lead to wrong/false
conclusions.
Your response to me, where you were *unaware* of whom you were responding
to, despite all the clear evidence right in front of you [ nothing was
hidden ] , is a simple everyday example where we as humans, whether super
geniuses or an average man lack awareness of what is.
As such this should indicate clearly that: *Reason alone, gets us nowhere.*
It should also re-emphasize that your latest comment *Reason is man's only
means of gaining his knowledge* is not true.
Through awareness, we can gain knowledge simply by being aware. No reasoning
is required in this process of personal awareness. Only ones personal
attention to *what is*.
I'm sure you can now see the logical reasoning of coming to such a
conclusion. If not let me know where you see the difficulty.
Cheers
uraniumc...@yahoo.com
Immortalist wrote:
> A bachelor can be defined as an unmarried man. Being unmarried is the
> essential defining property of a bachelor. Now, if I were to say
> 'bachelors exist', I would not be giving a further property of
> bachelors. Existence is not the same sort of thing as the property of
> being unmarried: for anyone to be unmarried they must first exist,
> though the concept of a bachelor remains the same whether or not any
> bachelors do happen to exist.
>
> the mistake it makes is to treat the existence of God as if it were
> simply another property, like omniscience, or omnipotence. But God
> could not be omniscient or omnipotent without existing, so by giving a
> definition of God at all we are already assuming that he or she exists.
> Listing existence as a further essential property of a perfect being is
> making the mistake of treating existence as a property rather than as
> the precondition of anything having any properties at all.
>
> about the properties of a unicorn, such as having one horn and four
> what a sentence like 'Unicorns have one horn' really means is 'If
> unicorns were to exist, they would have one horn'. In other words,
> 'Unicorns have one horn' is really a hypothetical statement. So the
> non-existence of unicorns is not a problem for the view that existence
> is not a property.
>
No.
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
Sean wrote:
..qualifying and nonsensical crap snipped..
> My point is this : Reasoning is great and useful Yes it must follow good
> logic in order to be useful.
That's back to front POC (Primacy of Consciouness) nonsense.
Logic is an art or process of non-contradictory indentification and
integration of the material of man's senses.
There HAS to be someTHING to be logical about, logic is applied to that
which exists.
Therefore logically, existence BEFORE logic, NOT the other way round.
>
> It is called AWARENESS.
AWARENESS OF WHAT?
Awareness requires someTHING to be aware of.
>
> Without awareness, reasoning is useless and will alsways lead to wrong/false
> conclusions.
The word you are looking for is *perception*
Reason is the tool which then puts it (existence) all together.
> Your response to me, where you were *unaware* of whom you were responding
> to, despite all the clear evidence right in front of you [ nothing was
> hidden ] , is a simple everyday example where we as humans, whether super
> geniuses or an average man lack awareness of what is.
Perceptions of tha which exist can be wrong, my MISTAKE was, nothing
more than a contradiction of that which existed. I was NOT being
logical, I did not apply non-contradictory identification of that which
existed.
> As such this should indicate clearly that: *Reason alone, gets us
nowhere.*
And yet that statement is not possible unless you apply or use *reason*
- albeit wrongly, to that which actually happened.
>
> It should also re-emphasize that your latest comment *Reason is man's only
> means of gaining his knowledge* is not true.
But of course you cant even say is true, that UNLESS you apply reason
(non-contradictory identifiation of that which exists) to your
arguement.
>
> I'm sure you can now see the logical reasoning of coming to such a
> conclusion. If not let me know where you see the difficulty.
NOPE, if anything you have argued th contrary case extremely well. Not
even an arguement against reason (which there cant be without
contradiction) can stack up unless reason is used.
Michael Gordge
Sean
<mikeg...@xtra.co.nz> wrote in message
news:1147482710.6...@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> Sean wrote:
>
> ..qualifying and nonsensical crap snipped..
>
well that;s a bummer can;t remember what crap it was now. :)
>> My point is this : Reasoning is great and useful Yes it must follow good
>> logic in order to be useful.
>
> That's back to front POC (Primacy of Consciouness) nonsense.
>
> Logic is an art or process of non-contradictory indentification and
> integration of the material of man's senses.
>
> There HAS to be someTHING to be logical about, logic is applied to that
> which exists.
>
> Therefore logically, existence BEFORE logic, NOT the other way round.
>
mmmm, did I say Logic before existence? Canlt recall now, u smipped it. and
no time.
Not sure what ur so upset about, but whatever.
>>
>> It is called AWARENESS.
>
> AWARENESS OF WHAT?
>
> Awareness requires someTHING to be aware of.
>
Who you are actually replying to .. hows that for a start?
Now I remeber the context of this post.
>>
>> Without awareness, reasoning is useless and will alsways lead to
>> wrong/false
>> conclusions.
>
> The word you are looking for is *perception*
>
am I? You say tomatoe .....
> Reason is the tool which then puts it (existence) all together.
>
So long as you were aware of what was there before you put it all together.
>> Your response to me, where you were *unaware* of whom you were responding
>> to, despite all the clear evidence right in front of you [ nothing was
>> hidden ] , is a simple everyday example where we as humans, whether
>> super
>> geniuses or an average man lack awareness of what is.
>
> Perceptions of tha which exist can be wrong, my MISTAKE was, nothing
> more than a contradiction of that which existed. I was NOT being
> logical, I did not apply non-contradictory identification of that which
> existed.
>
If you say so. I agree you were not being logical. :-)
> > As such this should indicate clearly that: *Reason alone, gets us
> nowhere.*
>
> And yet that statement is not possible unless you apply or use *reason*
> - albeit wrongly, to that which actually happened.
>
Well made perfect sense to me, what else can I say?
>>
>> It should also re-emphasize that your latest comment *Reason is man's
>> only
>> means of gaining his knowledge* is not true.
>
> But of course you cant even say is true, that UNLESS you apply reason
> (non-contradictory identifiation of that which exists) to your
> arguement.
>
Yes but then I was the one who was aware, sorry, perceptive enough to
realise you didnlt know who you were talking to and therefore your reply was
inherently illogical. I think that;s quite clear. But you can use whatever
words you wish to express it.
>>
>> I'm sure you can now see the logical reasoning of coming to such a
>> conclusion. If not let me know where you see the difficulty.
>
> NOPE, if anything you have argued th contrary case extremely well. Not
> even an arguement against reason (which there cant be without
> contradiction) can stack up unless reason is used.
>
>
> Michael Gordge
>
You must be right then. You're a great arguer. <smile>
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
Sean wrote:
> mmmm, did I say Logic before existence? Canlt recall now, u smipped it. and
> no time.
Time has nothing to do with it, you've spent a lot more time posting
more piffle on other subjects, than you **wanted** to spend justifying
what you regurgitated here.
You said
***Through awareness, we can gain knowledge simply by being aware. No
reasoning
is required in this process of personal awareness.***
Gain knowledge of what?
HOW do you know that what you are aware of is real, true, exists if you
dont apply reason?
What is this awareness you speak of, dependent upon if not your senses?
Give an example of a bit of knowledge you claim to have from being
aware which does not or did not require the process of reason your
senses, to eliminate other possibilities and render your perception as
true, without contradiction.
Michael Gordge
Anthony G. Rubino
Michael Gordge wrote:
>
>Give an example of a bit of knowledge
>you claim to have from being aware
>which does not or did not require the
>process of reason your senses, to
>eliminate other possibilities and render
>your perception as true, without
>contradiction.
>
data before reason can be employed. Without that awareness and
knowledge, reason would be useless. Perceptions are not contradictory.
They can only be considered as contradictory by reason. Without reason,
there could be no contradiction: confusion, perhaps, but not
contradiction.
Tony, philosopher
http://www.geocities.com/trisector/
So many misconceptions, so little time.
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
Anthony G. Rubino wrote:
> >
> Knowledge of the sense data must be established by an awareness of that
> data before reason can be employed.
Existence preceeds the conscious mind, we know that because there has
to be something to be conscious of, man can not be conscious of
nothing.
Consciouness or what you call awareness is only the state of mind able
to identify that which already exists.
> Without that awareness and
> knowledge, reason would be useless.
So what? There still has to be someTHING to be aware of. Knowledge is
NOT automatic, it is the result of a process of non-contradictory
identification and integration of the material which exists and
perceived by man's senses.
> Perceptions are not contradictory.
Nonsense, they most certain can be, hence the need of logic eg the
perception that socialism is a good idea or good theory most certainly
is a contradiction of the reality of man's nature (thats an example
only, which needs not be discussed here ie NOT a strawman).
> Without reason,
> there could be no contradiction: confusion, perhaps, but not
> contradiction.
Reason is the *tool or faculty* of man used to identify the
contradictions in man's perceptions of that which already exists.
Reason is man's only means of gaining his knowledge. Reason defined as,
the faculty of man which identifies the material of his senses PLUS for
that information to be regarded as knowledge it must not contain
contradiction
>
> Tony, philosopher
Philosophers THINK, thinking requires reason, reason requires
existence, existence can only be identified, what man thinks does not,
can not change that which exists. Man must idnetify that which exists
and integrate that information into his knowledge or he builds his
knowledge with that information without contradiction.
Michael Gordge
Anthony G. Rubino
Michael Gordge wrote:
>
>Existence preceeds the conscious mind,
>we know that because there has to be
>something to be conscious of, man can
>not be conscious of nothing.
>
>Consciouness or what you call
>awareness is only the state of mind able
>to identify that which already exists.
>
not the only existent: i.e., Minds exist. Conscious minds exist. Other
entities exist. All that exists has the property of existence. I also
assume that other entities existed before the human mind.
Anthony G. Rubino
My apologies. The preceding post was premature and incomplete.
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
Anthony G. Rubino wrote:
> I assume that the mind referred to above is a human mind and that it is
> not the only existent: i.e., Minds exist. Conscious minds exist. Other
> entities exist. All that exists has the property of existence. I also
> assume that other entities existed before the human mind.
The point?
Michael Gordge
Anthony G. Rubino
Michael Gordge wrote:
>
>Existence preceeds the conscious mind,
>we know that because there has to be
>something to be conscious of, man can
>not be conscious of nothing.
>
>Consciouness or what you call
>awareness is only the state of mind able
>to identify that which already exists.
>
I assume that the mind referred to above is a human mind and that it is
not the only existent: i.e., Minds exist. Conscious minds exist. Other
that exists has the property of existence.
Knowledge of what exists is distinct from what exists. There are
existents that we do not know about. For us to know about them, they
must have another property besides existence by which they can be known.
