Category: Existence

Heidegger, Carnap, and Das Nichts

A Substack entry wherein I diagnose Rudolf Carnap’s Heidegger Derangement Syndrome. Rudi was down with a very bad case of it. Thanks to him it spread to a crapload of analytic bigots. Excerpt:

One of the reasons I gave my weblog the title Maverick Philosopher is because I align neither with the analytic nor with the Continental camp. Study everything, I say, and drink from every stream. “Nothing human is foreign to me.” (Terence)

Reverting to the camp metaphor, when did the camps become two? In dead earnest this occurred when Heidegger burst onto the scene in 1927 with Being and Time. I agree with Peter Simons: “Probably no individual was more responsible for the schism in philosophy than Heidegger.” (Quoted in Overgaard, et al., An Introduction to Metaphilosophy, Cambridge UP, 2013, 110.) It is not as if Heidegger set out to split the mainstream whose headwaters were in Franz Brentano into two tributaries; it is just that he started publishing things that the analytic types, who had some sympathy for Heidegger’s main teacher Husserl, could not relate to at all.

If I were were to select two writings that best epitomize the depth of the Continental-analytic clash near the time of its outbreak, they would be Heidegger’s 1929 What is Metaphysics? and Carnap’s 1932 response, “On the Overcoming of Metaphysics Through the Logical Analysis of Language.” (In fairness to Carnap, let us note that his Erkenntnis piece is more than a response to Heidegger inasmuch as it calls into question the meaningfulness of all metaphysics.)

The young Martin Heidegger

 

Is God a being among beings or Being Itself? An Exchange with Dale Tuggy

Top o' the Stack.

One morning, just as Old Sol was peeping his ancient head over the magnificent and mysterious Superstition range, I embarked on a drive down old Arizona 79, past Florence, to a hash house near Oracle Junction where I had the pleasure of another nice long three and one half hour caffeine-fueled discussion with Dale Tuggy. For me, he is a perfect interlocutor: Dale is a serious truth-seeker, no mere academic gamesman, analytically sharp, historically well-informed, and personable. He also satisfies a necessary though not sufficient condition of fruitful dialog: he and I differ on some key points, but our differences play out over a wide field of agreement.

I incline toward the view that God is not a being among beings, but Being itself. Dale rejects this view as incoherent. In this entry I will take some steps toward clarifying the issues that divide us. I will conclude in good old Platonic fashion, aporetically.

Once More on Whether Existence Could be a Property

This just over the transom from Samuli Isotalo:
 
I recently started reading your book A Paradigm Theory of Existence and the following kind of argument against the view that existence is a first-level property came to my mind. Probably you and many others have considered something like this, but I send it anyway.
 
Suppose existence is a first-level property and to exist is to instantiate this property. Now, given that some substance a instantiates some property P, we most likely want to say that this property P itself also exists. Thus, given that some substance exists, we want to say that the property, existence, it instantiates, also exists. But if to exist is to instantiate a property, existence, then it seems that in order for this property to exist, it needs to instantiate a further property, existence2. But then we also want to say that this property, existence2, exists, therefore it needs its own property, existence3, and so on ad infinitum.
 
You make three points.
 
The first is that, if existence is a first-level property, a property of concrete individuals or substances, and if the existing of substance a is its instantiating of this property, then the first-level property of existence must itself exist. I agree.  For if existence did not itself exist, then neither a nor any concrete individual would exist.  This holds no matter to which category we assign existence.  No matter what existence itself is, were it not to exist, nothing would exist. But if you read me carefully, you will see that I resolutely deny that existence is a property (where properties are defined in terms of instantiation) of anything, whether individuals, properties, concepts, linguistic  expressions, worlds, . . . whatever.
 
Your second point is that if existence is a property of individuals, and existence itself exists, then there has to be a second property, existence2, in virtue of whose instantiation existence1 exists.  But this doesn't follow. For it may be that existence is a self-instantiating property, roughly in the way a Platonic Form is self-exemplifying.  (But we needn't digress into a discussion of Plato, his Forms (eide), participation (methexis) in Forms, the Third Man Regress, etc.)
 
Consider the property of being concrete. Is it itself concrete? No, it is abstract. Now consider the property of being abstract. Is it itself abstract? Yes. Therefore, the property of being abstract is self-instantiating. (Notice: I did not say self-exemplifying. A property is not an exemplar.). The same holds for other putative properties: self-identity is self-identical, causal inertness is causally inert, omnitemporality is omnitemporal. 
 
So why can't existence be self-instantiating? I am not saying that it is, but if it is, then, to your third point,  the infinite regress cannot get started. Note also that if properties are necessary beings, as many philosophers maintain, and if existence is a property of individuals, then too the infinite regress could not arise.
 
Thus, treating existence as a first level property leads to an infinite regress. Existence seems to always pass on to some further property, like a slippery piece of soap that one cannot catch. What if we say that the property existence itself just exists, without it instantiating any further property? Then it seems that we have arrived at a picture very much like the one you are endorsing, namely, existence itself as Paradigm. For then we have this one property existence, which alone exists without it pointing to anything further, and every other thing exists in relation to it, by participating in it or instantiating it. But then it seems that to call such a thing ‘property’ is misleading, for properties are ontologically posterior to substances. Now, this reminds a lot of Aquinas, when he says, e.g. in De Ente et Essentia that existence itself is to be understood as something absolute and every other thing as participating in it.
What you are missing is that I deny that existence is a property. So your criticisms do not touch my view. What I conclude, after  a complicated argument that I cannot here summarize, is that existence is more like a paradigmatic individual. It is not a predicable entity. It is more like the opposite of a predicable entity. It is not a property of individuals, properties, or anything else. As I said above, self-existent Existence, as that in virtue of which everything else exists, resembles a Platonic paradigm. You are right to catch the similarity to Aquinas, although my argumentation is wholly non-Thomistic. It is unlike any of his Five Ways. This because it it not based on an Aristotelian substance ontology, but on a fact ontology deriving from Gustav Bergmann and D. M. Armstrong.

What are Modes of Being?

The following has been languishing in my unpublished archives since December 2009. Time to clean it up and send it out. If it triggers a bit of hard thinking in a few receptive heads, and therewith, the momentary bliss of the sublunary bios theoretikos, then it has done its job. 

Don't comment unless you understand the subject-matter. 

