Something
Thankyou for that thoughtful post.exposing potential flaws.
The psychological game we seem to play regarding the word 'existence' is that we are always drawn to an absolute 'something' but my thesis is that 'thinghood' itself is relative to the needs of human observers. But to escape the 'thinghood of observers' I argue that they are a transient pole of one side of an interaction event we call 'observer-observed'.
Now it may be that those 'interactions' require a transcendent vantage point sometime called 'a God's eye view' but far from evoking deism, I am alluding to timeless metaviews of space-time implied by frontier physics.

I'm on vacation and have just scanned the recent exchanges.

You appear to know where I'm coming from with the language focus, but in order to avoid being caught in a word regress, I turn to Maturana's view of 'languaging' as a form of behavior which enables 'structural coupling'. This avoids representational issues by taking a 'systems view' of cognition. — fresco

I hope you're enjoying your vacation.

I am not at all acquainted with Maturana. But I took a quick tour on wikipedia. I found this caption that might be relevant:

an autopoietic system is autonomous and operationally closed, in the sense that there are sufficient processes within it to maintain the whole. Autopoietic systems are "structurally coupled" with their medium, embedded in a dynamic of changes that can be recalled as sensory-motor coupling.[5] This continuous dynamic is considered as a rudimentary form of knowledge or cognition and can be observed throughout life-forms.

It seems to me, the notion of structural coupling is applicable to the relation between actual existing and the concept of existence. The concept of existence is structurally coupled with the knowledge/cognition of one's own existing, and this link becomes evident somewhere in the recall of sensory-motor coupling.

So, when discussing existence, we are not discussing a concept that represents a seperate reality. Rather, we are discussing a concept that is predicated on itself as the premise, e.g. the concept of existence can only arise (in all its details) as a result of my own existing. Structural coupling means that my existing is entirely apprehended in my cognition, to which I apply greater significance by rendering it as the concept of existence, and my concept of existence can never exceed my existing.

Maybe you can help clarify.

Thanks. I'm studying it.

observer-observed — fresco

Do you mean: that which exists being aware of its existence?

The difficulty in understanding Maturana stems from his deflation of "thinking' as an epiphenomenon of " behavior'. Thus the very usage of any 'word' (including 'existence') amounts to no more than its function in facilitating a behavioral coordination between cognitive systems...you and me, or two or more subsystems of 'you' (aka 'thinking' at the neural level).
I consider this to be a biological counterpart to Wittgenstein's 'meaning is usage'.

Existence is relative, not absolute. — fresco

No, Existence blue, not red.

...so what I 'mean' by "existence' depends on the communicative context in which it occurs. Philosophical 'discussions' which remove a word from normal contexts do not qualify unless we admit to trying.to influence each others 'behavior' by doing so.

What do I mean by normal contexts?...
..does God exist...do ghosts exist....do electrons exist...etc.
...all of which I claim can be answered by examining the utility of the 'thing deemed to exist' ...and that utility will differ for different users.
Note we do NOT normally ask ...do trees exist (or other humanly agreed 'things' which we don't need to 'deem') except when considering the behavior of other species.
NB. This is a useful reference.

http://www.oikos.org/vonobserv.htm

Thanks for the link. I read it and found some relevant points:

the only realities possible are realities brought forth by an observer's operations of distinction.

cognition is not a means to acquire knowledge of an objective reality but serves the active organism in its adaptation to its experiential world.

[...] if we reflect upon our experience as observers, we discover that our experience is what we find ourselves observing, talking, or acting, and that any explanation or description of what we do is secondary to our experience of finding ourselves in the doing of what we do.

From this article, Mantura comes off, in the philosophical sense, as a phenomenologist, regardless of his scientific qualifications. In fact, in the philosophical sense, science is fundamentally phenomenological, as corroborated in the article: "[...] like Maturana, they [physicists] have realized that it is their own concepts, their own operations of distinction that bring forth the experiential world which they describe in their science." So even if the coherence of his system is valid, it still suffers from the same criticisms that plague phenomenology, as was pointed out in the article.

Nevertheless, I think he is on the right track in reducing reality/existence to the experiential world of the observer, or, cognitive immediacy. Whatever can be explained/described has its reality only in cognitive immediacy as the linguistic form. Even the reality of the meaning of the linguistic form can be reduced to my cognitive immediacy.

Although he rejects the notion of an ontic reality, he can not escape the inference to one, and in his case, the fundamental ontic reality is the experiential world of the observer. Nevertheless, he seems to emphasize the individual as the primary unit of existence, regardless of its cognitive dependency on biology or subjection to the species. . . And I'm ok with that.

No, Existence blue, not red. — Banno

Existence?!?!? What's that?

Good !
I have found that most mainstream philosophers haven't got a clue.about this stuff
Regarding 'fundamental ontic reality' bear in mind that 'the observer' is not a fixed entity but may be multifaceted and transient.

I love philosophy and I am not an academic but a mere bartender, which has educated me empirically. You need to define existence beyond the lexicon to be given an exact answer unless you want a poetic answer. Everything is relative! The day I can undeniably experience something objectively true is a day I will look forward to, but the confusing truth is you can only see, hear or feel the world through your own perspective. Even the most pure or scientifically of hearts there is no absolutes.