If they are not known, we cannot talk about them with any credible claim
that we know what we are talking about. What does not exist cannot be
known. Whatever we talk about necessarily includes a claim that we know
something about it, if we know what we're talking about, and that
carries with it a necessary implication of its existence.
The nature, or essence, of any existent is the 'collection' of the
properties, or qualities, by which it can be known. Neither existence,
nor essence, can precede the other since they are properties present at
the inception of the existent: i.e., the existent and its properties
exist together.
It is the nature of mind to have the ability to be aware and conscious.
The ability to be aware and conscious is distinct from the awareness and
consciousness since we are not always aware of the things we could be
aware of. We are only aware of those things that we attend to which
complicates the meaning of the idea of a 'state of mind' and our ability
to change it.
Last but not least, we can be conscious of nothing. If we could not, we
could not talk about it, with any credible claim that we know what we're
talking about.
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
Anthony G. Rubino wrote:
piffle of 500 totally wasted words snipped.
> Last but not least, we can be conscious of nothing.
Oh really, define a nothing.
Michael Gordge
Sean
<mikeg...@xtra.co.nz> wrote in message
news:1147562323.1...@j73g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Sean wrote:
>
>> mmmm, did I say Logic before existence? Canlt recall now, u smipped it.
>> and
>> no time.
>
> Time has nothing to do with it, you've spent a lot more time posting
> more piffle on other subjects, than you **wanted** to spend justifying
> what you regurgitated here.
>
Funny thing how I get to do what I wanted to do. I guess you could call it
freedom, nothing personal that's for sure.
> You said
>
> ***Through awareness, we can gain knowledge simply by being aware. No
> reasoning
> is required in this process of personal awareness.***
>
> Gain knowledge of what?
>
> HOW do you know that what you are aware of is real, true, exists if you
> dont apply reason?
>
> What is this awareness you speak of, dependent upon if not your senses?
>
> Give an example of a bit of knowledge you claim to have from being
> aware which does not or did not require the process of reason your
> senses, to eliminate other possibilities and render your perception as
> true, without contradiction.
>
>
> Michael Gordge
>
Michael, amongst other things on my plate I have been pondering your
questions and still can;t quite get an answer I feel really answers them
adequately. I;m sorta wondering now is it merely a belief an assumption on
my part or is there something more to it. Can't quite figure it out yet,
and I am preoccupied with some other things besides my daily dose of piffle.
<G>
It was a spontaneous response that seemed spot on at the time, not really
sure why though. So I am going to save this and sit on it untill some
clarity comes through. could be 5 minutes or 5 days i don;t know. best i can
do for now. cheers
Robert J. Kolker
>
> That's back to front POC (Primacy of Consciouness) nonsense.
>
> Logic is an art or process of non-contradictory indentification and
> integration of the material of man's senses.
That is Objectivist crapdoodle. Logic is the art/science/discipline of
valid inference. Logic operates on propositions, no percepts.
>
> There HAS to be someTHING to be logical about, logic is applied to that
> which exists.
There are systems of logic that are purely formal and do not pertain to
any concrete object in the world or statements about such objects and
their relationships. Example: boolean algebra. This can be developed in
a purely abstract and formal way. It can also be applied to do useful
things like design circuits.
>
> Therefore logically, existence BEFORE logic, NOT the other way round.
Existence of what?
>
>
>>It is called AWARENESS.
>
>
> AWARENESS OF WHAT?
>
> Awareness requires someTHING to be aware of.
>
>
>>Without awareness, reasoning is useless and will alsways lead to wrong/false
>>conclusions.
>
>
> The word you are looking for is *perception*
>
> Reason is the tool which then puts it (existence) all together.
Reason does that, but formal logic need not do that.
Reason is not identical to logic.
Bob Kolker
Mike H
least, in my current opinion.
Immortalist wrote:
> A bachelor can be defined as an unmarried man. Being unmarried is the
> essential defining property of a bachelor. Now, if I were to say
> 'bachelors exist', I would not be giving a further property of
> bachelors. Existence is not the same sort of thing as the property of
> being unmarried: for anyone to be unmarried they must first exist,
> though the concept of a bachelor remains the same whether or not any
> bachelors do happen to exist.
>
> If we apply the same thinking to the Ontological Argument, we see that
> the mistake it makes is to treat the existence of God as if it were
> simply another property, like omniscience, or omnipotence.
The "existence of God" is a statement. Existence itself, however, may
still be a property.
Are numbers properties?
For the universe to exist or not exist are two possibilities. Two is a
number. Did the number two, and perhaps everything else, spring into
being by itself, complete with the consistency of its own existence?
I ask this, because we sometimes ask why anything bothers to exist.
Some objects are blue, and some aren't. The question of why the
universe exists, when it could not, is like asking why an object is
blue, when others are not. We see the tool of existential questioning
-- called *negation* -- before our very eyes, as if we are being teased
by something.
Does any of this make sense?
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
Robert J. Kolker wrote:
>
> That is Objectivist crapdoodle. Logic is the art/science/discipline of
> valid inference.
If that is the case, then perhaps you could explain how a contradiction
between premises makes any proposition valid.
> Logic operates on propositions, no percepts.
Logic identifies the premise/s of propositions, as containing no
contradictions, to be a valid propositions.
Propositions need checking, logic is the ONLY tool for that.
You really are all back to front. POC doesn't work in reality.
Existence before mind.
>
> There are systems of logic that are purely formal and do not pertain to
> any concrete object in the world or statements about such objects and
> their relationships.
> Example: boolean algebra. This can be developed in
> a purely abstract and formal way. It can also be applied to do useful
> things like design circuits.
Gosh, not even a computer program can be put together containing
contradictions. Logic is used a tool, an art, a process used to
identify and eliminate contradictions, to idnetify and eliminate ALL
even potential errors no matter where the potential of those errors
might be, from wiring diagrams, design circuits, to algebra and to just
general knowledge. eg *socialism is about caring* logic tells us is an
oxymoron (just thought I would throw that in, there's no need to
comment on the logical reality of it)
> >
> > Therefore logically, existence BEFORE logic, NOT the other way round.
>
> Existence of what?
Yes thats right, logic is the tool used to answer that question without
contradiction. There has to be someTHING that logic is applied to, it
is after all only a tool, you dont buy a hammer just for the sake of it
do you?
> Reason is not identical to logic.
Reason is the word used for the combination of two things, sensory
identification and the use of logic, ie. non-contradictory
identification of the senses and integration of that information into
its correct order in your mind.
I like the analogy of logic as being, the fastidious meticulous
*librarian of the mind*, with a razor sharp vivid and precise memory of
ALL the experiences thats man's senses have ever had and she (she's
always have the best memory) then sorts and places the information of
the senses (whether that be words which the eyes read or hear, or
material entities) into the correct contextual and hierarchical order.
Michael Gordge
jillar...@webtv.net
QUOTE:
essential defining property of a bachelor. Now, if I were to say
'bachelors exist', I would not be giving a further property of
bachelors. Existence is not the same sort of thing as the property of
being unmarried: for anyone to be unmarried they must first exist,
though the concept of a bachelor remains the same whether or not any
bachelors do happen to exist.
If we apply the same thinking to the Ontological Argument, we see that
the mistake it makes is to treat the existence of God as if it were
simply another property, like omniscience, or omnipotence. But God could
not be omniscient or omnipotent without existing, so by giving a
definition of God at all we are already assuming that he or she exists.
Listing existence as a further essential property of a perfect being is
making the mistake of treating existence as a property rather than as
the precondition of anything having any properties at all.
But what about fictional beings, such as unicorns? Surely we can talk
about the properties of a unicorn, such as having one horn and four
legs, without unicorns actually having to exist. The answer is that what
a sentence like 'Unicorns have one horn' really means is 'If unicorns
were to exist, they would have one horn'. In other words, 'Unicorns have
one horn' is really a hypothetical statement. So the non-existence of
unicorns is not a problem for the view that existence is not a property.
Philosophy - The Basics
by N. WARBURTON
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415146941/
END QUOTE
----------------------------------------------
Hello all thinkers in AP,
A bachelor can be 1] defined. But he can also be 2] observed, and/or 3]
reported because a bachelor is SEEN in a world.
A definition is only a line of words with a more proper- by a necessity
[of property]- correspondence to a world. So it differs from a report,
which suggests movement reiterated by some means of a story. Movement
can only happen in a world- the reiteration is a portal, POV story.
Still reports give definitions "relationships" which, at some point in
the history of philosophy, has joined in congruent searches between the
words and world, and which made defnitions a little less the jewel of
truth.
Which one [definition, observation, report] is the best criterion for
philosophy? One would like Ockham's razor in this assesment. But the
wholist, Plato, cast definitively idealist by mistake, in these matters,
might be better, due to his poetic stories about the relationships of
existence.
If one cannot use existence as a property in a definition, then it may
only mean that one may not abstract it. But the Warburton text does not
make that claim. It really claims the non use of "existence" because a
definition already registers "being" one "unmarried" as that being a
bachelor. That's good. That is Ockhamism.
If we can use existence as property then we can also use it as naught if
it is not proper in definitions of some nothings- unicorns, for
instance. So the text above that is contrary to this because,...
QUOTE:
'If unicorns were to exist, they would have one horn'. In other words,
'Unicorns have one horn' is really a hypothetical statement.
END QUOTE:
This means definition has been changed to hypothetical statement. The
thinking here has been transformed when the text begs us to maintain it
the same throughtout. RED FLAG!
One needs to maintain correspondence, and not switch from a definition
entailing a condition for necessity to a hypothetical entailing a
condition of if-ness. This text is a bait and switch. It begs the reader
to use the SAME thinking in correspnding relationships, then violates
it. Using "if", as a POSSIBLE existence in world of POSSIBLE naught,
takes away proper "definition" altogether. Now that's Platonic.
Meaning: one cannot make the same correponding jump in thinking from
bachelor, to God, to unicorn in relationship to existence and its
entailing naught in form to unicorn. Things have FORMS.
Up front comes the real of existence- wholism must be given it- defined,
as this being thus, observed and reported. It cannot be merely
abstracted. The existential-phenomenologist said it a different way:
existence cannot be bracketed out of the world. It is the essential,
real..
SleepyHeed
Paul Holbach wrote:
> > SleepyHeed wrote:
> > > Paul Holbach wrote:
>
> > > In classical logic, where there is no first-order predicate "exist", "x
> > > exists" means "There is something/somebody that is (identical to) x".
