That's a difficult post. Take:

The seeming things do... — Srap Tasmaner

Seeming is what we do to things, isn' it? This says that they seem to themselves.

And this:

That looks like just a denial of Heidegger’s first sense of ‘phenomenon’... — Srap Tasmaner

...which is...

something that is shown, or brought to light, or shows itself in itself, — Srap Tasmaner

It's not a hammer until one uses it to hit a nail. Use is pivotal.

Roughly, to be is to be the subject of a predicate. — Banno

So, when talking about being, we would predicate being. Therefor being would have to be something that exists. But this seemingly cannot be the case as being alledgedly isn't ontic. Any thoughts on this?

So, when talking about being, we would predicate being. — Heiko

No. That's wrong.

Rather, in predicating to something one assumes that the something is there for discussion.

"The cat is on the mat" presumes a cat.

This is why logic treats existence as a second order predicate:

"There is a something such that it is a cat and it is on the mat".

Rather, in predicating to something one assumes that the something is there for discussion. — Banno

So being literally has no properties?

Existence is a predicate. — Cuthbert

to be is to be the subject of a predicate. — Banno

Alrighty then. Anyone for the idea, expressed to the OP I think, that existence is in the relation between subject and predicate rather than inhering in one or
the other?

Anyone for the idea, expressed to the OP I think, that existence is in the relation between subject and predicate rather than inhering in one or
the other? — Joshs

Does being happen?

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’? — Srap Tasmaner

Your enquiry is spotlighting issues that raise questions that impel us toward intriguing considerations of subtle distinctions between ways of existing.

The intention of my question is to focus on whether a common, general attribute-of-existence can be distilled from a comparison of pencil-as-writing-instrument and pencil-as-imaginary-rocket. I figure the more disparate the two things compared, given that a common, general-attribute-of-existence can be distilled, the more generally we have identified general existence.

I have long suspected as, in its prepositional mode, functions as a philosophically rich grammatical form.

If I can make bold and conclude Heidegger, in saying, human is a being for whom being is an issue, means (along with other things) human cannot live without narratives, then I will also dare to speculate that for human, the statement x as y is a serious claim, which is to say, within the narrative, metaphor (and simile) is necessary, not optional.

This leads me to saying that human, with its big brain, cannot live locally, which is to say x as y statements are, for human, truth statements. Furthermore, I speculate human, by force of the necessary status of x as y statements, gets drawn toward this very thread overall (and others like it), which tries to comprehensively grasp existence in its phosphorescent super-abundance.

Let me truck out a notion now rolling around in my head for years.

An existing thing, whether material or conceptual, is a road map to somewhere else. Perhaps the thingliness and even the hereness & whereness of things are not primary to existence. Instead, perhaps how a thing spins out, as if by centrifugal force, its observer to another destination is what is primary about existence. All this is to say that what our senses perceive of existence might be secondary to how a particular thing spins out its observer onto another en route to (whatever).

As I recall, Aristotle said being is the means by which all beings are revealed as it remains unrevealed..

These speculations lead me to assert, being is transcendental to all beings.

This might mean then, regarding pencil-as-imaginary-rocket, while we don't want to cease discerning hallucinations as such when they occur, we do want to push things to the point where we find ourselves within the feathering-boundaries of identity statements as truth statements.

What say you to approaching general existence as existential incandescense?

"Harry Potter is a fictional character" on the other hand explicitely expresses the mode of his existence and makes perfect sense. — Heiko

Harry Potter is a thing. Harry Potter is a being. That's where we start. Whatever else we want to say about it is up to us. He's a fictional character, yes. In common usage, if we were to say that Harry Potter is "real," people would think we're insane. But does Harry Potter "exist" -- if by "exist" we mean is a being? Yeah, of course. So do unicorns and Santa Claus.

...existence is in the relation between subject and predicate — Joshs

What is the subject - following Frege?

Is ∃(x)f(x) to be understood as a relation between things that f and existence?

I don't see that. ∃(x)f(x) says "we can talk about things that are f"

Just as (a, b, c, d...), in setting out the domain of discourse, says "we can talk about a, b, c, d and so on".

Just as putting the pieces on the board sets us up to play, but is not part of the game.

So being literally has no properties? — Heiko

It's a property of properties, in one way.

An existing thing, whether material or conceptual, is a road map to somewhere else. — ucarr

How about, a thing is a dimensional construction which we create in order to organize and anticipate future events?

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. — Srap Tasmaner

From what I gather, phenomena appear in various ways, but all are "manifestations" (phusis), related to unconcealedness (aletheia). So that which manifests or is uncovered. That's phenomena, as traditionally thought. Heidegger will go on to talk much more about this relation to "presence" (time), and basically say that phenomenology is the study of absences. Or that's what I gather from him anyway.

His talking about "seeming" is important because it shows up right away in early Greek thought, along with "becoming," and leads directly to Plato's ontology. Being, as opposed to mere seeming/semblance and inconstancy, becomes thought of as the constant, the enduring.

So being literally has no properties? — Heiko

Beings have properties. Being is not a being.

Just as putting the pieces on the board sets us up to play, but is not part of the game. — Banno

It depends on the context in which they’re doing it. If someone who never played chess puts the pieces on the board the sense and purpose of what they are doing can’t be part of the game. If they are a chess player, then this act already presupposes and belongs to the context of playing just as every subsequent behavior they make throughout the actual game. Same is true of a pool player racking up the balls.

