Being, reality, existence and truth II

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Being, reality, existence and truth

I’ve often thought about the various degrees or planes upon which “being” can be expressed, if there is a subtle difference between them. Stefan, suggests there are four, some of which may be synonymous, these four are:

“x is” (to be)
“x exists”
“x is real”
“x is true”

Does anyone see these as synonymous, or are there differentiations between them? Plato defines Being, in the Sophist as anything which has effect or can be effected, a condition he equates with power:

I suggest that everything which possesses any power of any kind, either to produce a change in anything of any nature or to be affected even in the least degree by the slightest cause, though it be only on one occasion, has real existence [ontos enai]. For I set up as a definition which defines being, that it is nothing else but power. (247d,e)

Since it seems like there are slight difference hinted at in each of these four kinds of “Being”, and it appears as if Plato might be lumping slight difference of being, the four differences I tentatively intuit are:

“x is” (to be), “to on”, has an effect
“x exists”, “ousia”, is effected
“x is real”, “kalos”, participates
“x is true”, “aletheia”, is shown in connection

Any opinions on this would be appreciated.

Dunamis

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Dunamis

Though I am not entirely sure what you are getting at. If you are interested in the question of ‘being’, the only suggestion I can think of is to read Being and Time. Also, I do not think language is supposed to be analysed so deeply, as long as what you wish to convey is conveyed that should be it. Just as an aside, the word ‘exist’ means awareness, you say something exist because you are aware of it either directly or in your mind.

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PoR,

Are to you these four statements saying the same exact thing:

“x is” (to be)
“x exists”
“x is real”
“x is true”

Dunamis

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Well, it’s greek to me…and I took basic greek!

Is “kalos” in this listing participation in the beautiful?
ditto with “truth”.
Is the author taking all transcendentals and using their greek names as types of being?

I’m not sure if the on (the being) effects the ousia. Frankly, I’ve been out of school so long, I can’t remember if the “ousia” is being or essence.

Now I once ran into the works of an Arab scholar who had a different way of looking at kinds of being. His list of degrees of being included being as an object, being in thought, being in writing, being as ink in the pen,…and so on. Never ran into that thinking anywhere else. Maybe Avicenna AD could place it if he were here. Sadly, he’s passed away to a better world: – real life.

mrn

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Dunamis

“x is” (to be)
“x exists”
“x is real”
“x is true”

‘is’ is ambiguous because it is used in relation to certain words. It is a relationship indicator

exists - in what ways, in what ways does your awareness take?

real - in what sense, the word is ambiguous

true - in what sense, again ambiguous.

words especially relational indicators when in isolation can not be spoken of. we do not use words in isolation but as a part of a sentence, only in a sentence is the meaning of the word revealed.

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  1. “X is” and “X exists” are synonomous, although I doubt that anyone but a philosopher ever would use the former. “X exists” means, roughly, that X has properties, and X does not exist means (again roughly) that X does not have properties. (Which properties those are, of course, would depend on X) So, for example, “Santa Claus exist” means “Something (someone) has the properties of being a jolly old elf, owns reindeer, and lives at the North Pole, and brings presents to good children on Christmas morning” And, Santa does not exist means, “No one is a jolly old elf, owns reindeer, lives at the North Pole, and brings Christmas present to good children”.

  2. “X is real” is used to deny that X is imaginary, or an hallucination. To use philosophical jargon, it is used to deny that X, whatever it is, is mind-dependent. (Does not depend on what you believe, or hope, or wish) In general, like “exist” “real” is not the name of a property that all real things have, and all unreal things don’t have. It isn’t as if tigers have a property that unicorns don’t have. (Unicorns don’t have any properties at all) As J.L. Austin once remarked, “Existence is not like breathing, only quieter” The same goes for “real”

  3. “X is true”. Well, except for love as in “true love”, “true” is a property of propositions (or sentences, or beliefs, or statements) What are the "bearers of truth is disputable. But to say, for instance, that a statement is true is to say of it that it is one term in a dyadic relation, and the other term is a fact or a state or affairs external to the statement. And that the statement is true (has that property or that dyadic relation with a fact) when there is a correspondence between the statement and the fact, but a statement is false when there is no fact to which is corresponds. Thus, in Tarski’s famous formula, “Snow is white” is true if and only if, snow is white.