>
> > Hang on a mo - I spot some sleight of hand going on. If there /is/
> > somebody that is identical to x, doesn't that just say "somebody exists
> > whos the same as X"?
>
> Yes, here "is" and "exists" are synonymous so that you could write
> "there exists" instead of "there is". But I wouldn't call this a
> "sleight of hand", because what it merely shows is that "there is" and
> "exists" are virtually indefinable.
Most words are virtually indefinable in the sense that providing a
clear, watertight definition which will never be misconstured and will
never age with time is an impossible task when dealing with humans who
like to make language their own, live limited lifespans, and who like
to change things around on the whims of fashion, personal taste and the
latest developments in thinking.
> We all know how to use this words
> properly, but we seem unable to define them explicitly in a
> non-circular way.
Then how do we explain the meanings of these words to our children? We
must be fairly clear in our instructions or they wouldn't be able to
learn our language at all. Or maybe it's all just 'mysterious' -
wooooooh. ; )
I guess I don't believe in mysteries of that kind: I suspect it's one
of those cases of being unable to see the nose on the end of one's face
- we're just too close to the subject-matter (or looking at it in the
wrong way) to get clear about this stuff.
Although if I were to provide a defintion of 'exists' (in the sense in
which existence is distinguished from non-existence) I'd say something
like: This label has a bearer.
(But then there's endless wrangling to be done over the verb 'has' -
what if the bearer's not present and can't be pointed to? When I say
'has' - what kind of 'has' is that - does the bearer possess the label?
Is it a quality of the bearer. Or is it simply that once we label an
object we're able to use the label instead of pointing to the bearer of
the label and we call that kind of linguistic manipulation 'having'?)
> They appear to be what a linguistic school calls
> "semantic primes" (see:
> http://www.une.edu.au/arts/LCL/nsm/nsmpage1.htm). Nevertheless, some
> have tried to find a substantial definition of "exist" (as a
> first-order predicate):
>
> "We require that [ontological] posits be independent of any
> psychological or linguistic process whatsoever -- whether ours or
> someone else's. The latter does supply necessary and sufficient
> conditions for what exists. I call such posits 'ontologically
> independent' (not just ontologically independent of us)."
>
> [Azzouni. Jody | 2004 | Deflating existential consequence: A case for
> nominalism | New York / Oxford UP. (113)]
>
> So, in Azzouni's opinion
>
> "x exists" means "x is ontologically independent"
>
> Azzouni's definition may not be perfectly obvious, but I think he is on
> the right track.
> There is a very close semantic relationship between "exists" and "is
> real".
Sure. "It's real" = "I could point to it" (if it were a bit nearer).
Saying something's 'ontologically independent' is just a verbose way of
saying the same thing (i.e. it's not informative - it just looks that
way because we're using different words instead of saying the same
thing over and over).
> Azzouni would surely agree with the following definition by Charles S.
> Peirce:
>
> "Reality is that mode of being by virtue of which the real thing is as
> it is, irrespectively of what any mind or any definite collection of
> minds may represent it to be."
>
> [Source: http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/real.html]
>
> In this respect existence is always real existence, that is, what
> exists is real, and what is not real does not exist.
But then one heads off up-river into the philosophical jungle trying to
distinguish different kinds of real / existence. For instance - numbers
are real. But do numbers exist? Well I can count the number of beads in
front of me, and I can label them with a sign. I can point to the sign,
I can point to the beads. Does that mean there must be some platonic
realm where numbers (which if one were philosophically inclined one
might say are neither signs nor beads) exist?
(What this should show you is that when things get complicated and one
starts to tie oneself in knots one is missing something perfectly
obvious. In this case it's that the words 'real' and 'exist' are used
in slightly different ways to mean slightly different things from "I
can point to it", to "It has a general function in human life". The
fact that all these different kinds of uses get labelled with the same
label disguises the fact that the uses of the label are different from
one another.)
> > > "x exists" = "Things identical to x exist"
> > >
> > > So "George W. Bush exists" is true iff there is somebody who is
> > > (identical to) George W. Bush.
> > > (If there is at least one person identical to George W. Bush, then
> > > there is necessarily at most one such person, since nobody could be
> > > identical to two different persons.)
>
> In the classical second-order interpretation "x exists" means "The
> property of being (identical to) x is instantiated by exactly one
> thing"
Ah! The joys of mathematical interpretations of English!
> Regards
> PH
SleepyHeed
Paul Holbach wrote:
> > SleepyHeed wrote:
> > > Paul Holbach wrote:
> > > > SleepyHeed schrieb:
>
> > > > But what about fictional beings, such as unicorns? Surely we can talk
> > > > about the properties of a unicorn, such as having one horn and four
> > > > legs, without unicorns actually having to exist.
>
> > > ...and without unicorns actually having to have properties.
> > > The properties (predicates) we ascribe to nonexistent objects are not
> > > (really) possessed by these.
>
> > The properties we ascribe to non-existent objects follow the same
> > English grammar as anything else in English, but that doesn't make the non-existent object
> > any more or less real.
>
> Yes, statements about existents and ones about nonexistents do have the
> same grammatical form. But their respective logical interpretations are
> different.
= "We do different things with the statements."
> > Whether you want to say that non-existent objects don't /really/
> > possess quality ascribed to them depends on what you mean by the word
> > 'really'.
>
> Strictly speaking, I mean that they do not possess any properties at
> all -- period.
> As a motto: No instantiation (of properties) without existence!
Mainly because English requires a substantive for something to be a
property of.
> "'Real' is a word invented in the thirteenth century to signify having
> properties, i.e. characters sufficing to identify their subject, and
> possessing these whether they be anywise attributed to it by any single
> man or group of men, or not."
>
> [Source: http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/real.html]
Our sources disagree slightly!
[Source:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=Real&searchmode=none]
Mine says that 'Real' originally begins life as a word 'relating to
things' with a sense similar to 'actual', and that it mainly has usage
with respect to property. So "Is it real?" in its original sense means
"Can we go there?". It later develops other meanings ('actual', 'true
to life', and so on). Interestingly enough if you look up the entry for
'real' (above) scan down and look at the word 'Reality' - its original
meaning is a 'fixed property'.
> This is precisely what I mean by "Nonexistents do not really have
> properties".
Well imaginary things don't really exist, so they don't have properties
in the same way that unimaginary things have properties. For one thing
you're never going to be able to point at a real unicorn, so there's
nothing to compare one's conception with - with imaginary things all
one has is the conception (and the general consensus of opinion). If
you want to class this as 'really having' and 'not really having' is
entirely up to you - I'm not sure I think it's too useful a distinction
to make.
> We meaningfully ascribe properties to nonexistents in sentences such as
> "Chewbacca is a wookiee", even though neither Chewbacca nor any other
> wookiee exists.
>
> The meaning of a statement does not depend on whether what it is about
> exists.
True.
> Regards
> PH
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
SleepyHeed wrote:
>
> Most words are virtually indefinable in the sense that providing a
> clear, watertight definition which will never be misconstured and will
> never age with time is an impossible task when dealing with humans who
> like to make language their own, live limited lifespans, and who like
> to change things around on the whims of fashion, personal taste and the
> latest developments in thinking.
Which is why each word actually needs two definitions, this solves a
lot of the problems faced when those with evil intent who are required
to deliberately seek to confuse the vocabulary:
A *genus* definition which is the family it belongs to
and
A *differentia* which seperates that member of the family from all
other members in it
examples
Man
Genus: An animal
Differentia: One possessing a rational faculty
Comment: In the context of philosophy, man refers to a human being,
regardless of gender.
Infinity
Genus: A conceptual tool used to indicate a measurement
Differentia: Without a particular boundary / unbounded
Comment: This contradicts the law of identity, so should be recognized
as a metaphysical impossibility.
Existence
Genus: Collection of entities
Differentia: Including everything that has actual being
Comment: This includes mental entities existing as mental entities
Libertarians
Genus: People with a particular political system of beliefs
Differentia: They believe that the initiation of force should not be
permitted in any aspect of life
Existent
Genus: Thing
Differentia: That exists
Comment: This includes entities, attributes, and actions.
Evasion
Genus: Mental process
Differentia: Intentional attempt to deny, overlook, or ignore
information or ideas
Michael Gordge
SleepyHeed
mikegor...@xtra.co.nz wrote:
> SleepyHeed wrote:
> >
> > Most words are virtually indefinable in the sense that providing a
> > clear, watertight definition which will never be misconstured and will
> > never age with time is an impossible task when dealing with humans who
> > like to make language their own, live limited lifespans, and who like
> > to change things around on the whims of fashion, personal taste and the
> > latest developments in thinking.
>
> Which is why each word actually needs two definitions, this solves a
> lot of the problems faced when those with evil intent who are required
> to deliberately seek to confuse the vocabulary:
And providing two definitions will overcome all the practical problems
I outlined above?
> A *genus* definition which is the family it belongs to
>
> and
>
> A *differentia* which seperates that member of the family from all
> other members in it
>
> examples
>
> Man
> Genus: An animal
> Differentia: One possessing a rational faculty
> Comment: In the context of philosophy, man refers to a human being,
> regardless of gender.
OK. Provide me with genus and differentia definitions of the word "The"
and the cry "Help!". If what you say is true then /any/ word should be
able to be defined in the manner you've outlined in a clear and
unambiguous fashion, in words which will never change their meaning,
never be misconstrued, and never be forgotten.
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
SleepyHeed wrote:
>
> And providing two definitions will overcome all the practical problems
> I outlined above?
I haven't checked all of the words you used, but here this might help
http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Dictionary.html
> OK. Provide me with genus and differentia definitions of the word "The"
> and the cry "Help!".
Ohhh Wow, were those a couple of words causing you concern Sleepy in
the problems you want sorted?
Michael Gordge
SleepyHeed
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz wrote:
> SleepyHeed wrote:
> >
> > And providing two definitions will overcome all the practical problems
> > I outlined above?
>
> I haven't checked all of the words you used, but here this might help
>
> http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Dictionary.html
That's OK. I prefer these:
www.dictionary.com
www.etymonline.com
www.philosophypages.com/dy
> > OK. Provide me with genus and differentia definitions of the word "The"
> > and the cry "Help!".
>
> Ohhh Wow, were those a couple of words causing you concern Sleepy in
> the problems you want sorted?
Not really. You said that your definitional method would help out - I
was wondering if that was just b/s or if it would help clear up some
general philosophical troubles related in indexicals - I threw in an
exclamation / cry for good measure: Your method should cope with these
quite easily.
