Just thought I’d stop by to see what was up. Just read a thread where the existence of existence was being debated. (Hi, Zoot)
Today I spoke to a friend who told me that she took a philosophy class in college and had no idea what it meant until years later. “Because there was no logic to it,” she said.
Logic means nothing until you understand language and meaning. You have to know the language you are philosophizing in first. Then you have to know what meaning is. As it applies to philosophy. Not as in “Your Christmas card means so much to me.”
Then, you can maybe apply some basic logic, which is all you need to philosophize.
“Existence” is not a noun. I don’t care what the dictionary says - philosophers are supposed to know when the dictionary is correct and when it is not. That practically defines “philosopher.” If you don’t know when a word that is called a noun isn’t really a noun, then you have to try harder.
The verb “to be” poses the greatest challenge to philosophy. I have never understood why that is. It just, err… is.
“Existence” as a noun, is a poetic device. That is all it is.
Philosophers invent concepts. And disinvent them. Knowing which to invent and which not to is that art of philosophy.
It’s entirely possible that Heidegger was a satirist.
For his sake, I hope so. Then again, he’s dead. His existence is no longer. Which of these statements really means anything?
They choose ‘not to be’ in increments, without ever being influenced by the applicable linguistics of it. Its as if they don’t even know language philosophy applies to their voluntary diwnhill slide into oblivion, which of course threatens Faust’s whole thesis that philosophy merely takes place in the language center of the brain.
Its a noun, verb, adjective, question mark, and exclamation point.
One thing it can’t be is a predicate. Quirk of the brain, the fight or flight response allows impulse upon stimulation, but to create a differentiated knowing, of parts, requires reason beyond experience and actional relativity. Knowing isn’t existence, knowing is a build upon existence.
Great to see you pop by Faust. Hope all is well. I miss being able to run ideas by you.
As regards the topic, I agree existence is not a ‘thing’, let alone subject to itself. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made this point, but I never really thought of it in terms of “existence” not being a noun at all. I do think usage of the term as such often seems redundant or just plain confused.
He’s right though. Put it like this. There are no new extralinguistic or metalinguistic uses of the word ‘existence’ in a verifiable meaningful way that would make of it something metaphysical. It’s meaning is a simple designator of the thatness of some thing or event. That’s its phenomenological purpose. It is not the word for some entity as those who use it this way say. It is a redundant adjective, basically. It means thatness and says nothing about what it means to exist. It s the existential quantifier in grammar, not a descriptor or an explanation of anything.
It’s not a quality in other words… that’s where talk about it goes wrong… as if something has existence. Things don’t have existence like they have shape, form, degree, number, etc.
Think about the ordinary uses of the word folks and try not to use it philosophically for a moment. What is implied by a simple statement “the chair exists”? Nothing about the world is said that isn’t already obvious. The structure of the use is around the orientation of the person in relation to the object. It is a declarative statement redundency. It’s says I’m letting you know I know that is a chair. Nobody needs to say that, or rather, no new dimension of menaing is needed to understand what is implied in its use there.
The word gets bewitched and a rylean category mistake happens, and when that happens, its curtains for your theory.
Existence is is a binary property. Either something exists, or it doesn’t. If it is outside of your consciousness, or destroyed, it doesnt exist. As soon as you think of something, it exists in your mind, but not neccessarily outside of your mind.
Exists implies two properties = That the object has the form which it is defined as, and that it whether or not it is located in a certain bounds (in this case, consciousness.) A square circle cannot exist because it does not equal the form in which it is defined as.
Nice little logical tautology… something spinoza did often in his layout of geometrical propositions. To begin at an essential point what was identified had to exist completely and only because it’s definition did not rely on something else to exist. So think of anything right now. The existence of that thing and the way it is depends on the existence of many other things, therefore it’s existence is contingent or relies on something primary to it. in that case, what everything that exists was composed of had to be either a contingent property or a substantial property…i.e., the existence of the thing required that property to exist.
In the same way that the truth of the geometric tautology that a rational object can’t be other than it is without violating its definition, the self evident truth of there being an infinite substance underlying all that exists that by its very definition must exist; this by concluding that if you subtracted all contingent qualities from the world you would still have existence. THAT is the substance… that which we stand beneath as the poets and theologians say. The grand tautological truth. There can not be nothing.
Actually, there could be nothing, such as coma, although the permanence of nothing would negate consciousness.
The is where GUT comes in, whether or not the universe will big bang again, and whether or not planets are conscious, or stars. Because we wonder is it possible to have an infinite permanence of nothing, and have the consciousness of sperm never arise again.
