Or in other words, classes/kinds/types are simply a matter of how we want to conceptualize things, how we want to divide them up. — Terrapin Station

Hang on, weren't you quite vociferously arguing against model dependant realism only a few days ago, the idea that people don't objectively exist being nonsense? Now you're saying the opposite, that grouping some particular set of entities into a containing class is just a matter of how we conceptualise things. If grouping all lumps of quartz just because they the property {being a certain size range} and calling them 'sand' is just our conceptualising, then why is grouping certain collections of cells together just because they have they have the property {some specific type of connectivity} and calling them a 'person' somehow not just our conceptualising?

:point: ...

↪tim wood
Don't we need a definition of what it means to "exist" before we can proceed with an inquiry like this? — Metaphysician Undercover

A stipulative one, no?

No Voodoo, no woowoo. — tim wood

:up:

Samuel Johnson claims to have refuted this by simply kicking against a large rock, exclaiming 'I refute it thus!' But his 'refutation' is said to be fallacious, insofar as it simply assumes that Berkeley's claim is wrong or nonsensical, without offering any real rebuttal of it. (Hence the designation of it as 'argumentum ad lapidiem', the argument from the stone.) — Wayfarer

Well, rebutted thus (e.g.) ...

"The world is the totality of facts, not of things." ~TLP

The idea is to list as many differing kinds of existing/existence/existing things as we can think of. Part of the goal is to identify which things/classes of things may be reasonably said to exist, and also both to weed out unsupportable claims and to rule out "things" for which there is no direct evidence. — tim wood

"Certum est, quia impossibile" ~Tertullian :chin:

Consider:

1. impossible worlds: ways the world necessarily could not have been or cannot be described, mapped or modeled; what makes these ways 'impossible' is they contain contradictions or things/objects with inconsistent predicates (i.e.  members of the empty set).

2. possible worlds: ways the world possibly could have been or can be described, mapped or modeled; what makes these ways 'possible' is they do not contain contradictions or things/objects with inconsistent predicates.

3. e.g. 'the world is not the world' (i.e. nothingness, absolute absence / nonexistence) is an impossible world, or a way the world necessarily could not have been ...

4. if (1), then (3); and if (3) then (2); therefore (2). if impossible worlds do not exist, then 'the world is not the world' does not exist; and if 'the world is not the world' does not exist, then possible worlds exist; therefore possible worlds necessarily exist.

5. if (2), and if (4), then the world necessarily exists; therefore the set of non-necessary facts = the actual world (i.e. transfinite list - unbounded phase-space - of "things/classes that ... exist").

The question to you is, Does the stone exist? — tim wood

Of course stones exist, but defining 'what it means to exist' in such terms is another matter altogether.

1) All material things.
2) All other things existing by reference, but not material, as ideas/mental constructs. — tim wood

I don't think 'material' is a meaningful term. It changes over time and includes things that have qualities and lack qualities people a couple of hundred years ago would have considered material. It is an expanding set with shifting criteria. I think Terrapin's mock or perhaps serious suggestion 'stuff' works much better, since that rules out nothing and has no metaphysical baggage - that is obvious, at least.

My list

1) Things/processes we consider real - some of which we are likely incorrect about - some things simply don't exist, others did once, but no longer do.
2) Things/processes we consider possible and in fact are real. Some stuff that is possible might not exist yet and so it is non-existent, unless time is not what some of think it is.
3) Things/processes we consider not real/impossible - but which in fact are real
4) Stuff we haven't imagined that exists.

Two stones are near each other, and no others are close. That must be two, yes? No. the two is in the mind of the observer who associates the idea of two with the two stones. — tim wood

The problem though is that there is something "real" to these relationships which is not simply made up by a mind. The closeness of the two stones to each other, in relation to other stones is something not created by a mind. We want to say that this relationship exists independently of all minds.

I offered this above as tentative:Maybe I should offer a tentative definition of existence, or at least that which falls out of my two categories above: objects of thinking or sense or some combination, but in combination reducible to either object of thought or sense by parts. — tim wood

As Berkeley demonstrated, these two categories are reducible to one, being "perceived by a mind". Then we have no principle by which to justify the claim of anything outside of minds.

1a) Material existence shall be an absolute qualification for existence - the materiality, obviously, being demonstrable. If you might stub your toe on it, then it's difficult to see how it isn't. — tim wood

Here is the heart of the difficulty. You take for granted that "materiality" is obviously demonstrable. But attempting a rigorous definition of "matter" will show that this is not the case. The premise, "if you stub your two on it, then it is material", does not capture "materiality", because there are many things which you wouldn't stub your two on which we would still say are material. Therefore we would need a more adept description of what it means to be material to include these other material things into that category.