…………………………

Many contemporary philosophers are not familiar with talk of modes of being. So let me try to make this notion clear. I will use 'being' and existence' interchangeably in this entry. I begin by distinguishing four questions:

Q1. What is meant by 'mode of being'?
Q2. Is the corresponding idea intelligible?
Q3. Are there (two or more) modes of being?
Q4. What are the modes of being?

My present concern is with the first two questions only. Clearly, the first two questions are logically prior to the second two. It is possible to understand what is meant by 'mode of being' and grant that the notion is intelligible while denying that there are (two or more) modes of being. And if two philosophers agree that there are (two or more) modes of being, they might yet disagree about what these modes are.

With respect to anything at all, we can ask the following different and seemingly intelligible questions. What is it? Does it exist? How (in what way or mode) does it exist? This yields a tripartite distinction between quiddity (in a broad sense to include essential and accidental, relational and nonrelational properties), existence, and mode of existence.  There is also a fourth question, the Why question: why does anything at all, or any particular thing, exist? The Why question is not on today's agenda. 

My claim is that the notion that there are modes of being is intelligible, not that it is unavoidable. But we might decide that the costs of avoiding it are prohibitively high.  'Intelligible' means understandable.

What might motivate a MOB (modes-of-being) doctrine? I will sketch two possible motivations.

The Latest from Peter van Inwagen

This just over the transom:

Dear Sir, 

Recently I have been looking for some work by Peter van Inwagen and found his recent book Being A Study in Ontology. I believe the subject could be very interesting to you, because, as far as I know, you have written several times on his ontological views (even if there is deep disagreements between his and yours ontological views). 
 
I hope you are doing well in this messy and unpredictable world. 
 
Kind regards, 
Miloš Milojević 
 
Dear Mr. Milojević,
 
Thank you for bringing this book to my attention.  I will try to persuade the editor of a journal to send me a review copy. Failing that, I will happily shell out 75 USD for a copy. The undisputed 'king' of the 'thin theorists,' van Inwagen is wrong about Being, but brilliantly wrong and a formidable adversary. 
 
I have addressed his views many times in these pages and a few times in print.  Van Inwagen on Fiction, Existence, Properties, Particulars, and Method is one; "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" ( in Daniel D. Novotny and Lukas Novak (eds.), Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, Routledge. pp. 45-75. 2014.) is another.
 
Other articles of mine on Being and existence can be found via my PhilPeople page.
 
As for this "messy and unpredictable world," let's hope it holds together for a few more years. I see no reason to be optimistic, but I derive consolation both from philosophy and from old age. In the meantime we must do our part-time best to beat back the forces of darkness.  Only part-time, however, because this world is a vanishing quantity that does not merit the full measure of our love and attention. All things worldly must pass. "Impermanence is swift." (Dogen) "Work out your salvation with diligence." (Buddha)
 
Finally, Miloš, I  thank you for your correspondence over the years,
 
Bill
 
Musical addendum
 
If Harrison was the Beatle with spiritual depth, Lennon was the radical leftist shallow-pate, McCartney the romantic, and Starr the regular guy and good-time Charley.

Peter Geach on the Real Distinction I

GeachOceans of ink have been spilled over the centuries on the celebrated distinctio realis between essence (essentia) and existence (esse).  You have no idea how much ink, and vitriol too, has flooded  the scholastic backwaters and sometimes spilled over into mainstream precincts. Anyway, the distinction has long fascinated me and I hold to some version of it.  I will first give a rough explanation of the distinction and then examine one of Peter Geach's arguments for it.

1)  We can say first of all that the real distinction is so-called because it is not a merely conceptual or notional or logical distinction.  'Real' from the Latin res connotes something the existence of which is independent of finite minds such as ours. So the real distinction is not like the distinction between the Morning Star and the Evening Star. It is not a distinction parasitic upon how we view things, or when we view them, or how we refer to them or think about them.   The terms 'MS' and 'ES' express two different "modes of presentation" (Darstellungsweisen in Gottlob Frege's terminology) of one and the same massive chunk of extra-mental physical reality, the planet Venus.  So one might think that the real distinction between essentia and esse is like the distinction between Venus and Mars. Venus and Mars are not abstract modes of presentation but concrete entities in their own right.  Venus and Mars are distinct in concrete reality, not merely in conception, or distinct at the level of Fregean Sinn (sense).

2) But although the Venus-Mars distinction is a real distinction, the distinction between essence and existence cannot be like it.  For while each of the planets can exist without the other, essence and existence cannot each exist without the other in one and the same thing.  A thing's existence is nothing without the thing whose existence it is, and thus nothing without the thing's essence.  I hope it is obvious that the existence of this particular coffee cup from which I am now drinking would be nothing without the cup and thus without the cup's total or 'wide' essence.

3) A tripartite distinction has emerged: thing, existence of the thing, essence of the thing. A sentence ago I used the phrase 'wide essence.' Why?  Because 'essence' (quiddity, whatness) can be taken in two ways, one 'wide' the other 'narrow.' The wide essence encompasses all of a thing's quidditative determinations (Bestimmungen). We can think of wide essence as the conjunction of all of a thing's quidditative attributes. Socrates and Plato, for example, differ in their wide essences despite the fact that they are both essentially human and essentially rational, and univocally so, to mention just two of their essential, as opposed to accidental, attributes. For the one man is sunburned, let us say, while other is not.   So while they differ in their wide essences, they do not differ in their narrow essence: the two share their essential properties, being human, and being rational, and others as well.

4)  I said that it is obvious that the existence of a concrete individual  would be nothing at all apart from the wide essence of that very same concrete individual. How could the existence of Socrates, that very man, be anything at all apart from the ensemble of his attributes? The existence of a thing is not like the pit of an avocado that can be removed from the avocado and exist on its own.

It is rather less obvious, if at all obvious, that the wide essence of a concrete individual would be nothing without existence.  Why couldn't there be a wholly determinate individual essence that does not exist? Why couldn't it have been that before Socrates began to exist he was a wholly determinate individual essence?    His coming to exist would then be  the actualization of a pre-existent wholly determinate merely possible individual essence. On such a scheme when God creates, he does not create ex nihilo, out of nothing, but out of mere possibles.  He creates by conferring existence (actuality) upon  wholly determinate  individual essences which before their creation are merely possible items.

If, however, as Thomas maintains, creation is creatio ex nihilo, then the essence and the existence of a concrete individual are each nothing without the other. Here we take the Thomist line.

