Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Existence

  • Divine Simplicity and Whether Existence is a First-Level Property

    A London reader, Rob Hoveman, kindly sent me Howard Robinson's "Can We Make Sense of the Idea that God's Existence is Identical to His Essence" (in Reason, Faith and History: Philosophical Essays for Paul Helm, ed. M. W. F. Stone, Ashgate 2008, pp. 127-143).  This post will comment on the gist of section 4 of Robinson's article, entitled…

  • The Dead and the Nonexistent: Meinong Contra Epicurus

    Are there nonexistent objects in the sense in which Meinong thought there are? One reason to think so  derives from the problem of reference to the dead. The problem can be displayed as an aporetic tetrad: 1. A dead person no longer exists.2. What no longer exists does not exist at all.  3. What does not…

  • Being Dead and Being Nonexistent, or: How to Cease to Exist without Dying

    In general, being dead and being nonexistent are not the same 'property' for an obvious reason: only that which was once alive can properly be said to be dead, and not everything was once alive.  Nevertheless, it might be thought that, for living things, to be is to be alive, and not to be is…

  • The Evil of Death and the Rationality of Fearing It

    Is death an evil?  Even if it is an evil to the people other than me who love me, or in some way profit from my life, is it an evil to me?  A few days ago, defying Philip Larkin, I took the Epicurean position that death cannot be an evil for me and so…

  • John Deck’s Contrast Argument Against the Philosophy of Being

    John N. Deck is a highly interesting, if obscure, figure in the neo-Scholasticism of the 20th century. I first took note of him in 1989, ten years after his death, when his article "Metaphysics or Logic?" appeared in New Scholasticism (vol. LXIII, no. 2, Spring 1989, pp. 229-240.) Thanks to the labors of Tony Flood…

  • Total Dependence and Essence/Existence Composition

    Anthony Flood has done metaphysicians a service by making available John N. Deck’s excellent, St. Thomas Aquinas and the Language of Total Dependence. This is an essay that Anthony Kenny, no slouch of a philosopher, saw fit to include in his anthology, Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays (University of Notre Dame Press, 1976). Mr.…

  • Four-Dimensionalism to the Rescue?

    Let us return to that impressive product of porcine ingenuity, Brick House.  Brick House, whose completion by the Wise Pig occurred on Friday, is composed entirely of the 10,000 Tuesday Bricks.  I grant that there is a sum, call it 'Brick Sum,' that is the classical mereological sum of the Tuesday Bricks.  Brick Sum is…

  • Existence, Elimination,and Changing the Subject

    This is the fourth in a series on the metaphilosophical problem of sorting out the differences and similarities of analysis, identification, reduction, elimination, and cognate notions.  Parts I, II, III.  This post features existence, a topic I find endlessly fascinating and inexhaustibly rich. Consider the position of a philosopher I will call Gottbert Fressell.  (A little…

  • Mereological Innocence and Composition as Identity

    This is the third in a series.  Part I, Part II.  What follows is a 10th example of eliminativist/reductivist ambiguity. One of the axioms of mereology is Unrestricted Composition.  Here is David Lewis' formulation (Parts of Classes, Basil Blackwell 1991, p. 74): Unrestricted Composition: Whenever there are some things, then there exists a fusion of…

  • Van Inwagen on the Ship of Theseus

    Peter van Inwagen's Material Beings (Cornell UP, 1990) is a very strange book, but he is a brilliant man, so one can expect to learn something from it. A central claim is that artifacts such as tables and chairs and ships do not exist. One can appreciate  that if there are no ships then the…

  • Thinking About Nothing

    Suppose I try to think the counterfactual state of affairs of there being nothing, nothing at all.  Can I succeed in thinking pure nothingness?  Is this thought thinkable?  And if it is, does it show that it is possible that there be nothing at all?  If yes, then (i) it is contingent that anything exists,…

  • From the Mailbag: Faith and Modality

    An astute reader e-mails,  First, sometime ago I recommended John Bishop's Believing by Faith: An Essay in the Epistemology and  Ethics of Religious Belief . If you have yet to read the book, I would recommend his new article on Faith in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. You may be particularly interested in sections 7-10.   Second, I…

  • Could There Have Been Just Nothing At All?

    No doubt, things exist. At least I exist, and that suffices to show that something exists. But could it have been the case that nothing ever existed? Actually, there is something; but is it possible that there have been nothing? Or is it rather the case that necessarily there is something? Is it not only…

  • Modality and Existence

    Steven Nemes, who may prove to be my nemesis, e-mails: I'm enjoying your book so far. I'm starting the constructive half of it now, and am going to reread the chapter "The Ground of the Contingent Existent" after a quick skim over it recently. I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but upon hearing…

  • Misgivings About Deflationary Theories of Truth

    1. From my survey of the literature, there are four main types of truth theory being discussed: substantive theories, nihilist (for want of a better label) theories, deflationary theories, and identity theories.  Let me say just a little about the first two main types and then move on to deflationism. The Commenter (William Woking) will be sure…