So the difficulty is that some things which are material are easily demonstrable as such, when the materiality of rocks and things you might stub your two on, is taken for granted. But the material existence of other things, like fundamental particles for example, cannot be demonstrated in this way. So unless we have a rigorous definition of what it means to be material, this categorization doesn't help us in determining what type of existence things like fundamental particles have.

Will you accept an amendment to, "Having the capacity to be present in some sense or some way"? Meaning that lacking any such capacity means non-existence. Is that what you meant? — tim wood

I don't understand the reason for such an amendment. It's like you're saying that if something has the capacity to exist, can we say it's existing. "Capacity" is just a judgement which we as human beings make. We say that a thing is X, but it has the capacity to be Y. If Y has no presence in space or time, yet we say that there is the capacity for X to be Y, how can we say that Y exists?

This is the problem which "the future" hands us. Y may or may not come to be in the future, when there is the capacity for Y to be. So we cannot say that Y has a presence in time (in some eternalist way) because Y may not ever come to be. It may be prevented from coming to be. And, having never existed in the past, Y has absolutely no spatial presence. Since the capacity for Y might not be actualized, we cannot assign to Y any temporal presence (in the future) either. So despite the fact that there is the capacity for Y, we cannot assign to Y any form of existence. This is why we do not assign "exists" to things like capacities, which are properties only of the mind. There are no principles by which such things can be said to "exist".

Maybe, as the collection of everything that exists includes everything that exists, but does that help? As to classes and types, do you really have a problem having a class of sand that includes as members all the individual grains of sand? Of course, if you insist that it is all just how we want to conceptualize, that puts it "all" into the category of ideas. — tim wood

I'm just stressing that the categorization for something like this would ultimately be arbitrary. Particulars aren't just ideas, but types/classes are.

Hang on, weren't you quite vociferously arguing against model dependant realism only a few days ago, the idea that people don't objectively exist being nonsense? Now you're saying the opposite, that grouping some particular set of entities into a containing class is just a matter of how we conceptualise things. — Isaac

Particulars are real. Properties are particulars. So there are real things, and they necessarily have real properties. It's just that those real things are particulars.

Types/classes/kinds are not real (read "not objective"). They're conceptual ways of thinking about particulars. It's an issue of mentally abstracting over a number of particulars to simplify, because that simplification has many different practical benefits (for survival, communication, etc.)

This is why I kept telling you that you're doing the old conflation of concepts and what concepts are about or what they're in response to.

What I'm saying is really simple (at least it seems so to me), but your response suggests that you can't even grasp it.

What I'm saying is really simple (at least it seems so to me), but your response suggests that you can't even grasp it. — Terrapin Station

I'm not having any trouble grasping what you're saying, but your opinion here did not first arise in answer to the question "what do you think", it arose as a critique (and quite a strong one) of alternative positions. It is in that context I'm confused.

As such, what would be required to alleviate my confusion is not simply a clear exposition of what you think, but an explanation of why you feel it is necessary to think that, why the alternatives are untenable.

All you've done here is made a series of bare assertions.

Properties are particulars — Terrapin Station

Typically, properties are considered to be examples of universals, not particulars.

Typically, properties are considered to be examples of universals, not particulars. — Pantagruel

No, many philosophers make use of the concept of Tropes, even pre Williams philosophers have Trope-like entities in their ontologies.

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Ok. New to me, however what I just read says that tropes can be viewed either as objects, or properties, but not both, so they cannot bridge the gap between the two.

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Yes, I just skimmed through the Stanford article on Tropes also.

Personally, I find metaphysical hairsplitting to be a little tedious. Invariably it seems we are either trying to graft the mental onto the physical or ungraft it. In the end, both are in play, so unless there is some really compelling practical consequence I can live with a little ambiguity.

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Yes, I just skimmed through the Stanford article on Tropes also.

Personally, I find metaphysical hairsplitting to be a little tedious. Invariably it seems we are either trying to graft the mental onto the physical or ungraft it. In the end, both are in play, so unless there is some really compelling practical consequence I can live with a little ambiguity. — Pantagruel

:up:

Abstract objects are things like numbers and sets. They aren't considered to be mental objects for reasons pointed out by Frege.