5) The essence and the existence of a particular individual are thus each dependent on the other but nonetheless really, not merely notionally or conceptually, distinct.  They are really distinct (like Venus and Mars, but unlike the Morning Star and the Evening Star) but inseparable (unlike Venus and Mars).  They are really distinct like my eye glasses and my head but not separable in the manner of glasses and head. So a good analogy might be the convexity and concavity of one of the lenses.  The convex surface of a particular lens cannot be without the concave surface of that very lens and vice versa, but they are really distinct.  'Convex' and 'concave' are not merely two different ways of referring to the same piece of glass. The distinction is not a matter of our projection, or imposition, or interpretation.  There is a real mind-independent difference.  But it is only  an analogy. If the distinctio realis is an essential structural determination of finite beings, it is presumably sui generis and only analogous to the distinction between convexity and concavity in a lens.

6) Now what reason could we have for accepting something like the real distinction?  Here is one of Geach's arguments, based on Thomas Aquinas, from "Form and Existence," reprinted in Peter Geach, God and the Soul (Thoemmes Press, 1994), pp. 42-64.  Geach's argument is on p. 61.  I'll put the argument in my own way.  In keeping with my distinction between the rationally acceptable and the rationally compelling,  I find the argument rationally acceptable, and I incline to accept it.  Unfortunately many others, including many distinguished Thomists, do not. And that fact gives me pause, as it must, given my commitment to intellectual honesty. (More fuel for my aporetic fire.)

Suppose you have two numerically distinct instances of F-ness.  They don't differ in point of F-ness, since each is an instance of F-ness.  But they are numerically distinct.  So some other factor must be brought in to account for the difference.  That factor is existence.  They differ in their very existence.  Since they differ in existence and yet agree in essence, essence and existence are really distinct. For illustration we turn to Max Black.

Max Black was famous for his iron spheres.  (Geach does not mention Black.) In a well-known article from way back, Black hypothesizes a world consisting of just two of them and nothing else, the spheres being alike in every relational and monadic respect.  In Black's boring world, then, there are two numerically distinct instances of iron sphere.  Since both exist, and since they differ solo numero, I conclude that they  differ in their very existence.  Since they differ in their existence, but agree in their iron sphericity, and in every other relational and non-relational feature, there is a real distinction between existence and essence in each sphere.

Suppose you deny that.  Suppose you say that the spheres do not differ in their very existence and that they share existence.  The consequence, should one cease to exist, would be that the other would cease to exist as well, which is absurd.

Existence Exists: Analytic or Synthetic?

 Recently over the transom:

I am A. Kashfi, Professor of philosophy from Tehran University, Iran.

I am currently engaged in studying your esteemed book A PARADIGM THEORY OF EXISTENCE. In this book, you argue that “existence exists”. Regarding this proposition, a question has arisen for me. I would be grateful to have your response.

Is this proposition analytical or synthetic?

If this proposition is analytical, its equivalent would be: "Existence is existence" or "Existent is existent," which, as it is evident, doesn't contain particularly useful information.

If this proposition is synthetic, it requires that the concept of “existence” be distinct from the concept of “existent”. I want to know what the distinction between these two concepts is. Here, which concept "other than existence" (note: distinct from existence), in accordance with the synthetic nature of the mentioned proposition, are we attributing to existence?
 
In other words, I understand the proposition "A tree exists", but what does the proposition "existence exists", (given the synthetic nature of this proposition), mean?

Yours sincerely, A. Kashfi

Thank you for writing, Professor Kashfi. Nothing in philosophy fascinates me more than the topic of Existence, and so it is with pleasure that I think through your questions.

To understand what I mean when I say that Existence exists you have to understand that I distinguish between existing items (existents) and Existence.  Thus I do not use 'existence' as some philosophers do to refer to existents collectively.  Nor do I mean by 'Existence exists' what Ayn Rand means by it. The distinction between Existence and existents, as I construe it, is motivated by (i) the apparent fact, evident to the senses,  that there are many existents but that (ii) these existents all have something in common, namely, Existence. Existence is one to their many as that in virtue of which the many existents exist. The distinction gives rise to several questions. Here are four. First, what is it for an individual existent to exist? Second, what is Existence itself in its difference from individual existents? Third, how is Existence common to existents? Fourth, does Existence itself exist?

Reinhardt Grossmann proffers a quick answer to the fourth question: How could it fail to? "If existence did not exist, then nothing would exist." (The Categorial Structure of the World, Indiana UP, 1983, p. 405) Of course, he is not talking about my theory, but his own. He goes on to say that it does not matter to which category you assign Existence.  Whatever Existence is, it must exist if anything is to exist. I argue in my book that Existence cannot be a first-level property and thus that it cannot be that existents exist by instantiating Existence, not that this is what Grossmann maintains. Suppose that I am wrong and that Existence is a first-level property, a property of individual existents, and that the latter exist by instantiating Existence.  Then surely that property would have to exist if anything exists. Here then is an example of a meaningful use of 'Existence exists.' If Existence is a first-level property, a property of individuals, then Existence must exist if anything is to instantiate it.

The distinction between existents and Existence is nothing new. In Aquinas it is the distinction between ens/entia and esse.  In Heidegger it is the distinction (ontologische Differenz) between das Seiende and das Sein. We also find it it Islamic philosophy. Fazlur Rahman, glossing Mulla Sadra, writes, "Existence is that primordial reality thanks to which things exist . . ." (The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra, SUNY Press, 1975, p. 28. Diacriticals omitted.)

Sadra is clearly distinguishing between the things that exist (existents) and that in virtue of which they exist, Existence. There are of course very important differences between the three thinkers mentioned, and between their views and mine. But there is a close affinity between my view and that of Aquinas, and a somewhat close affinity between my view and that of Mulla Sadra.   

For Aquinas, Existence itself exists as God: Deus est ipsum esse subsistens. I am using 'Being' and 'Existence' interchangeably. For Aquinas, then, God is (identical to) self-subsisting Being.  God is both Being (esse) and the supreme being (ens).  In my jargon, the God of Aquinas is the Paradigm Existent. God does have have esse; he is (identical to) esse. So the Paradigm Existent  is both Being (esse) and being (ens). That is equivalent to saying that Existence exists. 