Or, as Aristotle said in his metaphysics, “to say of what is that it is, or to say of what is not that it is not, is true; but to say of what is not that it is, or to say of what is, that it is not, is false.” (Metaphysics)

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What happened to my original thread? Was it deleted, and if so, why?

Thankyou. According to philosophypages.com “existence” is defined as:

existence
Instantiation in reality, or actual being.

And “reality” is defined as:

reality {Ger. Wirklichkeit}
The totality of what is, as opposed to what merely seems to be.

It seems to me that reality is the totality of all real things (just like Christendom is the totality of all Christian nations). Thus, if “is” and “exist” are synonymous, “exist” and “real” are at least co-extensional too.

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-Imp

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Yes. That’s a vexed issue. We say of dreams, and hallucinations, that they exist, but they are not real. That might be just “talk” but it is something for which we need to account.

I must say that I do not find those definitions in philosophypages.com very enllghtening. Definitions are supposed to make matters clearer, not more obscure.

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Ken/

Perhaps one could say that a dream or a hallucination is some kind of representation of reality. These representations exist (in our minds), but the things they refer to don’t (most of the time) exist. In that way we could account for the difference between hallucination and non-hallucinations without using the word “real”.

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I guess so. But that sounds pretty convoluted to me. What would be the advantage? David Hume made the distinction between “real existence” and “ideal existence”, to denote the difference between non-mental objects, and mental objects like ideas and thoughts. Something like that might help.

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I hadn’t heard of Hume’s distinction, and I guess it’s the same. The advantage with this theory, if there is one, is that if it’s true we would not need an account of what reality is over and above what existence is. Thus what possibly could be seen as two different philosophical questions are shown to be just one question. We would reduce the number of concepts needed to account for the world.

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We would still be stuck with the notion of a “representation of reality” which seems to me quite a mouthful.

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It was a mistake to use the word “reality” there. If we were to make a definition of this:

it would go like this:

“reality” df= “non-mental objects plus mental objects like representations of reality”. The problem is that the word to be defined is both in the definiens and the definiendum. I should have said something like this:

“reality” df= “non-mental objects plus mental objects like representations of what objects there are”.

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And what sorts of things would these “representations” be?

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Do you think that’s a substantive and hard question or a question that makes no sense? I believe the former: we are still left with the question of what a representation is. But so would a theory that includes the word “reality”. The advantage, if there is one, with the above theory is that one doesn’t need a theory of what reality is apart from a theory of what existence is.

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I like Kennethamy’s above explanations. Did you come up with them on your own or was the influenced by other’s works (more than just normal influence from various sources)?

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POR,

I would suggest Sartre’s ‘Being and Nothingness’ for a more precise ontology regarding these questions. Personally, I don’t think any explainations so far have been sufficient in this thread. I would like to get involved but the methods in this thread are foreign to me to the point of absurdity. None so far have touched on the nature of the phenomena and its relationship to consciousness.

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Detrop,

" I would like to get involved but the methods in this thread are foreign to me to the point of absurdity."

Why don’t you impose your own methods and open the discourse up to a new avenue?

Dunamis

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Btw, when speaking of “existence”. Isn’t there a discrepancy in the interpretation of the logical quantifiers?

According to philosophypages.com:

Now it seems to me that these ordinary language formulations aren’t equivalent. In the ordinary language formulation of an existential proposition, one uses “is” (often one uses “exists” instead: “there exists at least one x…”). One says “there is at least one…”. In the ordinary language formulation of a universal proposition one doesn’t use “is” (in the sense of “exist”, of course one uses it in order to “predicate” later in the sentence) or “exist”. One just says: “for any…” A formulation analogous to the existential quantifier formulation is indeed possible; for example one could say: “For any x there is…” or “for any x that exists…”. Or one could formulate an existential proposition analogous to the universal quantifier formulation: as “at least one. x…” (without ‘is’ or ‘exists’).

Actually, this discrepancy doesn’t exist in medieval logic , that uses terms like “all”, “some” and “no”. Here the term “exist” isn’t used in any formulation.