I asked Nagase once about the ontology of abstract objects and he wasnt very interested in the question for reasons along the same lines as your view.

Yes, I came across the epistemological equivalent in a book by Kornblith many years ago on naturalistic epistemology. Kornblith describes "natural kinds" as homeostatic property clusters, physicalizing the mental.

The test I'm using is negation. — tim wood

Good. But maybe for different reasons. And from a human point of view only.....

The fundamental criterion for the existence of things, is the possibility of its negation. If its negation is impossible, it must exist, even if we have no idea what it is; if its negation is possible, its existence is not given, but is necessarily presupposed as existing, in order to have something to which the negation would apply.

The proof is in the categories.

Abstract objects are things like numbers and sets. They aren't considered to be mental objects for reasons pointed out by Frege. — frank

Have a glance at Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge. Makes the case for Frege’s Platonism.

Anything to contribute? — tim wood

Not really, too busy with mundane chores right at the moment. Other than recommending contemplation of the analogy of the divided line.

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I enjoyed reading all that. Well written and argued.

Just as a remark, it appears the word “thing” is the most common and general classification of existing objects used in this thread. The term is loosely applied to concrete objects, abstract concepts, numbers, words, feelings and sensations—basically any noun-phrase, whether they are physical or not.

So perhaps “object” would be a more precise term for existing things. “Object” also proves difficult to define but I think has at least these qualities:

• it is finite
• it moves as one
• it is bounded by a surface
• it has a position relative to other objects
• it acts

Gilbert Ryle liked to ask if there are three things in the field: two cows and a pair of cows.

The problem with things, as I see it, is that they have much to do with how our minds carve up the world. If you ask most people if the local McDonald's really exists, they'd agree that it does. You can go away, come back, and it's still there. You can kick the building, read the sign, eat the food, and so on. But there is a sense in which this particular collection of matter and activity is only a McDonald's to human beings.

Consider something like a constellation in the night sky, say Orion. Does Orion exist, objectively? I'm not asking if the mythological character exists. I am asking about the constellation. I'd argue that it does not exist apart from the way humans carve up the night sky and draw imaginary connecting lines and add labels and meanings. But the stars making up the constellation are real, aren't they? Actually, I think stars are not objectively real for precisely the same reason. Any particular "thing" in the world is case of us drawing a boundary somewhere in the world and adding a label and a meaning, even of seeing things from a certain "angle".

You might say that there must be something there underpinning what we see in the world. Yes. But it is tricky. Even elementary particles involve human concepts being overlaid on the world, divisions being made, and so on. And there is an awful lot of reification going on in scientific thinking. Just start digging into the idea of virtual particles and you'll see what I mean. The very idea of particles is problematic.

Suppose I pour out a bag of Skittles and a bag of M&Ms on a table. You could come along and look at the mess I've created and carve it up in your mind all sorts of ways. You could draw mental lines around all the yellow things and consider them as one group, or one thing. Or you could see all triangular arrangements of candies, all triads, as each constituting a thing. Or you could say that the set of Skittles is one thing and the M&Ms another, even if they are mixed. But notice that some of your boundaries intersect. And notice that if you consider each combination of three candies to be a thing, every individual candy belongs to many, many triads. But these are collections of things, not things, you might protest! And a nation is not? A beehive is not? A human is not? A fire hydrant is not?

Consider shampoo. Does it exist? Suppose you define shampoo as a mixture of particular chemicals in certain proportions. Is diluted shampoo still shampoo? What if you dilute it a lot? What if you have one molecule on earth, another on another planet, and so on, but you ultimately draw a line that collects 10 fluid ounces of water, sodium laureth sulfate, fragrance, and so on, and all long before the arrival of humans? Is it shampoo?

Does the existence of shampoo depend on hair and certain social practices?

You might say that for a thing to be a thing or for it to exist, it must be physically contiguous, not spread out like that. What about pollution? Romantic couples? Political parties? Biological life itself?

What about sweet food? Does it exist? Without us? Without animals?

Notice that while it might be argued that the matter is really there, that the world is really there, it is clear that the lines we draw in it, dividing this thing from that thing, maybe a pillow from a couch, are not really there in the world. The boundaries are something extra, something not in the world in itself. The same applies to your concept of yourself. You don't exist in the world in itself in the way you think you do.