Aquinas is saying that Being itself is. On my reading, he is making three interconnected claims. (1) Being is not other than every being, as it is for Heidegger. His is not an 'alterity' theory of Being.  (2) Being does not divide without remainder into beings. He rejects what I call radical ontological pluralism.  (3) God (self-subsistent Being) is not a being among beings; God is the being, where 'the' connotes uniqueness. See God: A Being among Beings or Being itself? Aquinas thus rejects an ontic conception of Being/God. Everything other than God is in a dependent and derivative way or mode. It is important to note that God for Aquinas is not only unique, but uniquely unique: unique in his very mode of uniqueness. If you understand what Aquinas is saying, then you will understand what I am saying when I say that Existence itself exists. Existence itself is Existence in its difference from the phenomenal existents which derive their existence from the Paradigm Existent.

'Ens' (being) is the present participle of the infinitive 'esse' (to be). This linguistic fact points us in a Platonic direction: phenomenal existents (you, me, my cats, the Moon, Trafalgar Square, my bicycle, its parts such as the chain, and its parts, the links . . .) participate in noumenal Existence. In virtue of this participation, phenomenal existents exist and form a unified plurality of existents. This plurality is no illusion. It is real, but derivatively real. What is derivatively real, however, is not ultimately real. I agree on this point and others with Plato, Aquinas, and Sadra.

Taking a further step in the Platonic direction, I will note that instead of 'Paradigm Existent' I could have used 'Exemplary Existent.' Both exemplars (paradigms, standards) and universals are ones-over-many, but an exemplar is not a universal. Universals have instances, but Existence has no instances.  Exemplification is not instantiation.

As for Sadra, if Existence is the "primordial reality," then this is tantamount to saying that Existence itself exists. For if Existence is real, then it cannot have a merely conceptual or mental status, as it would be if it were a product of abstraction, and if it is the primordial reality, then everything other than it is real in virtue of being dependent on it. As for Heidegger, while he too distinguishes Being from beings, he denies that Being itself is. Das Sein ist kein Seiendes! The overly triumphalistic subtitle of my book, "Onto-theology Vindicated" was meant to signal my opposition to Heidegger, whose critique of what he calls metaphysics is in part a critique of onto-theology. An onto-theological approach to Being avoids both the alterity view and the ontic view. But to explain this in any depth is beyond the scope of this response. See my Heidegger category for more on Schwarzwaldontologie. See also Three Theisms: Ontic, Alterity, and Onto-Theological and their Liabilities.

Analytic or Synthetic?

I will now respond to Professor Kashfi directly. He asks whether 'Existence exists' is analytic or synthetic and finds difficulties either way. My short answer is that Kashfi's question is not relevant to my broadly Platonic view. His question, couched in Kantian terms, is modern; my theory, harking back to Platonic exemplarism, is ancient. His question presupposes that Being is a being among beings. But that I deny. Now to the details.

Immanuel Kant applies the terms 'analytic' and 'synthetic' to judgments (Urteile). In the simple categorical case, a judgment involves a relation between a subject-concept and a predicate-concept. Thus the judgment expressed by 'Bodies are heavy,' (Kant's example of a synthetic judgment a posteriori) relates the concept body to the concept heavy via the copula 'are.'  But there has to be more to it than this, Kant insists, since we need to know "in what the asserted relation consists." (CPR B 141) His answer is that the relation of subject-concept to predicate-concept in a judgment is grounded in the bringing-together of concepts in the objective unity of apperception.  It is this objective unity of apperception (self-consciousness) that is "intended by the copula 'is.'" (B 142) In  Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, section 22, Kant writes, "The union of representations (Vorstellungen) in one consciousness is judgment." If these representations are united in the consciousness of a particular person, then the judgment is "accidental and subjective." If, however, they are united in a "consciousness in general," then the judgment is "necessary and objective."  This consciousness in general is what in Critique of Pure Reason he calls the objective unity of apperception.

Kant's central problem, as explained in his letter to Marcus Herz, is this: On what ground rests the relation of that in us which we call representation to the object? A judgment is a representation composed of concepts which are themselves representations. Judgments purport to be true or objectively valid. Suppose I see a green tree and judge that the tree is green. The judgment purports to be true  whether I or anyone make it. The purport is that the tree is green in reality apart from us  and our subjective mental states. I have an empirical representation of  green and an empirical representation of tree.  What I don't have is an empirical representation of what the 'is' denotes.  I have no empirical representation of the copulative tie or, equivalently, I have no empirical representation of the existence of the green tree. (The tree is green if and only if the green tree exists.) So how do I know that the tree is green? How do I secure the objective validity of the judgmental representation? What is the ultimate ground of the synthesis of subject and predicate in the object?  What makes it the case that the judgment expressed by 'This body is heavy' is true independently of my particular mental state and thus true for all actual and possible finite cognizers? What assures me that the judgental purport is satisfied? This is Kant's problem. To put it oxymoronically, it is a classically  modern problem. (The modern period in the West begins with Descartes, 1596-1650.)

Kant's solution is a transcendentally idealist one. The ultimate ground of the synthesis of subject and predicate in the object is is supplied by the objective unity of apperception which is also the transcendental unity of apperception. This solution is fraught with difficulties. For me, the central difficulty is the one I tackled in my doctoral dissertation: what exactly is the status of this transcendental unity of apperception? But that is basically what Kant is maintaining: we, in our transcendental capacity,  constitute objects in their objectivity. For we are the source of the the objective synthesis that lends objectivity to judgments.

Whether a judgment is analytic (e.g., 'All bodies are extended') or synthetic ('This body is heavy'), all such judgments are about phenomenal particulars in space and time.  But neither Kant's transcendental unity of apperception nor my Paradigm Existent is a phenomenal particular in space and time. For Kant, the ultimate transcendental condition of anything's being an object is not itself an object among objects. Similarly, the The Paradigm Existent is not an existent among existents. It is no more such than the God of Aquinas is a being among beings. 

And so I say that the question 'Analytic or Synthetic?' is inappropriately asked of 'Existence itself exists.'

Kashfi writes, "If this proposition ['Existence exists'] is synthetic, it requires that the concept of 'existence' be distinct from the concept of 'existent'."  Kashfi thereby assumes something that I explicitly deny early on in my book, namely, that Existence is a concept. Concepts track essences. The concept triangle, for example, 'captures' the essence TRIANGLE. The existence of an existing thing, however, cannot be captured, grasped, 'made present to the mind'  by any concept.  Existence is trans-conceptual.