>
> Michael Gordge
Paul Holbach
> > Paul Holbach wrote:
> > Yes, here "is" and "exists" are synonymous so that you could write
> > "there exists" instead of "there is". But I wouldn't call this a
> > "sleight of hand", because what it merely shows is that "there is" and
> > "exists" are virtually indefinable.
> Most words are virtually indefinable in the sense that providing a
> clear, watertight definition which will never be misconstured and will
> never age with time is an impossible task when dealing with humans who
> like to make language their own, live limited lifespans, and who like
> to change things around on the whims of fashion, personal taste and the
> latest developments in thinking.
Well..., I think you know pretty well what I mean by "virtually
indefinable".
(For example, "eats" is not a virtually indefinable verb.)
> > We all know how to use this words properly, but we seem unable to define them explicitly
> > in a non-circular way.
> Then how do we explain the meanings of these words to our children? We
> must be fairly clear in our instructions or they wouldn't be able to
> learn our language at all. Or maybe it's all just 'mysterious' -
I'm not an expert as concerns infantile language acquisition, but I
suppose that children learn practically what certain expressions mean
by learning how to use them properly, without being given any explicit
lexicographic definitions.
> Although if I were to provide a defintion of 'exists' (in the sense in
> which existence is distinguished from non-existence) I'd say something
> like: This label has a bearer.
This is the meta-linguistic approach:
"x exists" means "'x' refers to something"
<->
"x does not exist" means "'x' refers to nothing"
The problem with this is that there are linguists and philosophers who
maintain that the relation of reference always holds between a
linguistic expression and an object, but not necessarily between an
expression and an existent object. That is, if we can (or actually do)
equally refer to both existent and nonexistent objects, then the
meta-linguistic approach fails, because then "x exists" may be false
even if "'x' refers to something" is true.
> > Azzouni's definition may not be perfectly obvious, but I think he is on
> > the right track.
> > There is a very close semantic relationship between "exists" and "is
> > real".
> Sure. "It's real" = "I could point to it" (if it were a bit nearer).
If abstract objects are real, you cannot point to them.
> > "Reality is that mode of being by virtue of which the real thing is as
> > it is, irrespectively of what any mind or any definite collection of
> > minds may represent it to be." (Peirce)
> >
> > [Source: http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/real.html]
> >
> > In this respect existence is always real existence, that is, what
> > exists is real, and what is not real does not exist.
>
> But then one heads off up-river into the philosophical jungle trying to
> distinguish different kinds of real / existence.
We do not have to distinguish different kinds of (real) existence but
different kinds of (real) existents.
Regards
PH
Sean
>
> Evasion
> Genus: Mental process
> Differentia: Intentional attempt to deny, overlook, or ignore
> information or ideas
>
You /have/ been reading this group. <G>
>
> Michael Gordge
>
Excellent, do have web link for the above Michael?
Sean
"SleepyHeed" <simonh...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1147687970....@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
> mikegor...@xtra.co.nz wrote:
>> SleepyHeed wrote:
>> >
>> > Most words are virtually indefinable in the sense that providing a
>> > clear, watertight definition which will never be misconstured and will
>> > never age with time is an impossible task when dealing with humans who
>> > like to make language their own, live limited lifespans, and who like
>> > to change things around on the whims of fashion, personal taste and the
>> > latest developments in thinking.
>>
>> Which is why each word actually needs two definitions, this solves a
>> lot of the problems faced when those with evil intent who are required
>> to deliberately seek to confuse the vocabulary:
>
> And providing two definitions will overcome all the practical problems
> I outlined above?
>
I thought this was a reasonable *qualification* of what was offered sleepy
... fwiw
......................... this solves a
SleepyHeed
Paul Holbach wrote:
> > SleepyHeed wrote:
> > > Paul Holbach wrote:
>
> > > Yes, here "is" and "exists" are synonymous so that you could write
> > > "there exists" instead of "there is". But I wouldn't call this a
> > > "sleight of hand", because what it merely shows is that "there is" and
> > > "exists" are virtually indefinable.
>
> > Most words are virtually indefinable in the sense that providing a
> > clear, watertight definition which will never be misconstured and will
> > never age with time is an impossible task when dealing with humans who
> > like to make language their own, live limited lifespans, and who like
> > to change things around on the whims of fashion, personal taste and the
> > latest developments in thinking.
>
> Well..., I think you know pretty well what I mean by "virtually
> indefinable".
> (For example, "eats" is not a virtually indefinable verb.)
I agree that words like 'Eat' can be ostensively defined and that on
the whole words like 'Exist' can't. But there are hundreds of words in
English that can't be ostensively defined and cause us no trouble. So
it can't just be that that causes such trouble with the word 'Exists'.
Perhaps the problem simply lies in believing that all adjectives
function the same way because they all occupy more-or-less the same
position in a given sentence?
> > > We all know how to use this words properly, but we seem unable to define them explicitly
> > > in a non-circular way.
>
> > Then how do we explain the meanings of these words to our children? We
> > must be fairly clear in our instructions or they wouldn't be able to
> > learn our language at all. Or maybe it's all just 'mysterious' -
>
> I'm not an expert as concerns infantile language acquisition, but I
> suppose that children learn practically what certain expressions mean
> by learning how to use them properly, without being given any explicit
> lexicographic definitions.
Then it should be possible for an adult to do the same?
> > Although if I were to provide a defintion of 'exists' (in the sense in
> > which existence is distinguished from non-existence) I'd say something
> > like: This label has a bearer.
>
> This is the meta-linguistic approach:
>
> "x exists" means "'x' refers to something"
> <->
> "x does not exist" means "'x' refers to nothing"
>
> The problem with this is that there are linguists and philosophers who
> maintain that the relation of reference always holds between a
> linguistic expression and an object, but not necessarily between an
> expression and an existent object. That is, if we can (or actually do)
> equally refer to both existent and nonexistent objects, then the
> meta-linguistic approach fails, because then "x exists" may be false
> even if "'x' refers to something" is true.
That's because the phrases "X exists" and "'X' refers to something"
don't (as a general rule) mean the same thing at all, although there
are probably some circumstances where the phrases could be exchanged
for one another.
I don't mean by "X exists" that "'X' refers to something" - if someone
were to offer me that latter phrase as an interpretation of the former
I'd want to clarify it by saying "Yes, X refers to something that
exists".
> > > Azzouni's definition may not be perfectly obvious, but I think he is on
> > > the right track.
> > > There is a very close semantic relationship between "exists" and "is
> > > real".
>
> > Sure. "It's real" = "I could point to it" (if it were a bit nearer).
>
> If abstract objects are real, you cannot point to them.
Well abstracts exist in the sense "We use abstract ideas". This doesn't
make them physically real though.
> > > "Reality is that mode of being by virtue of which the real thing is as
> > > it is, irrespectively of what any mind or any definite collection of
> > > minds may represent it to be." (Peirce)
> > >
> > > [Source: http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/real.html]
> > >
> > > In this respect existence is always real existence, that is, what
> > > exists is real, and what is not real does not exist.
> >
> > But then one heads off up-river into the philosophical jungle trying to
> > distinguish different kinds of real / existence.
>
> We do not have to distinguish different kinds of (real) existence but
> different kinds of (real) existents.
Ah - imaginary from non-imaginary.
Paul Holbach
> > Paul Holbach wrote:
> I don't mean by "X exists" that "'X' refers to something" - if someone
> were to offer me that latter phrase as an interpretation of the former
> I'd want to clarify it by saying "Yes, X refers to something that
> exists".
If the definiendum is part of the definiens, then the definition is
worthless.
Ax(E!x <-> Ey(|x| >-> y))
For all x: x exists iff there is something y such that "x" refers to
it.
This is true, but doesn't really define "exist" either.
> > We do not have to distinguish different kinds of (real) existence but
> > different kinds of (real) existents.
> Ah - imaginary from non-imaginary.
We can distinguish imaginary objects from non-imaginary objects, but we
cannot distinguish imaginary existents from non-imaginary existents,
since all existents are non-imaginary.
Regards
PH
Anthony G. Rubino
Paul Holbach wrote:
>
>We can distinguish imaginary objects
>from non-imaginary objects, but we
>cannot distinguish imaginary existents
>from non-imaginary existents, since all
>existents are non-imaginary.
>
What's the difference between imaginary objects and imaginary existents?
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
Anthony G. Rubino wrote:
> Paul Holbach wrote:
> >
> >We can distinguish imaginary objects
> >from non-imaginary objects, but we
> >cannot distinguish imaginary existents
> >from non-imaginary existents, since all
> >existents are non-imaginary.
> >
> I don't understand the distinction you are making.
>
> What's the difference between imaginary objects and imaginary existents?
There isn't.
Objects exist they are not imagined, other than to place in the mind
what exists (the object) when the senses are of no use.
Imagination is an existant, defined as, a state or process of mind
existence or non-existence
real or imagined
fact or fiction
good or bad
right or wrong
Michael Gordge
Anthony G. Rubino
Michael Gordge wrote:
>
>Objects exist they are not imagined,
>other than to place in the mind what
>exists (the object) when the senses are
>of no use.
>
>Imagination is an existant, defined as, a
>state or process of mind
>
>existence or non-existence
>real or imagined
>fact or fiction
>good or bad
>right or wrong
>
Holbach's distinction, but It's not helpful.
Your explanation is less intelligible to me than the distinction implied
in Paul's post.
SleepyHeed
Paul Holbach wrote:
> > SleepyHeed wrote:
> > > Paul Holbach wrote:
>
> > I don't mean by "X exists" that "'X' refers to something" - if someone
> > were to offer me that latter phrase as an interpretation of the former
> > I'd want to clarify it by saying "Yes, X refers to something that
> > exists".
>
> If the definiendum is part of the definiens, then the definition is
> worthless.
>
> Ax(E!x <-> Ey(|x| >-> y))
>
> For all x: x exists iff there is something y such that "x" refers to
> it.
>
> This is true, but doesn't really define "exist" either.
All I meant to show was that "X refers to Y" isn't always a valid
substitution for "Y exists", because if X refers to Y then it could
still remain to be shown that Y exists.
I guess my general point is that what formal logic of the kind you've
mentioned above fails to take account of are the extra-linguistic
factors which determine the meanings of our utterances. If, under
normal circumstances, I direct your gaze at someone and say "I'm
referring to /him/" would you then ask me "And does he exist?".
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
Anthony G. Rubino wrote:
> Your explanation is less intelligible to me than the distinction implied
> in Paul's post.