What about such things as money? Does it exist? Does the economy exist? What about newspaper articles? Insurance policies? College degrees? Speed limits? I think most people would agree that those are socially or mentally constructed. But I would argue that such things as rocks are also constructed by our minds in an important sense. There is no line out there in the world in itself separating this rock from the mountainside, saying that this collection of atoms is this particular thing we call a rock, which is good for throwing at birds, kicking, and so on.

A lot of this is a matter of how we humans are functionally related to our environments. What it is for something to be a chair is that it is something to sit on. Supposing all humans were to suddenly die, are there any chairs in the world? Are there any magazine articles?

The things I am talking about here are all real in an important sense, but also unreal in another important sense, much less real, I think, than most people suppose. The way we carve up and associate things and attach meanings to them is largely transparent to us. We mistake it for how things really are out there in the world beyond us. Mostly what we encounter in the world is how we experience it as modes of access, relating to human purposes. I'd suggest that in large part, what we see is really a projection of possibilities for future action, and all of this is tied up with biological functioning. This is why there can be such things as hiding places and forest paths.

Everything, or every thing, that we experience, is like this, and deeply so, much more deeply than we suppose. That isn't to say that there is nothing out there at all beyond our minds. Not at all. It's just that every way we have of thinking about it is inextricably bound up with our purposes. Some of this is obvious and right on the surface. Some of it recedes into the background and determines how we experience things without ever presenting itself to us consciously. And there are backgrounds behind backgrounds.

I wonder how it all relates to Kant. What about such categories as time and space, the very principles of individuation?

Perhaps this. Materiality just means encounterability (in some way or other), whether or not the the thing be encountered. I'm sure you will almost immediately again see circularity in this, in that presupposed is the thing encountered. But to go back, toe-stubbing was listed as "an" absolute qualification, not the only. So it seems difficult not to beg-the-question. But the way out of that is to acknowledge that things exist, and to try to identify sufficient conditions for existence. I nominate encounterability as a sufficient condition and an improvement over toe-stubbing and capacity-for. Yes? No? Improve? — tim wood

No, I don't agree with "encounterability". First, because it restricts existence to the encountering capacities of the thing doing the encountering. I assume that the thing doing the encountering is supposed to be human. Now "existence" is limited to the encountering capacities of the human being. this appears as a form of Protagorean relativism, "man is the measure of all things". And I think that there may be some existents which the limitations of the physical composition of the human being prevent us from encountering.

Also, on the other side of the coin, human beings sometimes encounter things which are imaginary, like in the case of hallucinations. The person may not be able to distinguish a true encounter from a false encounter, so encounter cannot be used as a principle for judging existence, because it provides no principle to distinguish true encounter from false encounter, which is what we need, to be able to judge whether a thing exists or not. And if we want to restrict "encounterability" to true encounters, we would need some way of determining what makes an encounter true. So we're really not gaining anything with this term. We're back to a sort of Parmenidean position, existence is truth. But what does that mean?

So perhaps “object” would be a more precise term for existing things. “Object” also proves difficult to define but I think has at least these qualities:



it is finite
it moves as one
it is bounded by a surface
it has a position relative to other objects
it acts — NOS4A2

I think in mathematics, an "object" may be infinite.

I will get to the force stuff in this post, as that is clearly the part that you felt may be significant. However, I just have to try the relationship thing one more time.

Also, I think I read through most of the posts, but certainly feel free to point me at anything I may have missed.

The difficulty I have is that the relationship is no thing separate from the objects themselves. Two stones are near each other, and no others are close. That must be two, yes? No. the two is in the mind of the observer who associates the idea of two with the two stones. — tim wood

Not quite what I was going for. Yes, the relationship between the 2 stones is in the observer's mind, but it is also a physical relationship. 2 stones in Florida are closer together than one in Florida and one in Russia. Whether we use human language to describe this or not, it is as true as the rock's physical existence is "true". How about "Earth is in the Milky Way galaxy"? While none of those words necessarily have any meaning, we have assigned them meanings and all together what they express is true, right? But earth being located in the Milky Way does not seem to be a 1. physical thing or 2. JUST an idea/mental construct...?

I'm looking on line for a definition of force , but haven't found a good one. How would you define "force?" — tim wood

Wow, the dictionary definitions ARE rather inadequate aren't they?!? The physics definition from a textbook is more what I was thinking, something like: a force is any interaction that, when unopposed, will change the motion of an object

I was thinking that besides the 4 fundamental forces we would be able to point to some physical object as the origin of "force"...but I guess whatever its origin, force could still be something different than the 2 classifications of "things" you gave. interesting.