One reason is that existence is not essence. Another reason is that each existing thing has its own existence: Socrates' existence is his and not Plato's. The two philosophers differ numerically in their very existence. They differ numerically as existents. Thus their numerical difference is numerical-existential difference. But as Aristotle said (in Greek, not in Latin): Individuum qua individuum ineffabile est. Individuals as such are ineffable. That strikes me as obvious given that (i) there is and can be no concept that captures or grasps the haecceity (non-qualitative thisness) of an individual, and (ii) there are no haecceities except those of existing things.  (Pace Plantinga, there are no such metaphysical monstrosities as  uninstantiated haecceities.)  There are, in other words, no individual concepts. Definitions and arguments here and in the surrounding entries in the identity and individuation category.

Neither the existence of Socrates, the existence that is his alone and not possibly shared with any other existent, nor Existence itself in its difference from existents is a concept. My point is that Existence either in finite existents or in itself cannot be reduced to a concept. I am not saying that we have no concept of Existence; we do. It is just that the concept of Existence is the concept of something that is not and cannot be a concept.  Existence is in this respect like God. We have various concepts of God, but God is not a concept. Or do you think that a mere concept in a mortal's mind created the world? Similarly, do you think that that in virtue of which finite existents exist is a concept in a mortal's mind?  See The Concept GOD as a Limit Concept.

To understand what I mean by 'Existence itself exists,' you have to understand that Existence itself is like the Platonic Form/Idea, Humanity. The former, like the latter, is not self-predicable or self-instantiating: Humanity is quite obviously not human, nor a human. And because Humanity is not self-predicable, one cannot sensibly ask whether the predicate-concept human is analytically contained in the subject-concept Humanity or synthetically  attached to it. The Form/Idea Humanity exists by being (identical to) itself. Its Being is (identically) its self-identity unlike a particular human such as Socrates whose Being is not its self-identity. (If Socrates' Being were his self-identity, then he would be a necessary being, when in fact he is a contingent being.) The same goes for Existence in its different from existents: its Being is its self-identity, which implies that the Paradigm Existent is metaphysically necessary.

If Humanity were self-predicable (self-instantiating), then the Third Man Regress would be up and running. For if  'is human' is univocally predicable of both the Form Humanity and its phenomenal instance Socrates, then a second Form — call it Humanity II — would have to be introduced to explain what is common to both Humanity and Socrates. And so on into an infinite explanatory regress which, as explanatory, is vicious. (Sone infinite regresses are benign, e.g. the truth regress.)

The Form/Idea Humanity is a CASE of itself, but not an INSTANCE of itself. A case because Humanity  is not a universal what-determination abstractly common to particular phenomenal beings, but a paradigm or exemplar.  The standard meter bar in Paris might prove to be a useful analogy if you take it the right way (which is of course that way I want you to take it.) The standard meter bar is obviously not an instance of itself because it is a material particular, and such things do not have instances.  For the same reason, you cannot predicate the standard meter bar of itself.  The standard meter bar is nonetheless a case of itself in that it is a metal bar exactly one meter in length: it sets the standard by being (identical to) the standard.

Now the standard meter bar is a phenomenal particular relative to which other phenomenal particulars either measure up or fall short, whereas the Paradigm Existent is not a phenomenal particular.  This is a point of disanalogy. But if you understand how the standard meter bars functions as a paradigm, you should also be able to understand how Existence could so function, mutatis mutandis.

Can a Necessary Being Depend for its Existence on a Necessary Being?

Brian Bosse raised this question over the phone the other day. This re-post from February 2010 answers it.

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According to the Athanasian Creed, the Persons of the Trinity, though each of them uncreated and eternal and necessary, are related as follows. The Father is unbegotten.  The Son is begotten by the Father, but not made by the Father.  The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.  Let us focus on the relation of the Father to the Son.  When I tried to explain this to Peter the atheist, he balked at the idea of one necessary being begetting another, claiming that the idea makes no sense.  One of his arguments was as follows.  If x begets y, then x causes y to begin to exist.  But no necessary being begins to exist.  So, no necessary being is begotten.  A second argument went like this.  Begetting is a causal notion.  But causes are temporally precedent to their effects.  No two necessary beings are related as before to after.  Therefore, no necessary being begets another.

I first pointed out in response to Peter that the begetting in question is not the begetting of one animal by another, but a begetting in a different sense, and that whatever else this idea involves, it involves the idea of one necessary being depending for its existence on another.  Peter balked at this idea as well.  "How can a necessary being depend for its existence on a necessary being?"  To soften him up, I looked for a non-Trinitarian case in which a necessary being stands in the asymmetrical relation of existential dependency to a necessary being. Note that I did not dismiss his problem the way a dogmatist might; I admitted that it is a genuine difficulty, one that needs to be solved.

So I said to Peter:  Look, you accept the existence of Fregean propositions, items which Frege viewed as the senses of sentences in the indicative mood from which indexical elements (including the tenses of verbs) have been removed and have been replaced with non-indexical elements.  You also accept that at least some of these Fregean propositions, if not all,  are necessary beings.  For example, you accept that the proposition expressed by '7 + 5 = 12' is necessarily true, and you see that this requires that the proposition be necessarily existent.  Peter agreed to that.

You also, I said to him, have no objection to the idea of the God of classical theism who exists necessarily if he is so much as possible.  He admitted that despite his being an atheist, he has no problem with the idea of a necessarily existent God.

So I said to Peter:  Think of the necessarily existent Fregean propositions as divine thoughts.  (I note en passant that Frege referred to his propositions as Gedanken, thoughts.)  More precisely, think of them as the accusatives or objects of divine acts of thinking, as the noemata of divine noeses.  That is, think of the propositions as existing precisely as the  accusatives of divine thinking.  Thus, their esse is their concipi by God.  They don't exist a se the way God does; they exist in a mind-dependent manner without prejudice to their existing in all possible worlds.  To cop a phrase from the doctor angelicus, they have their necessity from another, unlike God, who has his necessity from himself.

So I said to Peter:  Well, is it not now clear that we  have a non-Trinitarian example in which a necessary being, the proposition expressed by '7 + 5 = 12,' depends for its existence on a necessary being, namely God, and not vice versa?  Is this not an example of a relation that is neither merely logical (like entailment) nor empirically-causal?  Does this not get you at least part of the way towards an understand of how the Father can be said to beget the Son?

To these three questions, Peter gave a resounding 'No!' looked at his watch and announced that he had to leave right away in order to be able to teach his 5:40 class at the other end of the Valle del Sol.

