Re: Existence as predicate

From: Paul Holbach (paulholbachSPAMBAN_at_freenet.de)
Date: 08/31/04 

Date: 30 Aug 2004 23:55:45 -0700

> Barb Knox <see@sig.below> wrote in message news:<
> ch0l3h$rog$1@lust.ihug.co.nz>...
> > In article <881c8779.0408301717.1492ae27@posting.google.com>,
> > paulholbachSPAMBAN@freenet.de (Paul Holbach) wrote:

> > Existence is a property b e s i d e all the other properties. ;-)
> >
> > The descriptive value of concepts such as existence and self-identity
> > is indeed close to zero.

> Not necessarily. Certainly the disputants think they are saying something
> meaningful in exchanges like "God exists!", "No She doesn't!", ....

Yes, youīre right, existential statements can be informative.
If, for example, you didnīt know that the Kremlin exists and I told
you that the Kremlin exists (and in fact said the truth by doing so),
your knowledge would certainly increase by your learning that "the
Kremlin" is not just an irreferential name.

But what I was trying to say is that "exists" doesnīt describe the
Kremlin as eg "is a fortress" does. So by merely knowing that there is
something called 'the Kremlin' I still donīt know anything 'material'
about it.

 
> The usual sense of "exists" is "exists in physical reality", but there are
> plenty of other reasonable senses.

Abstract entities such as numbers can be said to exist as well -- if
there are any such entities.

But abstract objects, if there are any, exist in the very same sense
of "exist" as concrete objects do.

There are many different *kinds* of existents, but there is only *one*
sense of "exist/-s"!

> For example, Pegasus certainly "exists"
> in the world of Greek mythology (which we today consider fictional, but the
> ancient Greeks didn't).

No, Pegasus doesnīt exist *at all*, and, hence, exists *nowhere*!
"The world of Greek mythology" is just a metaphorical phrase.

"There is, e.g., the relativistic doctrine according to which Cerberus
exists in the world of Greek mythology and not in the world of modern
science. This is a perverse way of saying merely that Greeks believed
Cereberus to exist and that (if we may trust modern science thus far)
they were wrong. Myths which affirm the existence of Cerberus have
esthetic value and anthropological significance; moreover they have
internal structures upon which our regular logical techniques can be
brought to bear; but it does happen that the myths are literally
false, and it is sheer obscurantism to phrase the matter otherwise.
There is really only one world, and there is not, never was, and never
will be any such thing as Cerberus."

[Quine, W. V. (1982). /Methods of logic/ (4th ed.). Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press. (p. 266)(Original work published 1950)]

> Napoleon "exists" in European history, although he
> as a person does not exist today.

Since Napoleon doesnīt exist *now*, "Napoleon exists" is false and
"Napoleon has existed" is true, which means that there was a time in
history when "Napoleon exists" was true.
I donīt believe in the existence of "past persons".
Following Quine, I hold that it is "sheer obscurantism" to claim that
Napoleon is somehow still with us, because he *absolutely* ceased to
exist on May 5, 1821.

> And formally, in modal logics there are
> various different conventions regarding whether an item that exists in some
> particular possible world must also exist in others.

Itīs certainly possible for me to conceive of a world in which it is
not the case that the person I am exists. But semiotic entities such
as conceptions of possible worlds, i.e. of worlds different from the
existent one, are not on an ontological par with the existent
transsemiotic world.
Statements such as "There exists a world A in which 'Paul Holbach
exists' is true and there exists another world B in which 'Paul
Holbach exists' is false" donīt make any real sense to me.
If there were two distinct "world bubbles", A and B, 'Paul Holbach
exists' would be true both in A and in B, despite the circumstance
that he couldnīt exist both in A and in B.

Anyway, "exists" is definitely no indexical!

> So, IMO, the predicate "exists" should almost always be qualified by the
> domain in which the item is being asserted to exist (or not). That is,
> Exists is usefully considered as a 2-place predicate, not a 1-place one.

I reject all those befuddling relativizations, because I think
/existence/ is an *absolute* concept:

"The concept of existence cannot be relativized without destroying its
meaning completely."

[Gödel, Kurt (1949). A remark about the relationship between
relativity theory and idealistic philosophy. In P. Schilpp (Ed.),
/Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist/.]

#PH