To be is to be the value of a variable. — Moliere
Boss Paul:
That ditch is Boss Kean's ditch. And I told him that dirt in it's your dirt. What's your dirt doin' in his ditch?
Luke:
I don't know, Boss.
Boss Paul:
You better get in there and get it out, boy.
But they have the characteristic of only existing within or as a part of something. You can’t have a hole that exists on its own, whereas you can have an object that exists on its own. So a hole has to be an attribute of something, it can’t have independent existence. — Wayfarer
I confess I have never understood this in the least. Bound variables are part of symbolic representations, not the things themselves. A cat is the value of a bound variable as in "Exists(x) such that x is a cat," but I find this very unconvincing. The cat is a cat long before there are logicians to invent quantified logic. I just don't understand this kind of thinking. Must be me. A lot of this kind of philosophical discourse just goes right over my head. — fishfry
Is the question whether holes exist? They most definitely do. Mathematically, if you poke a hole in the x-y plane, then loops around the can no longer be contracted to a point. The hole has changed the topology of the plane. Holes are a huge area of study in math. In algebraic topology they try to find clever ways to count the number of holes in an object. Holes are a thing, not just an absence of a thing. — fishfry
I don't mean to dig into Quine — Moliere
It seems you've changed your stance after your exchange with Wayfarer? — Moliere
But when you consider the sense in which holes (or absences) exist, then you're asking a question about their real nature, and that is what seems to me they don't have. — Wayfarer
So it's an unexpectedly deep question, I think (although maybe you did expect it!)
Yes I understand that. It's just that I've heard that particular saying before, and I genuinely don't understand it. — fishfry
No, I think holes exist, and so do shadows. There are things that exist and that only appear along with more substantial things. Holes and shadows being the two that come to mind. Ontologically parasitic, what a great phrase.
I think holes exist though. I haven't had a chance to read the SEP article yet. But there's too much math around the question of identifying and counting holes for me to doubt their existence. — fishfry
How about shapes? Shapes can't exist in isolation. They must be molded from something. — hypericin
Holes are properly thought of as shapes. Their only distinction is concavity. — hypericin
Oh, it comes from Quine's On What There Is, if you haven't read it. I have a hand-wavey understanding of it in the sense that I've read a bit of and about Quine. — Moliere
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