What was the point of "falsification" again? — Heiko

It was Popper’s way of showing that he was stuck in a Kantian time warp.

It was Popper’s way of showing that he was stuck in a Kantian time warp. — Joshs

Exactly - the _negative_ account is the corrective.

What would it mean for it to have a fixed identity? If we say
that it is composed of subatomic particles , do these particles have a fixed identity? Let’s say a quark exists for a millisecond. Does it have an identity that endures for this span of time? — Joshs

We cannot speak about things which are not identifiable as having an identity except in the minimal sense that to speak about them is already to posit an identity.

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...? — Banno

Wouldn't the difference be that one is an abstraction, subject to an individual perception, and the other an apple physically realized? I would say that existence adds a quality that denies human intervention for it to be perceived as true, e.g even I can't see something, it can exist. I may be wrong in this though.

It's hard not to ask the question of being without getting into Heidegger, but let's see this question has any relevance to our lives, as individuals and also in the society/culture we happen to be living in.

I think it does, in the same sense that belief in God does. This is why I bring up religion often as being in a similar dimension as philosophy. I think they both ask and try to answer fundamental, universal human questions— and the answers (tacit or explicit) manifest themselves in our culture and our lifestyles.

Although Christianity is still around, I’d argue that this is a secular age, defined by capitalism and scientism — based solely on looking at how we actually live, and who our leaders are (and the beliefs on such they make and justify their decisions).

Thoughts on this? Am I way off?

Wouldn't the difference be that one is an abstraction, subject to an individual perception, and the other an apple physically realized? — john27

"an abstraction"...? What's that? What sort of thing is an abstraction?

"subject to an individual perception..." Do you often see nonexistent apples?

"...an apple physically realized" is an apple. Is an apple that is not physically realised an apple? It might well be a thought about an apple, or an imagined apple, or a story about an apple, but is it an apple?

Consider Meinongianism.

"Ronald McDonald does not eat spinach" is not like ""Ronald McDonald does not exist".

And you might furtehr consder

2. It's not difficult to understand an apple that is not sweet, or an apple that is not red - but an apple that does not exist? What is it? — Banno

"an abstraction"...? What's that? What sort of thing is an abstraction? — Banno

I would argue an abstraction is simply that; the vivid image of a red, juicy, sweet apple without its direct connection to our material world. I think the crux of this argument can be assessed as:

Do thoughts generate existence?

If yes then, I would find that you are correct, as there would not be any innate difference between two red apples "existing" per say.

If no however, and a thought remains solely the image of a red juicy and sweet apple without any substance beneath, no physical properties constraining it, then I would be more inclined to say that I am correct.

Whats the difference between an apple that exists and one that is generated by thought? well one you can eat, one you can't.

I don't know if I have fully understood Meinongianism so i'm going to refrain from saying anything right now :sweat:

It also might be more accurate to say that instead of do thoughts generate existence, do thoughts exist?

I forgot to address a point oops. Ill state it here:

"...an apple physically realized" is an apple. Is an apple that is not physically realised an apple? It might well be a thought about an apple, or an imagined apple, or a story about an apple, but is it an apple? — Banno

I would argue in this sense it is an apple, but incomplete, because it does not contain a major part of the apple which is its physical properties. My thinking kind of falls in line like this:

You watch a Bruce Springsteen show on youtube. then, you go to see one in real life, where it has the ambience, the entirety of the sound, hundreds of thousands of people around you etc.
The video could be considered the same thing as the real concert, but obviously its lacking something, which were physical properties that you could enjoy had you been there, had you entertained its physical existence.

"subject to an individual perception..." Do you often see nonexistent apples? — Banno

Well when I read I see things that aren't "there"(physically-or in a way that I can perceive naturally) all the time.

The video could be considered the same thing as the real concert, but obviously its lacking something, which were physical properties that you could enjoy had you been there, had you entertained its physical existence. — john27

Existence is not like being a video, or a simulation, or a story.

Would you buy front-row tickets to a concert, with back stage pass and after-gig party, if the only catch was that it didn't exist?

What would you have purchased?