You're not surprised of that are you?
I mean, mystics usually just agree to agree with each other, even if
they dont, just for the hell of it, but its really because they both
want to cover their arse, just in case the other is right of course.
Michale Gordge
SleepyHeed
I think what Paul's trying to say is that imaginary things don't exist,
and real things do. Thus there's no point trying to distinguish
imaginary existing objects from unimaginary existing objects because
imaginary objects don't exist. The same point would apply to the use of
the word 'real', viz: imaginary objects aren't real.
Read in this light his point:
"We do not have to distinguish different kinds of (real) existence but
different kinds of (real) existents"
means something like:
All things which exist - exist! Thus there's only one kind of existence
- /existence/!
Thus there are many different kinds of things which exist, but they all
exist in one way. And thus the only task that remains is to distinguish
those things from one another (rather than their modes of Being).
I'm not too sure why Paul thinks this is the task that remains - we
/were/ talking about definitions of 'existence' and whether existence
is a property of something.
Me, I think as far as the English grammar of the thing goes existence
/is/ a property of something: There must be a substantive in a sentence
to which the word 'exists' is appended or it's just not correct
English.
As far as the usage of the word 'exists' goes it's usually used to
distinguish real from imaginary, or fictional, or pretend, or
what-have-you. So in that sense I think it shares more in common with
other linguistic distinctions than it does with quality/property words.
In that sense existence is not a property of something.
So my answer is it's both; it just depends on your viewpoint as to
whether you'll argue one or't'other.
Anthony G. Rubino
>We can distinguish imaginary objects
>from non-imaginary objects, but we
>cannot distinguish imaginary existents
>from non-imaginary existents, since all
>existents are non-imaginary.
>
imaginary/non-imaginary existents. It is not clear to me how he is
distinguishing 'objects' from 'existents'.
This is a difficult topic to deal with without getting tongue tied and
twisted. The problem I have with your interpretation is that it presents
an implied double negation: if 'imaginary' already contains the negation
of existence, then 'non- imaginary existents' is equivalent to
'non-(non-existent) existents.
I agree with most of what you say above, but I disagree that 'imaginary'
necessarily means unreal.
I agree that:
"All things which exist - exist! Thus there's only one kind of existence
- /existence/!
Thus there are many different kinds of things which exist, but they all
exist in one way. And thus the only task that remains is to distinguish
those things from one another (rather than their modes of Being)."
I'm not sure that:
"(I think) what Paul's trying to say is that imaginary things don't
exist, and real things do. Thus there's no point trying to distinguish
imaginary existing objects from unimaginary existing objects because
imaginary objects don't exist. The same point would apply to the use of
the word 'real', viz: imaginary objects aren't real."
Though common, the usage below is the cause of much confusion.
"As far as the usage of the word 'exists' goes it's usually used to
distinguish real from imaginary, or fictional, or pretend, or
what-have-you. So in that sense I think it shares more in common with
other linguistic distinctions than it does with quality/property words.
In that sense existence is not a property of something."
It might help to reiterate a post I made on a related thread, followed
by an excerpt
of my earlier work.
Re: Absolute+relative Truths: The duality of Truth. ©
AE asks:
What about subjective facts that can't be objectified?
An interesting, and deceptively simple looking question. It can be
answered in many, many, many ways from different frames of reference and
perspectives. About 50 years ago I wrote a complete chapter on the
subjective - objective relationship which might fill in some of the gaps
of any brief explanation I can present here. That work is available on
my website.
In a general frame of reference, all knowledge can be seen to be both
subjective and objective, not one or the other. It is relatively easy to
establish the proposition that: 'all knowledge is subjective', as is
done from idealistic and solipsistic perspectives. Likewise the
proposition that: 'all knowledge is objective', is championed by
materialistic and epiphenominal perspectives.
It is a little more difficult to establish the proposition that: 'all
knowledge is both subjective and objective' because it requires the
recognition that the existence of thoughts are just as real as the
existence of objects: i.e., both the thought of an object and the object
itself both exist. Of course, that requires the acceptance of a
dualistic view, which many philosophers have tried to reject in favor of
a 'monism' of their choice. It seems that contemporary philosophers tend
to treat 'dualism' as a dirty word, somewhat like 'solipsism' is
treated.
In my view, the union of the two 'complete' monisms in terms of a
reciprocal relationship between them presents more than a dualism: it
presents a triunism, or trinity, - with the relationship as the third
'complete' monism. The monism of 'relationship' has been receiving some
contemporary focus in the form of 'process' and 'emergent' philosophies.
Any one of the three monisms, or any combination of two of them as
dualisms, can provide as 'complete' a description, or explanation, of
anything as any of the others from different perspectives since they are
'mirror images' of each: i.e., a one to one correspondence or 'mapping'
can be made (at least theoretically). The problem with adopting any
monism, or dualism, that tries to exclude one or two of the other
monisms is that it becomes the source of much unnecessary argumentation.
Given this context, I can answer your question in many ways from
different perspectives. Some of those answers may appear to be
contradictory if the shift in perspective is not taken into account. It
all depends the frame of reference (context) and the perspective (point
of view) from which it is viewed.
For example:
To answer your question from the subject's 'subjective' perspective, the
facts have already been justified, or 'objectified' to the extent that
that subject's perspective of what is 'objective' will permit, else they
would not be considered facts.
If the 'facts' held by that subject are 'scientific', another external
observer may agree. If, however, they are 'mystical', the external
observer may consider them to be only 'subjective' with no 'objective'
content at all.
Excerpt:
The mirror analogy has been mentioned. Its elaboration should be very
useful since it is almost a perfect analogy. The mirror can form an
image, or rather, an image can be formed in the mirror, or even better,
we can observe the formation of an image in a mirror, if, and only if,
there is something external to -- outside of -- the mirror which it can
reflect.
This observation emphasizes the necessity for the simultaneous existence
of the external and internal, the real object and the (real) image of
the object. It is true that our inside world may contain an
"imaginitive" thought that has no immediate correspondence with anything
in the external, real world, at the time it is being conceived.
First of all, let's simply give our mirror a "memory" by photographing
images that are formed. Now it is not necessary for the object to
co-exist with the image. To form an image of the object one simply has
to form an image of the photograph. It should be noticed that the
photographic, or "memorized", image could never have been formed if
there was not at some point in time the simultaneous occurence of
something external to the mirror at the same time that the image was
formed in the mirror. It should also be clear that the formation of an
image of the photographed, or "memorized", image could not occur unless
the photograph, or the "memory's representation", co-existed with the
formation of the image.
Now, if we could imagine a mirror that could form an image and
"photograph" that image by making some representation of that image
within its own substance, i.e., by retaining the image after the object
was removed, or by storing the representation of the image so that it
(the representation) could be utilized at a later time to "conjure up",
or "recall" the image -- we would have a complete analogy.<a
href="http://www.geocities.com/trisector/Notes2b.html#N9:"><sup>N9</sup><a>
At this point it is necessary to deal with a primarily semantic problem
to show the relationship of what we usually call "real" and what we
usually consider to be "imaginary" is the same as the relationship
between what we usually consider subjective and objective. The "real"
world is usually considered to be the "objective", "outside" world; the
"imaginary" world is the "subjective", "inside" world. But the term
"imaginary" carries with it a connotation that we shall have to separate
from the term.
Because it is "imaginary" does not mean that it is not "real". This
should be clear from the previous discussions, or the realization that
"thoughts", the "subjective", and "inside" world really exist -- as
really as the objective world. It might be better to talk about the
"image" world rather than the "imaginary" world, since the term
"imaginary" gives the impression that the image formed is not real.
This is the connotation that must be removed. To say that something is
"imaginary" is to say that the (real) images formed do not necessarily
correspond to the (real) objects that they supposedly represent, or that
the image of the object is not necessarily a good representation, or an
undistorted image.
SleepyHeed
Interesting. I didn't think he was saying anything like that! But, if
he is, that is a weird thing to say ...
> This is a difficult topic to deal with without getting tongue tied and
> twisted. The problem I have with your interpretation is that it presents
> an implied double negation: if 'imaginary' already contains the negation
> of existence, then 'non- imaginary existents' is equivalent to
> 'non-(non-existent) existents.
Perhaps, although one could just say that 'non-imaginary existents' be
substitutable by 'existents'.
I guess what we've run into here are the varied uses of the word
'real'.
When I say imaginary objects aren't real I simply mean: They're not
physical. That doesn't mean one can't create a representation of the
imaginary object - there are pictures of Santa Claus, for instance -
but what with imaginary things belonging to the realm of the
imagination, and what with that being mental, and what with the mental
not being physical (well, not at the conceptual level anyway), it
stands to reason that imaginary things / objects / existents aren't
physical either.
One might say that imaginary things have a conceptual paradigm on which
they're modelled (usually a handful of features - e.g. "Down the
chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound, He was dressed all in fur, from
his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and
soot"), but they have no physical model.
Even this isn't quite correct though: There's nothing to stop someone
taking a picture of Santa Claus as the paradigm from which they derive
their imaginary Santa Claus.
So what /do/ we mean when we say Santa Claus isn't real? We
(presumeably) know what we mean by the sentence, but we've managed to
peel the artichoke quite successfully now and are in a muddle.
Cormagh
> for anyone to be unmarried they must first exist
This would clearly not be true in a world without marriage, or in a
world where marriage was a universal condition. So the property of
existence must be carefully reasoned, and not taken for granted. To say
it is not a property is mere foolery: When we say these things exist,
it is because we Wish them to exist, and thus saying they exist
satisfies some need for justification or coherence.
> Listing existence as a further essential property of a perfect being is
> making the mistake of treating existence as a property rather than as
> the precondition of anything having any properties at all.
This implies that the existence of properties for an object certifies
existence as a precondition, as if imaginary objects didn't "exist".
> The answer is that
> what a sentence like 'Unicorns have one horn' really means is 'If
> unicorns were to exist, they would have one horn'. In other words,
> 'Unicorns have one horn' is really a hypothetical statement. So the
> non-existence of unicorns is not a problem for the view that existence
> is not a property.
Here the word hypothetical stands in for, "not a property we want to
associate with an existent being". We made existence a precondition,
yet we can have bachelors, gods, and unicorns who don't need it.
Is this whole book made up of similarly weak and circular arguments?
Anthony G. Rubino
SleepyHeed asks:
>
>So what /do/ we mean when we say
>Santa Claus isn't real? We
>(presumeably) know what we mean by
>the sentence, but we've managed to peel
>the artichoke quite successfully now and
>are in a muddle.