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Don't we need a definition of what it means to "exist" before we can proceed with an inquiry like this? — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not sure that insisting on such a definition is fruitful (or feasible).
If you insist on defining the term "exist" by other terms, then you've just taken a step towards indefinite regress or you end up with circularities.
I mean, you can't really miss existents, and there's not much of a complement to contrast with.
"Exist" is fairly basic, and categorizing different sorts of "existents" seems more fruitful, like @tim wood has been doing.
For example, I'd say both reality and fictions exist, it's just that fictions aren't real.
Besides, we use such terms, and that use (in whatever context) gives them common meaning.

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3) Process. The question arises if things are existent that require a length of time, that in less than which time they do not exist. But processes clearly exist, so it would appear that things exist within some bounds that do not exist outside of those bounds. I think that's interesting. — tim wood

Maybe this is a bit better, or at least closer to what I was on about ...

• spatial - objects (left-right, top-bottom, front-back, where)
• temporal - processes / events / occurrences (starts-ends, comes-goes, when)

5) self and others. I think those have got to be ideas/mental constructs. — tim wood

What I was thinking at the time was just the partitions rendered by (ontological) self-identity / individuation versus whatever else (other).
But maybe that's not so relevant here. Nevermind, "these are not the droids you're looking for".

On yours, in the way of relationships, the number of such immediately explodes into an uncountable infinity of descriptions of relationshps, and of everything in every combination. — tim wood

I would not use the word infinity, but I can certainly agree with uncountable. I don't see this as a problem.

And we have to consider that the existence of relationships, in this case, in as much as they do not depend on mind, must be real in virtue of something other than mind, and thus not necessarily accessible in any way by thee and me. — tim wood

Well the existence of these relationships is no more dependent on mind than the existence of the objects...right? You conceded the physical objective existence of the objects early in the OP (I thought?). If the objects exist, the relationships equally must exist. Are you suggesting that everything that exists, exists entirely independently from everything else until a mind suggests otherwise? I didn't have you pegged as a religious fellow (notice any "evolution" of the universe prior to life would have only occurred because of physical relationships - along with wherever we decide "force" fits into this whole situation).

When we say "Earth is in the Milky Way galaxy", if we concede the physical existence of some thing we call "earth" and some thing we call a "galaxy" that we have further labeled the "Milky Way", then that statement is 100% true even with no mind right? Are you trying to say all these things exist, but the relationships do not? Earth is not in the Milky way? Why not? What makes that a more subjective statement than "earth exists"?

even if it destroys by explosion the concept of existence via the notion of relationship. — tim wood

Dang, I suck at this stuff. That was not my intention at all. Relationships are just an addendum to existence. Once existence is established within a contained environment (the universe), then relationships are a tangible aspect of that existence.

But I invite you to consider whether relationships can be a different species of existence, or if instead they fall into ideas/mental constructs - that is, will you develop your thinking a bit more so that we might fall on one side or the other? — tim wood

So this entire post is describing why I don't think relationships fit into the mental construct arena. They are mental in that we use words to describe them, but that equally applies to any physical object. They are not mental because they exist regardless of any mind. But surely the relationships are not physical things themselves. If the physical objects disappear we are left with nothing, not relationships.

So, for me, relationships do not fit into either category. We could call it a mix of the two if we are very opposed to a 3rd category, but I would struggle to accept just one.

What about such things as money? Does it exist? Does the economy exist? What about newspaper articles? Insurance policies? College degrees? Speed limits? I think most people would agree that those are socially or mentally constructed. But I would argue that such things as rocks are also constructed by our minds in an important sense. There is no line out there in the world in itself separating this rock from the mountainside, saying that this collection of atoms is this particular thing we call a rock, which is good for throwing at birds, kicking, and so on.

A lot of this is a matter of how we humans are functionally related to our environments. What it is for something to be a chair is that it is something to sit on. Supposing all humans were to suddenly die, are there any chairs in the world? Are there any magazine articles? — petrichor

Excellent post. The tricky part is

The way we carve up and associate things and attach meanings to them is largely transparent to us. We mistake it for how things really are out there in the world beyond us. — petrichor

What can this world-beyond-all-carving be if not a kind of internal suspicion within our systematic carving-up of the world? The map is not the territory could be interpreted to mean only that we expect our map to change. Our map appears on itself as a changeable entity? And the world-beyond-the-map is the world-to-come is our map's knowledge of its own fragility?