`To be naive for moment, predicates tell us something about things. The apple is red. When I learn that J K Rowling exists and that Harry Potter doesn't then I'm learning something very specific about each of them. J K Rowling is an author and Harry Potter is a magician. J K Rowling exists and Harry Potter doesn't. That's four things I've learned in total. In this case existence is very predicaty isn't it?

Existence is not like being a video, or a simulation, or a story. — Banno

I agree. I think this statement is what differentiates thought from existence, being that my point was thought is similar to that of a simulation, a video, an image, or an intricate story of existence the we perpetrate ourselves. An abstraction.

Would you buy front-row tickets to a concert, with back stage pass and after-gig party, if the only catch was that it didn't exist? — Banno

I would buy a ticket, and walk through the door. Unfortunately, as I open the door to this concert, I find there is nothing there; a complete absence of existence. For no particular reason, I close my eyes. I then create a simulation of the concert within my mental capacities; incomplete of course, I cannot know what the ambience of the concert was, and heck, I probably can't even pinpoint what song is being played, but my simulation is correct enough to make my way back stage and enjoy the supposed concert nonetheless.

What a rip off!

I would much rather buy a ticket that doesn't exist to go to a real concert. At least then, if they don't accept my mentally simulated image of a ticket, I could just hop the fence.

"Ronald McDonald does not eat spinach" is not like ""Ronald McDonald does not exist". — Banno

Wouldn't this mean Harry Potter exists? It is just that he is no real person but a fictive figure.

Do thoughts generate existence? — john27

If you imagine an apple then there surely is an imagination of an apple. I do not see inaccuracies of spoken language to be a problem. If you buy a painting of a dragon there must be an idea of what a dragon looks like.

A mental picture of an apple, for example. — Heiko

I agree. Is this mental picture of an apple in your opinion in existence?

What do you mean by imagination? — john27

A mental picture of an apple, for example. Could be a painted image as well.

J K Rowling is an author and Harry Potter is a magician. J K Rowling exists and Harry Potter doesn't. That's four things I've learned in total. In this case existence is very predicaty isn't it? — Cuthbert

So far as the surface grammar goes, sure. “Exists” is after all an English verb, so it’s something English noun phrases can do.

You can imagine someone — many years ago now — who had not heard of Harry Potter coming into the middle of a conversation and asking who Harry Potter is. When we say, “He’s a character in a book by a woman named ‘J. K. Rowling’,” are we saying he doesn’t exist but she does? Or are we saying he exists in one way in she in another? Or are we saying he’s one sort of thing and she another?

Here are some different comparisons. Does Robert Galbraith exist? He’s J. K. Rowling, so he must, right? But he doesn’t exist as Robert Galbraith. Did J. T. Leroy exist? Not like J. K. Rowling. Someone did write the novels, and someone did appear in public answering to the name “J. T. Leroy” but they weren’t the same person. Does Oobah Butler exist? Oobah Butler wrote the articles that won awards — about a restaurant that didn’t exist but then did — but sometimes the person who showed up to collect the award, answering to “Oobah Butler”, was no more Oobah Butler than Savannah Knoop was J. T. Leroy. Does Erin Hunter exist? Someone writes the Warriors books, but not always the same person, and none of them are called “Erin Hunter”.

Honestly, I don’t think any of these puzzles are any help in understanding existence, not on their own. They are all — Harry Potter, Robert Galbraith, J. T. Leroy, Oobah Butler and the Shed at Dulwich, Erin Hunter — instances of one sort of pretending or another. Pretending is very interesting, but I’m not sure it’s the ‘master key’ to understanding existence.

It adds a layer to be analyzed; maybe that helps clarify the layer that was already there, but maybe not. This pencil is not a rocket. Two predicates there and some existence. If I pretend this pencil is a rocket, does that make it clearer in what sense the pencil exists? Or even in what sense it exists as a pencil but not as a rocket? Or in what sense no rocket exists where the pencil is? Maybe? If you incline to a ‘the pencil is a mental model’ view, then you kind of want to say everything’s pretend, all we do is pretend, so maybe the cases of obvious pretense are helpful if you can show they’re not different from ‘normal’ cases in any important way.