Regarding 'fundamental ontic reality' bear in mind that 'the observer' is not a fixed entity but may be multifaceted and transient. — fresco

That the observer is multifaceted and transient, although possibly essential attributes, are beyond the point of the observer. The observer is essential to it all.

Now let's try an experiment. I am not clever enough to do it alone, but you seem smart enough to carry me along. Let's say existence is dependent on the observer (which is transient and multifaceted), what next?

One thing, I think we must determine is how the observer recognizes "existence" within the medium of it's immediate cognitive experience.

The problem for me here is that you keep refering to 'existence' as a noun. The observer does not 'recognize existence'....it expects/predicts the nature of its interactions with its environment. Those expectancies we might call 'functional knowledge of the world' in the sense that relative to human lifespans many of those expectancies tend to persist. So 'existence' boils down that network of focal nodes, coined by a socially acquired language,about what we can successfully predict (or retrodict). But the whole scenario is transient with respect to what we call 'history'. All is in flux and it is only by virtue of those structures we call 'memory' can functional persistence be utilised.

Too narcissistic. It's not all about us.

The problem for me here is that you keep refering to 'existence' as a noun. — fresco

How should we use it. As a verb? An adjective?

the only realities possible are realities brought forth by an observer's operations of distinction.

The observer's operations of distinction are in cognition.

cognition is not a means to acquire knowledge of an objective reality but serves the active organism in its adaptation to its experiential world

This cognitive adaptation to the experiential world is, as you say, a network of focal nodes that comprise the functional knowledge of the world.

The focal nodes that constitute the observers experiential world may or may not persist over time. Yet one focal node is essential to it all:
that of a distinct observer experience, which is necessary to all subsequent operations of distinction.

What is added to our understanding by talking in terms of something's existence?

I mean...

We can point to trees. We can name them. We can talk about features of the trees. We can talk about the differences between trees and other stuff. We can talk about a tree's color, it's bark, it's leaves, it's height, etc.

But...

What are we talking about when we talk about a tree's 'existence' if not the tree?

But you are missing the point..we DONT NORMALLY talk about 'the existence of trees'!
Thats what I call 'seminaritis' or what Wittgenstein might have called Geschwatz.

'Existence' is a word we use in social contexts where utility of concept,like God,is being negotiated but where participants are unaware of the social construction of 'thinghood'. We don't normally (non philosophically) apply the word to agreed utilities like 'tree'. Using the word 'existence' as a noun, mistakenly in my view, implies 'a state of being' or 'reality' independent of contextual social utility. The concept 'tree' is useful by virtue of its agreed potential 'properties' as expected by humans which the word 'tree' triggers. Properties are merely potential interaction events, like 'shade', 'solidity', 'root damage', etc, according to context. The problem with concepts like 'God', is that there is no agreement about its utility, since its 'properties' are nebulous and parochial....hence believers argue for the existence of God as though it implied a 'state of being' beyond its social utility....they want 'existence' to be a noun whose 'thinghood' is beyond utility considerations, and most atheists who argue to the contrary are also unaware of the of those utility considerations applying to all humans call 'things'.

To Terrapin,

All CONVERSATION is by definition, is not solipsistic, and involves the needs of language users (aka 'us')
The fact that humans can operate verbally (=think) on the basis of a mental 'map' of what they consider to be a representation of 'the world' tends to gloss over the selective map making and map reading processes. Most of the time we do not verbalise/map read and proceed with life on the basis of 'seamless coping' (which is Dreyfus's term to describe Heidegger's observation that 'things' tend to be verbalized on;y when that coping is interrupted. You weren't verbalizing (conscious) of 'chair',were you even though you might be reported to be sitting on one!)

Rubbish.

I asked a question. It is sensible and relevant and cuts to the core of my point.

Do you have an answer?

Fresco thinks you have not seen his point, probably thinking it too important for anyone else to have considered before. Hence he fails to see that you have moved past him.

I'm confident you will agree wth me that his point is as significant as mine: that existence is blue.

I do.

Well then, is the absolute not as blue?

And hence...

What is added to our understanding by talking in terms of something's existence? — creativesoul

Existence is a fancy word that philosophers use to talk about being, or what is. For example, if I say "my finger itches", I am inferring that there is an itchy sensation in my finger. It is something that has the status of being - it exists.

Now it is very easy to discount "existence" as a redundant and unnecessary term in philosophy, but it definitely has important psychological application - especially in regard to the delusional psychotic, like the hypochondriac, paranoid schizophrenic, chronic liar &c.

Most importantly, I can make bold genereal claims in terms of "existence", e.g.: "in all of existence, no distinct objects can be identical in their external properties".

Well then, is the absolute not as blue? — Banno

Does blue actually exist?

You're referencing it. So it does, somewhere; maybe not here.

That comment is going to piss off @Banno. Ooooooooo!!! :grin:

Why? He's not wrong.

Why? He's not wrong. — Shamshir

About what?

Does blue actually exist? — Merkwurdichliebe

First, how does exists differ from actually exists?

It doesn't include the term "actually".

To be honest, I was merely using "actually" to accentuate "exists", but I should have simply put "exists" in italics. Sorry for the confusion.