Yeah. It should be understood that Locke's Tabula Rasa comes with a limitations and conditions clause.

Back in 1945, when Sartre uttered his existentialist credo, in my opinion he was tapping into QM.
— ucarr
And on what was - is - your opinion based? More opinion? Or something - anything - of any substance? — tim wood

I like to believe my opinion is based upon some observed phenomena established by repeated experimental observations performed by various researchers within the QM community.

Here's the key phenomenon, observed and examined repeatedly throughout the 20th century and ongoing: superposition. My basic conception is that Sartre, with his Existentialism, has argued for the matching bookend to Plato's (Socrates) Theory of Forms. The trick involved is that there's no necessary debate over one or the other being right, as suggested by the Principle of Non-Contradiction, as QM has (with conditions) toppled that principle.

By asserting super-position into my analysis, I'm declaring that Plato (Socrates) and Sartre are both correct in their observations, with Niels Bohr, et al putting a bow onto the matched set via QM.

Hello T Clark,
Big thank-you for your energetic & detailed response.

I am always skeptical of mixing quantum mechanics, science, with metaphysics. To me it looks like the similarities are metaphorical rather than literal. That's why I disliked "The Tao of Physics." Being would be unapproachable even if reality were classical.

Yeah. My approach to science (unfortunately) is through the lens of philosophy, whereas, it should be the other way around. When it comes to QM, I'm strictly a lay person & a novice. A legitimate science person can probably hammer my QM interpretations. Even so, without them, I haven't got a leg to stand on. Also, I like the scientific project in general because it impels practitioners to go chasing after difficult questions most people trash.

Hello to TheMadFool (great user name),
Your profile nails me. Yes. When it comes to cognition, high-speed, low-res feedback looping is my thing. I'm an intuitive. When I start getting too impulsive, I listen to music, which calms me.

Hello to Hermeticus,

The only option for us is subjective existence. There may or may not be an objective reality - but we may never know the details because we're bound to subjectivity.

This expresses for me, in a nutshell, the reasons for my (deepening) dalliance with existentialism.

I might be wrong in all my judgments, but nonetheless I'm treating them as necessary fictions that guide me forward.

I like to think Bob Mitchum, with many more degrees of cool, might say something like this to Jane Greer.

To My Fellow Travelers,
Being a glutton for attention, I want to lavish thanks upon you for your time & attention to my ruminations.

Shout out to Xtrix for starting this expansive thread. Your detailed consideration of being gives me much to think about in the coming days.

Looks like I'll be paying additional visits to that neologizing esoteric, the ever fearsome Heidegger.

1. What is the difference between a sweet, juicy, red apple and a sweet, juicy red apple that exists? The difference between a red apple and a green apple, or a sweet apple and a sour apple, is pretty clear. But explaining clearly what is added to an apple by existing...?

Great question, Banno. My tentative response has me taking recourse to that rascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I'm supposing that when we claim something exists, we're withdrawing credit from the Bank of The Social Contract. Dubious though they be, socially sanctioned claims of an independent, objectively existing reality are needed (by most of us) in order to secure a functional society. Consensus about what's really "out there" is a necessary (if fictional) binding agent for social organization and culture

Some additional thoughts,

To abstract and to generalize are closely related. To abstract means to take the general form of something out of its local context wherein it's a specific thing with distinguishing features that make it concrete. In its general form, the abstracted thing fits into a multitude of generally similar contexts.

Perhaps the most accurate way to distinguish to abstract from to generalize is to declare that the first action is a cause whereas the second action is an effect.

Perhaps here, within this examination, it's better to oppose to abstract with to multiply. With multiplication you can talk about taking a concrete thing and increasing its numbers without abstracting it from its concrete, distinguishing features. Even here, however, to multiply the numbers of a thing is to both abstract and generalize a concrete thing into generic members of a set.

Hello T Clark,

Thanks for the welcome to TPF and, also, thanks for taking the time to respond to my post.

I sense that your distinction between abstraction and generalization is sound, and perhaps you can elaborate on their differences a bit more.

Right now I'm wondering if perhaps there's some overlapping between the two concepts. My current thinking is that if one opaque bottle tests good, then the chemist makes an induction to the belief all opaque bottles shall test good. This is the generalization part.

Believing he's made a sound induction, the chemist feels ready to advance to the robust evaluation you write about and then, lastly, advise the producer to roll out a batch of product in opaque bottles. It is in the last part involving the advice where abstractionism comes in as it is a mental picture that guides the chemist in the absence of hands-on empirical testing at the full volume of commercial production.