>
most generally understood (implicitly) as a denial of some entity's
ability to have any 'real' effects on us or on 'reality': i.e., it is a
(most) essential meaning of the various meanings attached to the
concept, the meaning wthout which the concept would be rendered
meaningless.
The criteria of a causal relationship as a measure of 'reality' is
consistent with any perspective of Reality.
From a psychological perspective, or from the perspective of any
individual, that is the determining criteria for the attribution of
'real'. An 800 pound gorilla in the room could have no effect on me if
there is no 800 pound gorilla in the room unless I believed that there
was. My belief is sufficient to produce an effect on me even if no else
could be effected by that gorilla except indirectly by some action I
might take as a result of my belief. Thus, it can be real to me, but
unreal to others.
Any denial of existence, or 'realness' of any entity, is equivalent to a
belief that that entity cannot have any effect (on 'me'). Regardless of
whether or not an entity is considered 'physical', or 'non-physical',
(or any other attribution), it has, at the very least, the effect of
holding my attention as long as I am considering it. If I exist, I
cannot deny the existence of anything that effects me, without accepting
the proposition that non-existents can effect existents.
Thus, all arguments about existence, or non-existence, are flawed and
futile. The real question is: Can its existence effect anyone, or
anything? , A more productive approach would be to consider any claim
of existence in terms of the nature of that existent and its potential
effects.
jkrau...@yahoo.com
To cut the gordian knot here a bit, I'm going to say, no, existence is
not a property of something, and I'm going to argue this on linguistic,
rather than philosophical lines. The verb "to be", which appears to be
a a virtual universal linguistically, is, effectively, a grammatical
means of assigning properties to objects, not a property itself. The
sentence "I am existing" is a tautology. The sentence "I am" is not a
complete sentence, because no specific properties have been assigned to
me. I exist in terms of the properties I possess e.g., height, weight,
abilities, personality, profession etc., etc. I cannot exist without
such properties, ergo, existence alone is not a property.
Jerry Kraus
jkrau...@yahoo.com
Cormagh
> a a virtual universal linguistically, is, effectively, a grammatical
> means of assigning properties to objects, not a property itself.
I respectfully disagree. "to be" is a way of "showing the nature of",
"indicating", it even contains a linguistic root, "be", which means
"exist".
> The sentence "I am existing" is a tautology.
For sure, but also, no one would say that. They would say "I exist", or
"I am".
> The sentence "I am" is not a
> complete sentence, because no specific properties have been assigned to
> me.
This is only because of the limited and misleading definition you
already gave before in which you excluded the ability of "to be" to
signify and it's meaning as Being, or existence. If you look this word
up in a good dictionary you will see that the lexicographers agree with
me.
> I exist in terms of the properties I possess e.g., height, weight,
> abilities, personality, profession etc., etc. I cannot exist without
> such properties, ergo, existence alone is not a property.
This is a form of atomism: That existence is only defined by each and
every part of something which is not-it. By the way, you didn't
logically prove that existence alone is not a property. Here is what
you stated in symbols where "E" means my existence, "=" means "is a
property of": E = A, B, C and E not = not A, etc. therefore E not = E!
The only thing worse than a tautology is a contradiction. Rather than
live in such a slice-and-dice world (Aristotle), I would recommend
allowing Existence to breath as a full attribute of every thing or
object, and yes, without mincing words.
Frederick Williams
> what a sentence like 'Unicorns have one horn' really means is 'If
> unicorns were to exist, they would have one horn'.
I find it far easier to understand 'Unicorns have one horn' than 'If
unicorns were to exist, they would have one horn'.
--
Remove "antispam" and ".invalid" for e-mail address.
jkrau...@yahoo.com
Again, I wish to emphasize, this is a linguistic argument, not an
argument from formal logic, or even from conventional lexicography.
The purpose of the verb "to be", grammatically, in all languages, is
primarily to assign properties to objects. This is simply a fact. It
can, and has, been assigned other meanings such as the "property of
existence" which you refer to. But is this assignation truly
meaningful, or is it a misleading artifact, a philosophical dead end as
it were? What, exactly is its real world significance, if any? Is it
simply a logical/linguistic abstraction, with no real, practical
application?
Jerry Kraus
Paul Holbach
> To cut the gordian knot here a bit, I'm going to say, no, existence is
> not a property of something, and I'm going to argue this on linguistic,
> rather than philosophical lines. The verb "to be", which appears to be
> a a virtual universal linguistically, is, effectively, a grammatical
> means of assigning properties to objects, not a property itself. The
> sentence "I am existing" is a tautology. The sentence "I am" is not a
> complete sentence, because no specific properties have been assigned to
> me. I exist in terms of the properties I possess e.g., height, weight,
> abilities, personality, profession etc., etc. I cannot exist without
> such properties, ergo, existence alone is not a property.
"I am" may appear elliptic, because the question "You are what?" seems
to follow intuitively.
But at least "I exist" does not have the same appearance of
incompleteness.
Whether "bare existence" (i.e. the existence of something that has no
property other than existence (and self-identity)) is possible is
debatable, because there is no prima facie contradiction in affirming
this possibility.
As far as I'm concerned, I do consider bare existence a metaphysical
impossibility.
So, I acknowledge the following as a metaphysical axiom:
For all x there is a property X such that x is X and X is identical
neither to the property of existence nor to the property of
self-identity.
#PH
Cormagh
> Again, I wish to emphasize, this is a linguistic argument, not an
> argument from formal logic, or even from conventional
> lexicography.
Just as there is no argument which only consists of formal logic, there
is no such thing as a purely linguistic arument for which one has no
need of formal logic It is through the use of logic that one can best
discover fallacies and discontinuities.
> The purpose of the verb "to be", grammatically, in all languages, > is primarily to assign properties to objects. This is simply a
> fact.
You're wrong about this too. In Latin languages, and even in German,
the word to signify a property is different from the word that
signifies being.
> It can, and has, been assigned other meanings such as
> the "property of existence" which you refer to. But is this
> assignation truly meaningful, or is it a misleading artifact, a
> philosophical dead end as it were?
This is only true in English, where the same word does double-duty. No,
as I said before, this meaning is most likely not an artifact at all,
but the root of the word. the purpose of describing being as existence
is to signify the purpose and/or state of existence itself, which of
course what your argument wants to disenfranchise.
> What, exactly is its real world significance, if any? Is it
> simply a logical/linguistic abstraction, with no real, practical
> application?
You'll see a lot of examples of this usage in the Oxford English
Dictionionary. There are other ways of looking at it, but in the real
world, Being strives towards making itself useful. No mere definition,
or "comprehensive" listing of attributes could do this.
Paul Holbach
> > J. Kraus wrote:
> > The purpose of the verb "to be", grammatically, in all languages,
> > is primarily to assign properties to objects. This is simply a fact.
> You're wrong about this too. In Latin languages, and even in German,
> the word to signify a property is different from the word that
> signifies being.
There are existential and copulative meanings of "is":
Existential:
(1) "x is" (<=> "x exists")
(2) "There is a X" (<=> "Xs exist")
Copulative:
(3) "x is X" (<=> "x has the property of being X" or "x is a member of
the set of Xs")
(4) "A X is a Y" (<=> "The set of Xs is included in the set of Ys")
(5) "x is x" (<=> "x is identical to x")
#PH
jkrau...@yahoo.com
Let's consider French and German, for starters, these being the closest
to english, and most familiar to english speakers. The distinctions
between the copulative and "existential" functions are unclear, in all
three. The verbs "to be", in english, "etre", in French, and "sein",
in German, effectively serve the same copulative function of assigning
properties to objects. We also have the "existential" words "exist",
in english, "bestehe" in German and "existe" in French.
But when Descartes argues "I think therefore I am" he writes "je pense,
donc je suis", using the first person singular of the verb "etre", the
copulative verb. In english, this sentence could be translated either
as "I think, therefore I am", the most common and literal translation,
or "I think, therefore I exist", using the "existential" word. In
German, the translation of Descartes is "ich denke, also bin ich"
again, using the copulative verb.
Obviously, the copulative and existential functions are closely
related, linguistically. Obviously, the copulative function is
meaningful and useful, we must be able to assign properties to objects.
But, is the existential one?
I would argue that the concept of "existence" is meaningless. It is
attempting to turn a grammatical device, the copulative verb, into a
real world object. Perhaps, ultimately, it is derived from the Torah,
the old Testamest in Hebrew, in which "God" is represented by the first
person singular of the verb "to be". Thus, the concept of existence is
tied closely to the existence of God. But, I would be inclined to
translate the "I am" of Jehovah by "I am the undefinable". Thus, the
Torah is deliberately playing a linguistic trick, turning the
copulative verb on its head. The intention is not to present
"existence" as an actual thing, but to define something that cannot, in
fact, be defined.
Jerry Kraus
jkrau...@yahoo.com
rememberallthis
Immortalist wrote:
> for anyone to be unmarried they must first exist
In your confinement of thought and experience, yes. Outside those
contraints, no.
You may not know that there exist certain traditions when young people
would die before they got married, their parents would consider them
unmarried, and hence marry them off after they are dead.
So I think we have to consider the possibility of exceptions to what we
thought as rule, exceptions to what we normally consider as definitions
to words, based on our own experience.
And perhaps 'God' is such an exception. And perhaps the 'existence' of
God is such exception. Or maybe not. But I think we have to recognize
the existence of such possibility.
Charlie-Boo
Immortalist wrote:
> A bachelor can be defined as an unmarried man. Being unmarried is the
> essential defining property of a bachelor. Now, if I were to say
> 'bachelors exist', I would not be giving a further property of
> bachelors. Existence is not the same sort of thing as the property of
> being unmarried: for anyone to be unmarried they must first exist,
> though the concept of a bachelor remains the same whether or not any
> bachelors do happen to exist.
>
> If we apply the same thinking to the Ontological Argument, we see that
> the mistake it makes is to treat the existence of God as if it were
> simply another property, like omniscience, or omnipotence. But God
> could not be omniscient or omnipotent without existing, so by giving a
> definition of God at all we are already assuming that he or she exists.
> Listing existence as a further essential property of a perfect being is
> making the mistake of treating existence as a property rather than as
> the precondition of anything having any properties at all.
>
> about the properties of a unicorn, such as having one horn and four
> legs, without unicorns actually having to exist. The answer is that
> what a sentence like 'Unicorns have one horn' really means is 'If
> 'Unicorns have one horn' is really a hypothetical statement. So the
> non-existence of unicorns is not a problem for the view that existence
> is not a property.
