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
↪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
No Voodoo, no woowoo. — tim wood
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
"Certum est, quia impossibile" ~Tertullian :chin: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
1) All material things.
2) All other things existing by reference, but not material, as ideas/mental constructs. — tim wood
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Properties are particulars — Terrapin Station
Typically, properties are considered to be examples of universals, not particulars. — Pantagruel
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. — Metaphysician Undercover
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. — Metaphysician Undercover
Typically, properties are considered to be examples of universals, not particulars. — Pantagruel
MU and me are moving from toe-stubbing through "capacity-for," towards encounterability, with a changing of the target from defining existence to trying to identify sufficient conditions (on the assumption that existence itself is not in itself in question). I do not claim that MU has agreed, only that we seem at the moment to be in the same canoe and even paddling in a coordinated way. Anything to contribute?Of course stones exist, but defining 'what it means to exist' in such terms is another matter altogether. — Wayfarer
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
The test I'm using is negation. — tim wood
Abstract objects are things like numbers and sets. They aren't considered to be mental objects for reasons pointed out by Frege. — frank
Anything to contribute? — tim wood
I buy consciousness as existing. The idea of it being of course an idea. But the thing itself also appears to be an idea/mental construct.If mental constructs exist then I guess a fortiori consciousness must also exist. — Pantagruel
Force as existing, neither idea nor mental construct, nor material. A third category with ideas/mental constructs and all material things?Force X effects object Y — ZhouBoTong
1) The real as existing, because real, but as what unspecified. The fictional existing as idea.1) real and fictional
2) maybe existentially mind-independent and mind-dependent (qualia?)
3) spatial (left to right, top to bottom, front to back) and process (starts and ends, comes and goes)
4) interactees and interaction (and transformation)
5) self (indexicals) and other
6) particulars (examples) and generals (abstractions)
7) maps and territories (models and evidence) — jorndoe
I'm thinking that "considering" may be a consideration, but isn't itself evidence of the thing itself. In any case, as conjecture, then as idea/mental construct.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. — Coben
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
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
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
I'm looking on line for a definition of force , but haven't found a good one. How would you define "force?" — tim wood
Small steps here: how do you get this? Following your lead, I can conjure a being that can "encounter" nothing, and therefore nothing exists. The truth of the matter is that the quality of encounterability is a quality of the object in question, not some individual or specific class of individuals that may or may not either encounter or be able to encounter the object. This isn't about existence for, rather it's about criteria for existence qua. And this also stands as a sufficient cause: if encounterable (in some way or other) then it exists. What we don't have is what kind of existence, encounterability being possible in a variety of ways. And that list has grown, subject to correction, to material, idea/mental, force, process. If existence be the genus, these four, so far, seem like species.First, because it restricts existence to the encountering capacities of the thing doing the encountering. — Metaphysician Undercover
Don't we need a definition of what it means to "exist" before we can proceed with an inquiry like this? — Metaphysician Undercover
Let's try this: two stones. Ordinarily, when existence is asserted, it's fair to ask how or in what way. On my scheme, ideas of relationships applied to them or about them are no part of their existence. 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. 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. Still, though, I cannot rule yours out-of-court, even if it destroys by explosion the concept of existence via the notion of relationship. 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?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". — ZhouBoTong
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
5) self and others. I think those have got to be ideas/mental constructs. — tim wood
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
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
even if it destroys by explosion the concept of existence via the notion of relationship. — tim wood
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
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
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
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