What follows is the beginning of an idea which started in an intro to philosophy class and I’m sure somebody has worked this out further long ago.
While discussing the the otological arguement for God’s existence the professor told us to close our eyes and imagine a hundred dollars. Then he told us to imagine a hundred dollars that actually exists, at which point I burst into uncontrolable laughter. The stack of bills I had imagined was exactly the same, but it was on a table and I was considering the possibility of getting my hands on it. When questioned on the reason for my outburst, I said something to the effect that we cannot think an eternal, omnipotent supreme being into existence. But, there was something else nagging at me.
Fast foreward one week:
Professor: “Do Mermaids have tails?” (on some point not related to the nature of existence)
Me: “No”
Prof: “Why not, of course they do.”
Me: “Mermaids are not. So, any part of a mermaid is not, therefore the mermaids tail does not exist, therefore no mermaid can have a tail”
We went round and round on this for a while on this subject and I, for the sake of letting him teach the syllabus, relented.
So, after going over these two things for a while, I came up with the idea that when we say that someting exists, all we are really saying is that we think it shares a context with us. Yet this is somehow unsatisfactory to me and it bugs me now and then.
So, is there a book I should read or even better, a very simple explanation?
Well this breaks down into epistemology, which basically deals with the nature of knowledge. Locke believes that we derive our knowledge through empiracist or experience based means.
So for example, you see a picture somewhere of a mermaid that someone thought up by combining different concepts such as ‘woman’ and ‘fish’… well the animator would need to have seen a woman and a fish in his life to paint that picture. You can extrapolate or add quantities/qualities(that you’ve also experienced) to a certain thing, but you need to have experienced that thing first.
Consider this: Can you imagine what a million dollar bill looks like? You know that it exists, but you can’t picture it in your mind. (unless you’ve seen one somehow on tv or something… but you get the point?)
So yeah… this
I came up with the idea that when we say that someting exists, all we are really saying is that we think it shares a context with us
ert, I think the solution you’re looking for is ontological commitment, a notion developed I think by Quine. When the professor first asks, “Do mermaids have tails?”, he is intuitively committed to speaking of a world in which mermaids already exist. So everything that the professor speaks of adheres to this possible world in which there are existing mermaids. That is why the professor is even allowed to talk about mermaids at all in the first place. Mermaids do not exist in our world, but the professor is speaking of a possible world in which there exist mermaids. Also, the statement “mermaids are not” is very ambiguous, and if you further examine the meaning of what you might have meant or tried to say, I think you’ll find where you went wrong.
When we say that something exists, that’s exactly what we’re saying. It exists. A philosopher might say that it exists in every imaginable world, or that it only exists as a mental concept. A scientist might say that it exists only in the known universe, and only with material makeup. It is up to the speaker to clarify what they mean by what they say.
you should read french and german. either derrida if you care for the contextual side of it, or habermas if you’d rather go at it from the ontology of it. might also enjoy lyotard/levinas.
“Do mermaids have tails?” might be interpreted as “If there were mermaids, would they have tails?” And the answer to that is, yes. Or it might be interpreted as asking, whether, “There are mermaids, and they have tails” is a true statement. The answer to this second question is clearly, no, since the first conjunct, “there are mermaids” is false. Your teacher was obviously asking the second question, so he was right.
For all I know, I might agree that when we say that something exists that it “shares a context with us” is I knew how to tell whether something “shares a context with us”. But I don’t.
Yeah, we cant help but think of something existing (imagine a mermaid that doesnt exist).
The professor should have answered “mu” not “no”. This means he rejects the assumptions in the question (that mermaids exist) and says its meaningless. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28Japanese_word%29
But even so, i think the professor is wrong.
Frege reckons existence boils down to numbers.
Saying “mermaids exist” is saying “that there are instances of the concept ‘mermaid’”.
While saying “mermaids have tails” is saying that “the concept mermaid has a tail”.
They are talking about two different things; the meaning of the word, and the instances of its existence, and I reckons you are right.
‘Shared context’ is kinda vague, but its pretty similar to ‘has instances’.