A property is a set. Existing is a property of properties. To say
that a property exists is really to say that it is not equal to the
empty set. TRUE is the property that is the universal set.
(all x)P(x) means P = TRUE
(exists x)P(x) means P /= ~TRUE
When we treat the quantifiers as functions of sets, then it is easier
to carry out proofs e.g. applying Rice's Theorem to particular sets
of Turing Machines.
This is how it is formalized in CBL.
C-B
> Philosophy - The Basics
> by N. WARBURTON
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415146941/
Charlie-Boo
Descartes was informal, but in the CBL formalization of Computer
Science, axiom 1 is "I exist." and axiom 2 is "I am equal to myself."
>From this we can directly formally derive theorems of Recursion Theory
e.g. there is a program that outputs itself, which leads to other
theorems e.g. the Fixed Point Theorem and the Recursaion Theorem.
C-B
BuddhaThu
I would like generally to add to this, (if I may) . . . and with some
humor. It makes the grammar more fun. :-) People who know me here know
that I am like that. It is easy for the children to absorb. Here are
some of my teaching notes for the kiddies. ;-)
In grammar, there is a potential to confuse 'dangling present' or
'past participles' with 'gerunds.'
Participles such as verbs, 'extending' or 'extended' are used
as adjectives, i.e. 'extended' or 'extending members' are not
gerunds. ***They cannot be 'alone.'*** You will have lonely
'dangling participles.' ;-) They like to have significant others to
be ***'extend-ed.' ***(Note: the proper emphasis.) ;-)
However, gerunds that are noun/verb composites, i.e. ***'the
coming'*** can be alone, or with a significant other. It is whatever
you wish. They are concepts irreducible onto themselves, and are best
left to decide how this ***'coming'*** ought to be experienced. In
other words, irreducible or with stringed together clauses, that is.
Their 'participles' are never left 'dangling.'
In linguistics, 'members' are clauses. In mathematics,
'members' are elements. In logic, 'members' are propositions of
a syllogism. In human sexuality, well... you know. We are all adults
here. ;-)
Existence is never by predication. You will have 'dangling
participles.' Descriptive words denoting participles are
possibilities for existence with nowhere to describe.
For instance, the copula 'John is impotent, 'where 'impotent'
is a descriptive possibility for 'John.' Possibilities are not
actualities. They can only exist as proper names, nouns or pronouns.
Therefore, the physical 'John' is the final actuality, not his
possible existence of his 'manhood.' There could be a possibility
that John might be born a woman, or have a choice possibility of
undergoing a sex change. ;-)
Thus, we say, ***'His manhood is satisfied by John,'***and not,
***'John is satisfied by his manhood.'*** ;-)
Here, the possessive personal pronoun, **'his'** means the manhood
that belongs to and is satisfied by John, and not **'his'** in
terms of another, maybe, **'Joe.'** ;-)
Within grammar, there is confusion between categorical properties and
probabilistic or dispositional properties.
For example, in Cartesian metaphysics, there is a classification
between 'extended matter' and 'un-extended mind.' With this, we
ask the question, 'is there a time in the past to which matter is
never extended?'
Matter is always self-equated with extension. If matter is
'extend-able' (dispositional), it is because it is already
'exten-sion,' (categorical.) There is no time in the past to which
matter is never 'extension.'
Some of my colleagues have not quite got the gist of this grammar style
of critiquing.
Take 'extended members.' Is there a time in the past where
'members' are not 'extended'? I told them 'yes,' when the
'members' are not 'excited' or 'functional.' In this case,
there has to be sometime in the past when they are not. Otherwise, it
will be embarrassing. ;-)
However, this may not be true if you link 'members' up to elements
of a mathematical set. Then 'members' even though alone will always
be extension of the set. The description is categorical, or
self-equated to the definition of 'members.' An empty set with an
additional member is now an 'extension of the set.'
Again, existence is the noun/verb composites called gerunds. We might
even call them 'events' or 'actual occasions.'
Process metaphysics made a mistake. They emphasize becoming over being.
It is the centerpiece of their process metaphysics. This is wrong. They
are trying to counteract Aristotle's 'Being' over 'Becoming.'
However, 'Becoming' denotes only possibilities. It is existence by
possibility or predication, which is an oxymoron. It is a bad
grammatical mistake. Actuality and possibility are both mutually
exclusive terms. Existence is always actuality, and an actual act.
Therefore, the copulative verb 'to become' is not self-equated in
usage to the copulative verb 'to be.'
An 'actual occasion' or 'event' is an actual act, i.e. 'the
running,' 'the walking,' 'the love making,' 'the coming'
and of course, 'the being.' An actual occasion is not a
'becoming.' It is the 'actual event' of the 'the coming.'
That is when things get exciting.
***Therefore, existence is a gerund. ***
It is not a pure noun, i.e. 'being.' It is not a possibility, i.e.
'becoming.' It is a gerund, i.e. 'being.'
Quantum physics is different from the physics of our ordinary world.
Ordinary world objects that spins or waves will have something
underneath 'to spin' or 'wave.' Hence, when two people are
making love and experiencing 'the coming,' we must look for
something underneath that is doing the spinning or waving. ;-)
Quantum physics will not have this. They will have something call
'intrinsic spin' or 'intrinsic wave.' There is nothing
underneath that is doing the spinning or waving. The 'spinning' and
'waving' are gerunds. They are actual events. They must be actual
events that are extensions. Otherwise, they cannot be events. You
cannot have an event at time zero. It is like an empty set with nothing
in it. The members within a set of time will always require extension.
Remember, 'nothing' is not an object to the verb. It is an adverb
to the verb. 'Nothing' alone is a possibility without existence. It
is a 'dangling participle,' as a result of something else that
still left 'dangling.'
Therefore, when you 'experience nothing' in sex, there is a lack of
experiencing that special something. It is a description of the actual
occasion of not experiencing something that is most sought after.
Therefore, you must confront each other, or see a sex therapist,
whichever comes first.
Cormagh
> I would argue that the concept of "existence" is meaningless. It is
> attempting to turn a grammatical device, the copulative verb, into a
> real world object.
This argument is mere sophism. If a verb has two uses and different
meanings, and someone is motivated to first refute one of the meanings,
and then to confound the two, even a child can see through the ruse.
> The intention is not to present
> "existence" as an actual thing, but to define something that cannot, in
> fact, be defined.
The argument began with existence being defined as a property, not a
thing in itself. Existence is a concept we use to assign reality to
things. Whenever someone refers to something as "existent", they are
making a claim that it is present. Far from being meaningless, the term
helps in writing and speech to separate verifiable appearances, from
the unsubstantial. The fact that there are varying qualities in the
"realness" of those things for which existence is claimed does not
render the term any less meaningful.
john...@cybrzn.com
john...@cybrzn.com
Bob
>The argument began with existence being defined as a property, not a
>thing in itself.
Existence is neither a thing nor a concept. Existence is an Act.
It is the act of assertion. Of the many possibilities that can be
objectively real, one asserts itself and becomes real. We say that
entity exists in the real objective world.
If you study quantum field theory you will get a better idea of how
this works. A particle exists as the result of fluctuations of the
zero point energy of the quantum vacuum. Governed by creation and
destruction operators derived from the wave equation, these
fluctuations combine to assert themselves as particles.
Existence is this act of assertion. Even the equations of quantum
field theory use the term "action" to derive the operators.
--
"First and last, it's a question of money. Those men who own the
earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort
of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the
fellow on the outside cannot get in. The laws are really organized
for the protection of the men who rule the world. They were never
organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for doing
justice, not the slightest in the world."
--Clarence Darrow
Paul Holbach
> Existence is neither a thing nor a concept. Existence is an Act.
Could you do some existing for me?
#PH
Bob
<paulholbachD...@freenet.de> wrote:
>> Existence is neither a thing nor a concept. Existence is an Act.
>Could you do some existing for me?
I am right now.
Paul Holbach
> > "Paul Holbach" <paulholbachD...@freenet.de> wrote:
> > > Bob wrote:
> > > Existence is neither a thing nor a concept. Existence is an Act.
> >Could you do some existing for me?
> I am right now.
Existing is more like sitting rather than like walking.
#PH
Bob
<paulholbachD...@freenet.de> wrote:
>> >Could you do some existing for me?
>> I am right now.
>Existing is more like sitting rather than like walking.
Existing is the act of asserting an entity's existence. Without the
act of assertion, nothing would exist.
What is being asserted? Esse - the Principle of Being.
In quantum field theory, particles come into existence under the
assertion of creation operators which combine fluctuations of zero
point energy of the quantum field in the quantum vacuum.
For example, when two photons of the right energy, momentum and other
good stuff come together, an electron is formed along with some other
good stuff. Electrons are made out of photons. When an electron and
its antiparticle (positron) come together, they destroy one another
and the two photons are returned to the vacuum from which they came.
All particles in the Universe come from the assertion of vacuum
fluctuations - that assertion in the form of combining.
yvan....@skynet.be
If existence is a property of something,
let's define the thing having all properties, name it X.
Then, X exists, obviously by definition. But you can also deduce that
X does not exist either. Conclusion : inconsistency.
Just to remind that only real things "exist" in the physical sense of
the word. Fiction does not exist but can be very useful.
Question : do mathematics exist or are they non existant fiction ?
(sometimes very useful though)
Yvan
Immortalist a écrit :
> A bachelor can be defined as an unmarried man. Being unmarried is the
> essential defining property of a bachelor. Now, if I were to say
> 'bachelors exist', I would not be giving a further property of
> bachelors. Existence is not the same sort of thing as the property of
> being unmarried: for anyone to be unmarried they must first exist,
> though the concept of a bachelor remains the same whether or not any
> bachelors do happen to exist.
>
> If we apply the same thinking to the Ontological Argument, we see that
> the mistake it makes is to treat the existence of God as if it were
> simply another property, like omniscience, or omnipotence. But God
> could not be omniscient or omnipotent without existing, so by giving a
> definition of God at all we are already assuming that he or she exists.
> Listing existence as a further essential property of a perfect being is
> making the mistake of treating existence as a property rather than as
> the precondition of anything having any properties at all.
>
> But what about fictional beings, such as unicorns? Surely we can talk
> about the properties of a unicorn, such as having one horn and four
> legs, without unicorns actually having to exist. The answer is that
> what a sentence like 'Unicorns have one horn' really means is 'If
> unicorns were to exist, they would have one horn'. In other words,
> 'Unicorns have one horn' is really a hypothetical statement. So the
> non-existence of unicorns is not a problem for the view that existence
> is not a property.