Notes on Avicenna: Essence, Existence, and Creation

Avicenna-3112421686Time was when the Islamic world could boast world-class philosophers. The Persian Ibn Sina (980-1037 anno domini) was one of them. He is known in the West as Avicenna.  Translated into Latin, his works had a major influence on the philosophy of the 12th and 13th centuries and beyond. De Ente et Essentia of Thomas Aquinas is a well-known text that shows the Persian's influence.  In this entry I will discuss some of Avicenna's  positions in metaphysics as I understand them. My understanding is based on close study of Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, and Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, The Paradoxical Structure of Existence. Comments and corrections solicited. That Avicenna anticipates Alexius von Meinong is an idea I arrived at independently. (The exposition of this anticipation belongs in a separate post.)

1) Wilhelmsen credits Avicenna with raising a new question in philosophy: "How is existence related to the order of nature or essence?" (PSE, 40; cf. BSP, 40 ff.) What motivates the new question is the conviction that the world of beings is a world of creatures that owe their existence to a creator. If the Being or existence (esse) of a being (ens) is its being-created-and-sustained-by-God, then there must be a real distinction (distinctio realis) between existence and essence in the creature.  To exist is then not to be the same (Plato) or to be a substance (Aristotle). An existing thing is thus in some way 'composed' of essence and existence. Avicenna thus upholds a real distinction between essence and existence. (Is he the first to do so in the history of philosophy? I'm really asking!)  I myself understand the distinctio realis along the following lines. (Someone who knows Avicenna's texts can comment on how closely my understanding, which is fairly close to that of Aquinas, matches Avicenna's.) 

About anything whatsoever, including God,  we can ask two different questions: What is it? (Quid sit?) and Is it? (An sit?)  In a contingent being (ens), the distinction between what the thing is (wide essence, quiddity) and its existence (esse) is real, meaning that the distinction pertains to the thing (res) itself apart from our modes of considering it. 'Real' in this context does NOT mean that in a contingent existent such as my cat Max Black there are two things, one res being the essence, the other res being the existence. That is supposedly what Giles of Rome held, not what Aquinas or I hold. I am going to assume that Avicenna did not anticipate Giles of Rome.

Analogy: my head and my eyeglasses are really distinct in the Giles-of-Rome way: head and glasses can each exist on its own apart from the other. But the convexity and concavity of a particular lens cannot exist on their own apart from each other. And yet the convexity-concavity distinction is real, not projected by us.  The real distinction that I espouse is like the distinction between the particular convexity and the particular concavity in a particular lens. 'Like,' not 'the same as.' The real distinction between essence and existence in a contingent being such as an optical lens is sui generis: there is no adequate model for it. We acquire some understanding of the sui generis distinction only by analogy from mundane examples. 

2) A second Avicennian innovation is a distinction between modes of Being (esse) or modes of existence, different ways for an item to be or exist.   (That there are different ways of existing or different modes of Being  is a notion fiercely resisted by most contemporary analytic philosophers, but I am of the opinion that the MOB doctrine — to give it a cute name — can be plausibly defended quite apart from Avicenna's particular views. See Holes and Their Mode of Being and the entries in my modes of being category. See also "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" in Novotny and Novak, eds., in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, Routledge 2014, pp. 45-75. One of the dogmas of analysis is that there are no modes of being.) The second innovation presupposes the first, the real distinction. The latter allows us to focus on the existence of the thing without conflating it with its essence or quiddity. We find this conflation in Aristotle for whom there is no difference between an F and an existing F, a man and an existing man, say. For Aristotle, then, there is no difference between Milo and existing Milo. Once one grasps the difference between the existence/existing of Milo and Milo, one can go on to ask how something like Milo exists, in what specific way he exists.  In the case of God and Socrates we surely want to say that God exists necessarily whereas Socrates exists contingently. Now it is not obvious, but it can be plausibly argued that this modal-logical  difference — typically spelled out nowadays in analytic precincts by saying that God exists in all possible worlds whereas Socrates exists in some but not all possible worlds — is rooted in an ontological difference between two ways (modes) of existing.  If that is right, then it is not the case that God and Socrates exist in the same way, pace such luminaries as Alvin Plantinga and Peter van Inwagen and their numerous acolytes. (See my A Paradigm Theory of Existence, Kluwer Philosophical Studies Series #89, 2002, Chapter One, Section 4, "Contingency and Necessity as Modes of Existence," p. 22 f.) Back to the Persian.

3) For Avicenna, there are two modes of existence; there are two ways for one and the same essence/nature to exist/be. The one way is universally in mente; the other is singularly in re. Thus one and the same essence (humanity) exists singularly in the man, Milo, and in the man Socrates, and so on, and universally in the mind of anyone who knows Milo or Socrates or any man to be a man. The first mode could be called esse reale, the second esse intentionale. So if essence is really distinct from existence, then essence is really distinct both from intramental (esse intentionale) existence and extramental existence (esse reale).

4) Given (3), it follows that an essence in  itself is neither mental nor extramental, neither universal (repeatable) nor singular (unrepeatable), neither one nor many, neither abstract nor concrete, neither predicable nor impredicable, and — mirabile dictu — neither existent nor nonexistent. The essence in itself is thus a third item, a tertium quid. (It looks very much like a Meinongian Sosein jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein! But Meinong goes on the 'back burner' for now.)  

In sum, there are two ways for an Avicennian essence or nature to exist: either in things outside the mind, or else in the mind, and one way for an essence to be (not exist), and that is to be absolutely or indifferently, or if you prefer, amphibiously (either on the dry land of the real, or in the water of mind).  It is here that the dialectic becomes tricky and 'aporetic.' For what I take Avicenna to be saying is that the essence or nature absolutely considered, i.e., considered in its neutrality or indifference to both intramental and extramental existence,  is in itself a non-existing mind-independent item.  That is to say: the essence an sich, the essence as a modally indifferent tertium quid, is not an artifact or product of our considering.  Its absoluteness and indifference does not derive from our absolute considering;  our considering is an absolute considering because that which is being considered IS (not exists) absolutely. Get it? 

Now to exist is to be actual, whether in minds or in things. So the essence or nature in itself which exists neither in minds nor in things, is metaphysically prior to actuality and is therefore a pure possibility. "It follows that pure nature is pure possibility for being in some order. Therefore the possible is prior to the actual in an absolute sense." (Wilhelmsen, 41) Gilson puts it like this: in Avicenna's world, "essences always remain, in themselves, pure possibles, and no wonder, since the very essence of essence is possibility." (BSP, 82)

5) It follows from (4) that essentia as pure possibility is no longer internally tied to esse as etymology would suggest inasmuch as essences in themselves are what they are whether or not they exist in either of the two modes in which they exist. Avicenna thus drives a wedge between essence and existence in such a way that existence can only accede to essences and is insofar forth only accidental to them. Existence 'happens' to them while they on their part remain indifferent to existence.  