Pretending a pencil is a rocket is pretending something is a rocket, and that’s different from holding up your hand in a certain way and saying, “Pretend I’m holding a pencil.” Is that a funny way of saying, “Pretend I’m holding something you (and I, and everyone else) would pretend is a pencil”? (You’ll have to spruce up your vocabulary, because you only can pretend a pencil is a pencil if you mistakenly think it isn’t. Fun!) Even if it is, have you learned anything about the difference between having something in your hand and not?

This pencil is not a rocket. — Srap Tasmaner

Question -- Since your example sentence provides (1) subject (pencil), (1) complement (rocket) and (1) verb (to be), when you write

Two predicates there and some existence. — Srap Tasmaner

am I failing to understand your intentions? Please clarify. :smile:

I meant logical predicates, sorry, not grammatical. (It’s grammatically subject and predicate, as usual, or one noun phrase and one verb phrase, and the verb phrase has a predicate nominative in it.)

Of the thing in question, ‘__ is a pencil’ can be truly predicated, ‘__ is a rocket’ cannot; and there’s a thing in question.

So that’s two (logical) predicates and some existence.

I’m not in love with that analysis, but it’s the usual way people do it.

Or are we saying he exists in one way in she in another? Or are we saying he’s one sort of thing and she another? — Srap Tasmaner

Ok, I think my naivety can withstand this pressure. Yes, we can say that Potter exists in one way and Rowling in another. Existence is a predicate. Also '..is red' is a predicate. The apple is red. My trousers are red. But they are different colours. Am I saying that the apple is red in one way and my trousers are red in another? Yes, that's just what I'm saying. So Potter exists in one way - as a character - and Rowling in another - as the author.

Does Erin Hunter exist? Someone writes the Warriors books, but not always the same person, and none of them are called “Erin Hunter”.

You have just given a very good account of the kind of existence that Erin Hunter has and doesn't have. That's like any predicate. The apple is a shiny bright red and my trousers are a dull dark red. Nothing to bother my naivety here. There are different kinds of existence, redness and noise. I'm ok with that.

I wasn’t really arguing against treating ‘__ exists’ as a predicate, just suggesting that most of the examples we think of are really about something else (pretending).

So Potter exists in one way - as a character - and Rowling in another - as the author. — Cuthbert

Of course, no one is confused about any of this. It’s just hard to figure out how we keep it all straight, logically. How would we explain it to someone unfamiliar with the idea of fiction?

For instance, when you say Harry’s a character, you don’t mean that in the same way you might say Harry’s a magician. In the book, he’s not a character in a book, but a real person.

You have just given a very good account of the kind of existence that Erin Hunter has and doesn't have. — Cuthbert

Have I? There is nothing on earth that answers to “Erin Hunter”. She doesn’t exist. Some people pretend she does, and some people mistakenly believe she does. None of that means she exists in some special, different way. Why should it? If I pretend this pencil is a rocket, does that mean ‘in some sense’ it is? Why? It’s still a pencil and I must think it’s a pencil to pretend it isn’t. I don’t even think it’s a rocket — I’m not mistaken, like the readers of the Warriors books, but pretending, like the authors.

What kind of existence do you think Erin Hunter has? (It is evidently not the kind that allows you to write books, because only people can do that.)

When Tolkien pretends that what he offers to the public is a translation of The Red Book of Westmarch, he pretends both that there is such a thing and that his work is a translation. If you want to say that ‘in some sense’ the Red Book exists, then is Tolkien’s work ‘in some sense’ a translation? In what sense could that possibly be true?

Existence is a predicate. — Cuthbert

I would say instead that Western philosophy of a certain stripe and era treats existence as a predicate( we can trace this logic back to Aristotle), but that wasn’t always so, and it isn’t the case for Wittgenstein or the phenomenologists( or for the OP).
A predicate isnt something simply added onto a subject as an additional piece of information that can be correct or incorrect. A predicate pragmatically and contextually transforms a subject in a certain direction. Not only the redness of an apply, but the nature (the sense) of the connection between the predicate and the subject are understood within a unique context of sense. We ignore all this and pretend that we are dealing with a picture of an apple and potential attributes or properties that transcend the context of their invocation.