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

An idea which comes directly from Heidegger, in his treatment of hermeneutics and developed by Gadamer. Davidson may or may not have encountered the idea via Heidegger, but it at least was enunciated by the latter long before Davidson. I sometimes wonder whether some analytic philosophers have not claimed originality and got away with it because their fellow analytics are not familiar with the phenomenological tradition.

Does being happen? — Heiko

Yes, being is a happening.

An idea which comes directly from Heidegger, — Janus

Who, as I said, got it from Husserl.

I'm not much interested in who said it first, so much as who said it best - the point is to be clear about what is being claimed.

Sure. Putting the pieces on the board is what Go consists in. But setting the game up is not playing the game; we need to keep track of which activity we are involved in.

Or if you prefer, setting the game up is usually a different language game to playing, although of course one can imagine a game in which setting up the game is part of the game.

Banno's game, for instance.

Who, as I said, got it from Husserl.

I'm not much interested in who said it first, so much as who said it best - the point is to be clear about what is being claimed. — Banno

Did you already say the idea came from Heidegger via Husserl? If so, my apologies I missed it. I'm not aware of that idea deriving from Husserl, but in any case it is abundantly clear in Heidegger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Always_already

So I suppose I am granting two ways of talking about being.
The first is exemplified in ∃(x)f(x), Quine's

A theory is committed to those and only those entities to which the bound variables of the theory must be capable of referring in order that the affirmations made in the theory be true.

The second extends Quine's logic to allow for individual constants, specified as part of the structure of the logic itself.

Or, in a simpler mode, the first is talk of the way things are and the second is giving things proper names.

setting the game up is not playing the game; we need to keep track of which activity we are involved in.

Or if you prefer, setting the game up is usually a different language game to playing, although of course one can imagine a game in which setting up the game is aprt of the game. — Banno

Is ∃(x)f(x) to be understood as a relation between things that f and existence? — Banno

Existence would be the way that the particulars ( a thing that is f) alters the sense of the subject that they are particulars of. Formal logic supposes that the subject and predicate sit still as self-identical contents , while we cobble them together in an external relation. Existence as subject-object relation claims
instead that taking the predicate as the subject ( taking this apple as an apple) isnt just a neutral cobbling of already fixed contents. Rather , when we deal with a particular , we are altering the original context of the subject. The subject morphs in such a way that it freshly frames the particular.

Putting the pieces on the board isnt just prelude to the game. It establishes a fresh context out of which the context of game is dependent and shaped.

Sure, the games are recursive.
Next?

I'm not aware of that idea deriving from Husserl, but in any case it is abundantly clear in Heidegger. — Janus

This is how Husserl modeled the pre-interpreted basis of experience:

“Every apperception in which we apprehend at a glance, and noticingly grasp, objects given beforehand- for example, the already-given everyday world- every apperception in which we understand their sense and its horizons forthwith, points back to a "primal instituting", in which an object with a similar sense became constituted for the first time. Even the physical things of this world that are unknown to us are, to speak generally, known in respect of their type. We have already seen like things before, though not precisely this thing here. Thus each everyday experience involves an analogizing transfer of an originally instituted objective sense to a new case, with its anticipative apprehension of the object as having a similar sense.”(Cartesian Meditations, Husserl)

But Heidegger didn’t simply copy Husserl’s approach. There are important differences , and they go way behind Davidson’s grasp of the pre-interpreted.

Existence would be the way that the particulars ( a thing that is f) alters the sense of the subject that they are particulars of. Formal logic supposes that the subject and predicate sit still as self-identical contents , while we cobble them together in an external relation. — Joshs

The first sentence took me some time. I don't think that "alteration" is the right word there - "defines" would be more appropiate, I think. When using the existential quantor the "x" typically appears in the predicate as well. It does not seem to make sense to say "There is an x, so that 3=3" (atough the grammar indeed seems to allow this - but I would have to look that up).

Yes, being is a happening. — Joshs

I don't agree with this.

Being isn't any-thing, including a "happening," including "becoming," including "change." It is very much like nothing. We interpret this "nothing," but that's all we can say about it.

All these sorts of words have overlapping meanings: exists, real, authentic, present, etc. You just have to look to context.

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? — Srap Tasmaner

If we are talking about folk you might expect to meet in the street, or read about in history books, then "Frodo doesn't exist" says that the name "Frodo" does not refer. "Frodo walked into Mordor" is an empty sentence.

If on the other hand we are talking about Mordor and surrounds, then "Frodo" does indeed refer, and "Frodo walked into Mordor" is, we are told, true.

If we want to talk about both - to explain the difference between Tolkien's The Red Book of Westmarch and, say, Gibbon's Decline and fall of the Roman Empire, we will need suitable predicates to differentiate them - "...is historical", "...is fiction", or some such.

Interesting, thanks. As I read that, Husserl seems to be saying that there is a primordial act of consciousness wherein something is first seen as something. Would you say this is still working within a metaphysics of presence, whereas Heidegger would say that the seeing as is derived from the pre-conscious pragmatic awareness of the ready-to-handedness of things?

Being isn't any-thing, including a "happening," including "becoming," including "change." It is very much like nothing. We interpret this "nothing," but that's all we can say about it. — Xtrix

I don't see being as separate from becoming; the only difference I could imagine would be to see it as becoming abstractly considered by putting the idea or sense of change aside. Do you understand being as changeless?

Lest the relevance to the OP be lost, notice that the account of being given in the tradition of Frege, Russell, Quine and so on does not depend on time. Instead it delves into what can be said.

Are you claiming that the phenomenological account of being cannot be said? Or are you only interested in what can be said in terms of predicate logic?