6) You will recall that for Aristotle, accidents receive their being from (primary) substances (prote ousiai) and are nothing without them.  Thus if A is an Aristotelian accident, then A cannot exist apart from some substance or other, and indeed cannot exist apart from the very substance S of which it happens to be the accident. The Islamic thinker takes the Greek's substance-accident distinction and puts it to use in a highly creative way. Whereas accidents for Aristotle derive their being from the substances of which they are the accidents, the Being (esse) of creatures is reduced by Avicenna to an accident of essences which, in themselves, as pure possibles, are beyond existence and nonexistence.

7) (6) entails interesting consequences for the notion of divine creation.  On an Avicennian scheme, creation is actualization of the merely possible.  If so, God does not create ex nihilo, but ex possibilitate. He doesn't create out of nothing; he creates out of possibles. This does not comport well with divine sovereignty. If God is sovereign, he is sovereign over all orders, including the order of the merely possible.  On the Avicennian scheme God is constrained by the ontologically prior order of mere possibles. He is therefore not free. Or at least he is no free in the libertarian sense of 'free.'

8) We have landed in a curious dialectical predicament.  On the one hand, we need the real distinction to make sense of divine creation ex nihilo.   The pagan philosophers didn't have it or need it, because their systems were not informed by divine revelation.  Aristotle's God is not a creator but merely a prime mover. His primary substances exist just in virtue of being the substances they are. For Aristotle, for a primary substance S of kind K to exist is just for S to be a member of K.  For Socrates to exist is just for Socrates to be a man. Hence there is no need for a real distinction between Socrates and his existence.  On the other hand, the Avicennian scheme, which needs the real distinction, fails to safeguard the absolute sovereignty and freedom of God and fails to capture the radicality of creatio ex nihilo. The reason, again, is that Avicenna's God creates, not out of nothing, but out of possibilities.  He is thus not a creator in the strict sense, but a mere actualizer of mere possibles that ARE independently of his will. (Cf. BSP, 83)

Some Questions about Existence, Part I

Pat F. inquires:

Your theory is that existence is the unity of a thing’s constituents. What I wasn’t entirely clear on is just what those constituents are. In one section of your book, you argue for the real distinction between essence and existence, which gave me the impression that existence was a constituent (rather than, as Miller would say, a component) along with essence (which seems to me the traditional compositional analysis);however, elsewhere you deny existence is a constituent. I am sure the misunderstanding is on my part, but clarification would be most helpful.

My question at the beginning of the book is: What is it for a concrete contingent individual to exist? My cat Max is an example of a concrete individual. Max exists. Nothing can exist without properties. So Max has properties. Some are essential, some are accidental, some are monadic, and some are relational. Take the conjunction of all of these properties and call it the wide essence or quiddity (whatness) of Max.  Now one of my claims is that existence is not included in the wide essence of any contingent being. (Max is of course a contingent being which is to say that, although he exists, at every moment at which he exists his nonexistence is possible.) At the same time, though, existence is predicable of Max: 'exists' is an admissible first-level predicate, pace the 'Fressellians.' Barry Miller and I agree about this.  

I have said enough to motivate  a version of the famous distinctio realis, the real distinction of essence and existence. About anything whatsoever we can ask two different questions: What is it? (Quid sit?) and Is it? (An sit?)  In a contingent being (ens), the distinction between what the thing is (wide essence, quiddity) and its existence (esse) is real, meaning that the distinction pertains to the thing (res) itself apart from our modes of considering it. 'Real' in this context does NOT mean that in Max there are two things, one res being the essence, the other res being the existence. That is supposedly what Giles of Rome held, not what Aquinas or I hold. 

Analogy: my head and my eyeglasses are really distinct in the Giles-of-Rome way: head and glasses can each exist on its own apart from the other. But the convexity and concavity of a particular lens cannot exist on their own apart from each other. And yet the distinction is real, not projected by us.  The real distinction that I espouse is like the distinction between the particular convexity and the particular concavity concavity in a particular lens. 'Like,' not 'the same as.' The real distinction between essence and existence in a contingent being such as an optical lens is sui generis: there is no adequate model for it.   

So, to answer the reader's first question, while I do hold to some version of the real distinction, I do not maintain that the existence of a contingent being is a constituent thereof. The existence of a contingent being is not a spatial, temporal, or ontological part of it. It is the contingent unity or contingent togetherness of all of its ontological parts; it could not possibly be one of them. The whole thing exists; the existence of the thing cannot be assigned to one proper part thereof. I believe I call this "The holism of existence" in my book.

To get some idea of what an ontological part might be, consider a bundle theory of ordinary concrete particulars. The ontological parts are the properties, whether universals or tropes, the bundling of which constitutes the particular. The existence of an ordinary particular, Max, for example, would then be the contingent compresence of the properties, where the compresence of the properties is not itself a property. (Exercise for the reader: explain why compresence cannot itself be a property or a relation.) 

Now the bundle-approach is not the approach to constituent ontology that I espouse in my book, but it is in some ways similar.  In my book I assay ordinary particulars as concrete facts, taking Gustav Bergmann and David Armstrong as inspirations.  The latter's thick particulars are facts of the form a's being F, where F is a maximal conjunction of properties and a is a thin particular. On this assay, my beloved Max has as ontological constituents a thin particular and a maximal bunch of properties construed as universals.  The existence of Max then turns out to be the peculiar fact-making contingent unity of all of his  ontological constituents, a unity that equips him to serve as the truth-maker of all the wonderful truths (true truth-bearers) about him.

There is a problem with this view and it is similar to the mess the hylomorphic constituent ontologists get into when they find that they have to posit materia prima which is, arguably, a Grenzbegriff if not an Unbegriff. 

Philosophically Salient Senses of ‘See’

This entry is relevant to my ongoing discussion with Dr. Buckner.

It is plain that 'sees' has many senses in English.  Of these many senses, some are philosophically salient.  Of the philosophical salient senses, two are paramount.  Call the one 'existence-entailing.'  (EE) Call the other 'existence-neutral.' (EN)  On the one, 'sees' is a so-called verb of success.  On the other, it isn't, which not to say that it is a 'verb of failure.'  