Imagine going on and on about an apple that “doesn’t exist.”

Imagine going on and on about an apple that “doesn’t exist.” — Xtrix

Or having one’s life changed by a novel whose characters ‘don’t exist’.

:up:

Existence is a predicate. — Cuthbert

No it isn’t.

Pretending a pencil is a rocket is pretending something is a rocket... — Srap Tasmaner

Does the pencil as writing instrument have at least one existential attribute in common with the pencil as rocket?

No it isn’t. — Xtrix

Exactly. Which is why the statement "Harry Potter exists" is underdetermined and misleading. We would understand it as "Harry Potter is a real person" which he is not. "Harry Potter is a fictional character" on the other hand explicitely expresses the mode of his existence and makes perfect sense.

Wouldn't this mean Harry Potter exists? It is just that he is no real person but a fictive figure. — Heiko

Roughly, to be is to be the subject of a predicate. Harry Potter is a fictional character.

A mental picture of an apple is not an apple. It's a mental picture - whatever that is.

I’ve been dancing around it, but there may be some connection between being and pretending.

In the introduction to Being and Time, Heidegger addresses the two senses of ‘phenomenon’: (1) something that is shown, or brought to light, or shows itself in itself, all that; (2) something that seems to be something else, that shows itself as something it is not, a semblance. The two are related, and you can see how they would be, but he also wants to block an identification of seeming with appearing (as). It’s confusing enough that MacQuarrie and Robinson include a lengthy analytical footnote, and I don’t intend to go through all that.

We might hope to find something to do with pretending here, because it is possible for something to show itself in itself or as something else, and it’s possible for us to treat something as what it is or as something else. (If there is a connection, it might explain why talk of existence often gets hung up on cases of pretending.)

But pretending is not like a mistake, which is also taking something to be something it’s not. When your child comes out in their Halloween costume, you can pretend not to recognize them, to think they are actually Jack Skellington, say, which would indeed have been a mistake. In this case, the child may be pretending to be Jack Skellington, or not. They’ll let you know if you get it wrong. You can pretend to be Jack Skellington without dressing up at all, so the costume doesn’t tell you whether they’re pretending.

What we do in pretending does not seem to be grounded in how things can seem to be something they’re not; nor does it bring about any such seeming. Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t find much of a connection.

Does the pencil as writing instrument have at least one existential attribute in common with the pencil as rocket? — ucarr

Do you mean, do they both exist?

I don’t think ‘as’ confers or conjures existence. You can use a rock as a hammer, but you don’t thereby bring into existence the-rock-as-hammer alongside the rock itself, do you?

Or going the other way, in abstracting, you can look at a basketball as a toy, as a shape, as a souvenir, as a commercial product, and so on. Those are ways in which the basketball can be seen, but it’s the basketball being seen in this specific light, the basketball that is the thing here, and how it is viewed is not another and separate thing.

Or is none of this what you meant by ‘existential attribute’?

So... One cannot simply walk into Mordor? :gasp:

there may be some connection between being and pretending. — Srap Tasmaner

Perhaps the one useful thing in phenomenology is that the cat is only on the mat because we pretend it is so. We can pretend things that are true.

Oh, sorry - I said "pretend" instead of "intend"...

We might owe a debt to Husserl.

Davidson phrased the same point in a less misleading way when he pointed out that the world is always, already, interpreted.

Is that what you have in mind?

Is that what you have in mind? — Banno

No.

Maybe we can ask the question straight up: is it because things can seem to us to be something they are not that we can pretend that they are something they are not?

I have ‘no’ so far for that question. The seeming things do and the pretending we do have a very abstract similarity but are not actually connected. So far as I can tell.

If you come at it from the analytic tradition, you might want to say that there’s not even a question here: something seeming like now one thing and now another is just us conceptualizing it variously. If we can do that, we can obviously pretend using the same tools. (Talk is cheap.) That looks like just a denial of Heidegger’s first sense of ‘phenomenon’, and if you do that then you just can’t have phenomenology. I’m not ready to say that.