>
Dianelos Georgoudis
Immortalist wrote:
> A bachelor can be defined as an unmarried man. Being unmarried is the
> essential defining property of a bachelor. Now, if I were to say
> 'bachelors exist', I would not be giving a further property of
> bachelors. Existence is not the same sort of thing as the property of
> being unmarried: for anyone to be unmarried they must first exist,
> though the concept of a bachelor remains the same whether or not any
> bachelors do happen to exist.
>
> If we apply the same thinking to the Ontological Argument, we see that
> the mistake it makes is to treat the existence of God as if it were
> simply another property, like omniscience, or omnipotence. But God
> could not be omniscient or omnipotent without existing, so by giving a
> definition of God at all we are already assuming that he or she exists.
> Listing existence as a further essential property of a perfect being is
> making the mistake of treating existence as a property rather than as
> the precondition of anything having any properties at all.
>
> But what about fictional beings, such as unicorns? Surely we can talk
> about the properties of a unicorn, such as having one horn and four
> legs, without unicorns actually having to exist. The answer is that
> what a sentence like 'Unicorns have one horn' really means is 'If
> unicorns were to exist, they would have one horn'. In other words,
> 'Unicorns have one horn' is really a hypothetical statement. So the
> non-existence of unicorns is not a problem for the view that existence
> is not a property.
Ah, but the proposition "If unicorns exist then unicorns have two
horns" is true also, because "unicorns exist" is false, and according
to boolean logic a falsity may imply anything.
Actually I think an excellent way to discuss questions is to put them
in propositional form. Now a proposition is a symbolic representation
of a relation between symbols. A proposition itself as well as its
truth value have no meaning unless the one who claims the proposition
implicitly or explicitly describes at least one way to project that
proposition into some experiential situation (i.e. a situation that can
actually happen in our field of conscious experience) in which the
proposition makes some kind of prediction, which can be tested as for
its truth value. This should be obvious. After all imagine a
proposition that cannot be projected into an experiential situation.
Then whether that proposition is true or false can have absolutely no
effect on our conscious experience (because if it had this could be
used to project it into some experiential situation). But if the truth
value of a proposition cannot have absolutely no effect whatsoever for
us then by definition it is meaningless for us.
Now let's see some example of meaningful propositions. The
proposition "2+2=4" means that "If you take two countable things (e.g.
beans) and put them together to two other things and count the result
you will get up to four". In fact it can be shown that all mathematical
propositions (no matter how abstract the math) can be projected into an
experiential situation. The proposition "ripe strawberries are red"
means that "if you ask a normal child for the color of strawberries
you'll get mostly 'red' as the answer" or "If you shoot a digital photo
of ripe strawberries and check for the RGB value of the pixels that
make them up in the photo you'll find out that for most of them the R
value will be much higher than the G or B value". The proposition
"light travels at 300,000 kilometers per second" means that if you are
designing a robot explorer on Mars it's not a good idea to leave its
electronic brain back on earth and use an radio link to control the
robot's movements, because by the time the robot gets the answer about
how it should react to a situation it may be too late. And so on.
So in order to meaningfully think about propositions one must find at
least one way of projecting them into experiential situations. Of
course, when two people discuss about a proposition they may not agree
about whether a particular projection is warranted according to the way
that we should use language. For example, one might object that to
project "ripe strawberries are red" into "questioning children
about the color of ripe strawberries" is not warranted because this
only tests what children believe about ripe strawberries' color, and
that, say, a better projection would be to actually show children some
ripe strawberries before asking them. In any case a proposition can be
only meaningfully discussed by two people if they both agree about what
it means, which implies that they both agree about how it is to be
projected into a experiential situation. Curiously enough there are
propositions where nobody knows of how to project them in a
experiential situation, and which nevertheless most people strongly
believe are both meaningful and true. One such proposition is
"Physical reality causes the phenomena we experience".
So, let's go back to the proposition "Existence is a property". What
is the experiential situation where that proposition makes a prediction
we can test? Let's try to find out. First of all what is a "property"?
It's a concept used in relation to propositions. It turns out that many
(if not all) propositions can be rewritten in the form "A belongs to
the set B" or "A has the property defined by the set B". For example
"ripe strawberries are red" can be rewritten as "ripe strawberries
belong to the set of red things" or "ripe strawberries have the 'red'
property". The advantage of thus rewriting propositions is that if one
describes how the red property is to be tested in an experiential
situation (such as testing for the RGB values) that allows one to check
for that property, then one is implicitly describing the meaning of all
propositions of the form "X is red". So all propositions of the form "P
is a property" mean that all propositions of the form "X has the P
property" are meaningful as long as X is compatible to P's test in an
experiential situation.
So the proposition "Existence is a property" means that all
propositions of the form "X exists" are meaningful as long as X is
compatible to how one is to test for X's existence in an experiential
situation. Now, we don't have to define what that experiential
situation should be, but only to point out that all people who use the
concept of "existence" imply such an experiential situation where
existence can be checked using the methodology they have in mind (e.g.
ask a scientist whether X exists; if the scientist says it exists then
it does). So "Existence is a property" is always true. Of course if
two people disagree about how the "existence" property should be
checked in an experiential situation they will not agree about the
truth value of some propositions of the form "X exists", but this
is irrelevant to the argument that "Existence is a property".
I think it was Kant who, when discussing the ontological argument,
suggested that existence is not a property as any other property,
because all other properties only make sense if one assumes that a
thing exists. But that's false as your example of unicorns shows.
Another example would be the proposition "Santa Klaus is fat". Now
Santa Klaus does not have the existence property because the
proposition "Santa Klaus exists" is false according to the test of
existence that all grownups would use, but certainly Santa Klaus has
the fatness property, because the proposition "Santa Klaus is fat"
can be projected into experiential situations where a successful
prediction will be made, for example that when watching a TV spot with
Santa Klaus in it the actor who plays Santa Klaus will probably be a
fat person. Now, somebody may disagree with this particular projection
claiming that the proposition "Santa Klaus is fat" implies that
Santa Klaus exists and also is fat, but this is not, strictly speaking,
what the proposition says. In any case if that disagreement turned up
in a discussion people could easily enough agree on two propositions
and how they can projected into experiential situations, namely:
"Santa Klaus has the fatness and the existence properties" and
"Santa Klaus has the fatness but not the existence properties".
(Observe that all properties of a concept are properties of the concept
only - it is true that the way we project properties into
experiential situations often implies that we consider that property to
belong to an actual physical thing, but this is not relevant -
strictly speaking concepts such as "truth" or "property" are
defined in relation to propositions and one should be weary when people
use them outside the field for which they are defined. For example the
concept of the largest odd number does not have the "existence"
property but it certainly has the "odd number" property).
As for the ontological argument, on the one hand it's obviously a bad
argument because it has no convincing power at all, but on the other
hand it's not so easy to pin down what the error in it is. I recently
read an article by Alvin Plantinga about it. My take on the ontological
argument is simpler than his. The ontological argument is basically
this:
1. A concept A can be judged to be greater or lesser than a concept B
depending on the properties they have.
2. Of all possible concepts there is a concept Z that is the greatest
of all. We call that concept "God".
3. If a concept A has the "existence" property and the concept B
has all its properties except the "existence" property then A is
greater than B.
4. Therefore "God" has the existence property, in other words
"God" defined as the greatest possible concept exists because of
logical necessity.
Now to understand what this argument says let's project each one of
its propositions into an existential situation.
#1 is a little difficult because St. Anselm does not define what
"greatness" is, so let's project this property into an
existential situation by defining a democratic process. We bring all
grownup people together, explain to them all the properties of two
concepts and how these properties are projected into existential
situations and ask them to judge which is greater - and accept the
majority view as the definition of the "greater than" property.
#2 is rather clear. It says that after having voted for all possible
concepts people would end identifying which is the greatest concept of
all, which we proceed to call "God".
#3 is actually tricky, because almost certainly people would judge the
concept of hell without the "existence" property as greater than
the concept of hell with the "existence" property. So we must find
a better version for that statement. Let's try:
3B. The greatest concept must have the "existence property".
Why? Well, here is the proof of 3B:
3B1. Let us assume that the greatest concept is Y but does not have the
existence property.
3B2. Then a concept Z that has all the properties of Y and also the
"existence" property would be greater still.
3B3. Therefore the greatest concept must have the "existence"
property.
Now it's clear that 3B does not speak about all concepts (because we
have seen that the "existence" property does not always add to a
concept's greatness) but only about a necessary property of the
greatest concept. What bothers me in 3B's proof is the proposition
3B2. Its meaning is clear because it can easily be projected into a
existential voting situation, but how do we know how people will vote,
in other words how do we know 3B2 is true? They may conceivable vote
against existence. Still, I could not construct a credible
counterexample. (I can construct credible counterexamples to the way
many religious people define their God's properties, but this is not
the issue here). So unless somebody can suggest a good counterexample
for 3B2 we must accept 3B as true.
#4 is the logical conclusion of the argument. So indeed we have a valid
argument that the greatest conceivable concept must have the
"existence" property, in other words that "God, defined as the
greatest conceivable concept, has the existence property, i.e. refers
to something that belongs to the set of existents" is a true
proposition. Sounds impressive until one recalls what it actually means
when projected into an experiential situation: it says that if people
in general were to choose they would certainly choose for the existence
of what is referred by the greatest possible concept. Which does not
imply that it actually exists and that the other properties it has and
the predictions they imply (say that all people will enjoy an eternity
of bliss after death - certainly a much greater concept than the one
given by most Christians) will actually come to pass. So, what the
ontological argument basically says is that people would wish for the
greatest possible concept to have the "existence" property. Which comes
to no surprise.
Still I find St. Anselm's ontological argument to be extremely
important, not because it has any power of convincing atheists about
whether God has the "existence" property, but because it has much
power of convincing theists (and atheists) about all other of God's
properties. So if God is defined as the greatest possible concept then,
for example, hell does not exist. Actually nor does any punishment in
the hands of God: God does not have the "punishing" property,
because a concept of God without that property is greater than a
concept of God with it. As for the famous "problem of evil" it
implies that whatever suffering we experience cannot be God's
punishment but must be logically necessary for a greater good that God
wishes us to have. So St. Anselm wonderlfully clarifies what he means
by "God exists": he means that the greatest possible reality is the one
in which we actually exist.