EE:  Necessarily, if subject S sees x, then x exists.

EN:  Possibly, subject S sees x, but it is not the case that x exists.

Now one question is whether both senses of 'see' can be found in ordinary English.  The answer is yes.  "I know that feral cat still exists; I just now saw him" illustrates the first.  "You look like you've just seen a ghost"  illustrates the second.  If I know that the feral cat exists on the basis of seeing him, then 'sees' (or a cognate thereof) is being used in the (EE) sense as a 'verb of success.'  If ghosts do not exist, as I am assuming, then one who sees a ghost literally sees something that does not exist.  We call this second sense of 'sees' the phenomenological sense.  

So far, I don't think I've said anything controversial.  I have simply pointed out two different senses and thus two different uses of 'sees' in ordinary, non-philosophical English.

We advance to a philosophical question, and embroil ourselves in controversy, when we ask whether, corresponding to the existence-neutral sense of 'sees,' there is a type of seeing, a type of seeing that does not entail the existence of the object seen.  One might grant that there is a legitimate use of 'sees' (or a cognate thereof) in English according to which what is seen does not exist without granting that in reality there is a type of seeing that is the seeing of the nonexistent.

One might insist that all seeing is the seeing of what exists, and that one cannot literally see what does not exist.  So, assuming that there are no ghosts, one cannot see a ghost.  As Joe Biden might say, "Come on man, you can't see what ain't there!"

But suppose a sincere, frightened person reports that she has seen a ghost of such-and-such a ghastly description.  Because of the behavioral evidence, you cannot reasonably deny that the person has had an  experience, and indeed an object-directed (intentional) experience.  You cannot deny, given her fear-indicating behavior, verbal and non-verbal, that she had a visual experience as of  something ghastly. You cannot reasonably say, "Because there are no ghosts, your experience had no object."  For it did have an object, indeed a material (albeit nonexistent) object having various ghastly properties. After all, she saw something, not nothing. Not only that, she saw something quite definite with definite properties.  She didn't see Casper the Friendly Ghost but a ghastly ghost.

You might object, "No, she merely thought she saw something." But there was no thinking or doubting or considering going on; she saw something and it scared the crap out of her.

This example suggests that we sometimes literally see what does not exist, and that seeing therefore does not entail the existence of that which is seen.  If this is right, then the epistemologically primary sense of 'see' is given by (EN) supra.  If so, then problems arise for realism about the external world. For example, how do I know that the tree I see in good light (etc.) exists in itself whether or not I or anyone see it? 

Henessey's response:  "I grant the reality of her experience, with the reservation that it was not an experience based in vision, but one with a basis in imagination, imagination as distinguished from vision."  The point, I take it, is that what we have in my example of a person claiming to see a ghost is not a genuine case of seeing, of visual perception, but a case of imagining.  The terrified person imagined a ghost; she did not see one.

I think Hennessey's response gets the phenomenology wrong.  Imagination and perception are phenomenologically different.  For one thing, what we imagine is up to us: we are free to imagine almost anything we want; what we perceive, however, is not up to us.  When Ebeneezer Scrooge saw the ghost of Marley, he tried to dismiss the apparition as "a bit of bad beef, a blot of mustard, a fragment of an underdone potato," but he found he could not.  Marley: "Do you believe in me or not?"  Scrooge: "I do, I must!"  This exchange brings out nicely what C. S. Peirce called the compulsive character of perception.  Imagination is not like this at all.  Whether or not Scrooge saw Marley, he did not imagine him for the reason that the object of his experience was not under the control of his will.

The fact that what one imagines does not exist is not a good reason to to assimilate perception of what may or may not exist to imagination.

Second, if a subject imagines x, then it follows that x does not exist.  Everything imagined is nonexistent.  But it is not the case that if a subject perceives x, then x does not exist.  Perception either entails the existence of the object perceived, or is consistent with both the existence and the nonexistence of the object perceived.

Third,  one knows the identity of an object of imagination simply by willing the object in question.  The subject creates the identity so that there can be no question of re-identifying or re-cognizing an object of imagination.  But perception is not like this at all.  In perception there is re-identification and recognition. Scrooge did not imagine Marley's ghost for the reason that he was able to identify and re-identify the ghost as it changed positions in Scrooge's chamber.  So even if you balk at admitting that Scrooge saw Marley's ghost, you ought to admit that he wasn't imaging him.

I conclude that Hennessey has not refuted my example. To see a ghost is not to imagine a ghost, even if there aren't any.  Besides, one can imagine a ghost without having the experience that one reports when one sincerely states that one has seen a ghost.  Whether or not this experience is perception, it surely is not imagination.

But I admit that this is a very murky topic! 

Existence, Time, Property-Possession, and the Dead

Here are four propositions that are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent. 

1) For any x, temporal or atemporal, if x has a property, then x exists.

2) For any temporal x, if x exists, then x exists at present.

3) Frege, a temporal item, does not exist at present.

4) Frege has properties at present.

(1) is plausible: how could anything have a property if it is not 'there' to have it? This use of 'there' is non-locative.  I assume that to exist = to be, and that Meinongian nonentities, "beyond being and nonbeing," are unintelligible.

(2) is plausible: the past is no longer, the future not yet; the present alone is real/existent!  It is important to note, however, that the plausibility of (2) is not that of a tautology. Tautologies are plausible in excelsis; substantive metaphysical claims are not. One cannot reasonably controvert a tautology; one can reasonably controvert a substantive metaphysical claim. What (2) formulates, call it 'presentism,' is somewhat plausible but surely not logically true. So the senses of 'exist(s)' and 'exist(s) at present' are distinct. If I say that a thing exists, I say nothing about when it exists; I say only that it is 'there' in the non-locative sense among the 'furniture of the world.' Indeed, 'x exists' leaves open whether the thing is in time at all. 'God exists' is noncommittal on the question whether God is temporal or atemporal. 

(3) is plausible: (a) Frege is temporal in that he cannot exist without existing in time; (b) Frege does not now exist.

(4) is plausible: Frege is now famous and he is dead. Those predicates are true of him: he has (instantiates) the properties they express. 

The tetrad is collectively inconsistent. One way to solve the problem is by rejecting the least plausible proposition. By my lights, that proposition is (2). To reject (2) is to reject presentism. But if presentism is false, it does not follow that eternalism is true!