Category: Existence

Can Existence Be Analyzed in Terms of Power? Commentary on Sophist 247e

At Sophist 247e, Plato puts the following into the mouth of the Eleatic Stranger:

I suggest that anything has real being that is so constituted as to possess any sort of power either to affect anything else or to be affected, in however small a degree, by the most insignificant agent, though it be only once.  I am proposing  as a mark to distinguish real things that they are nothing but power. (Cornford tr.)

The gist of the passage is that what makes a thing real or existent is its (active) power to affect other things or its (passive) power to be affected by them.  In sum,

D. For any x, x exists =df x is causally active or passive.

Thus everything causally active/passive exists, and only the causally active/passive exists.  The definition rules out of existence all 'causally inert' items such as propositions as Frege construes them, namely, as the senses of context-free indicative sentences. And of course it rules out sets of Fregean propositions.  But what about the mathematical (as opposed to commonsense) set of the books on my desks?  Each of the books is existent or real by (D) and so is the object resulting from the bundling of the books together; but the set of these books is arguably abstract and thus causally inert.  So if (D) is true,  we cannot admit mathematical sets into our ontology.  For such items do not enter into causal relations.  Fregean propositions and mathematical sets are therefore putative counterexamples to (D).  If these counterexamples are genuine then (D) fails extensionally: the extension of the existent is wider than the extension of the causally active/passive.

But what interests me at the moment is not the extensional correctness of (D) but  a deeper question.  Even if we assume that (D) is extensionally correct, i.e., that all and only  existents are causally active/passive, does (D) tell us what it is for an item to exist?  When we say of a thing that it exists, what are we saying about it?  That it is causally active/passive?  My answer is in the negative — even if we assume that all and only existents are causally active/passive.

My reason is quite simple.  For an item to be capable of acting or being acted upon it must 'be there' or exist!  'Before' it can be a doer or a done-to it must exist. (The 'before' is to be taken logically not temporally.) The nonexistent cannot act or be acted upon.  There is no danger that winged horses will collide with airplanes.  The reason is not that winged horses are abstract or causally inert objects; the reason is that they do not exist.  Winged horses, if there were any, would belong to the category of the causally active/passive.  But they don't exist — which is the reason why they cannot act or be acted upon.  They are not abstract items but nonexistent concrete items.  Existence, therefore, is a necessary condition of an item's being a causal agent or patient.  It follows that existence cannot be explicated in terms of power as per the Eleatic Stranger's suggestion.  Existence is too fundamental to be explicated in terms of power — or anything else.

If you are having trouble seeing the point consider the winged horse Pegasus and his singleton {Pegasus}.  Both of these items are nonexistent.  One is concrete (causally active/passive) while the other is abstract.  But neither can enter into causal relations.  To say that Pegasus is concrete is to say that Pegasus, were he to exist, would belong among the causally active/passive.  What prevents him from being such is his nonexistence.  His existence, therefore, cannot be explicated in terms of causal activity/passivity.

There is a tendency to conflate two different questions about existence.  One question about existence concerns what exists.  Answers to this question can be supplied in the form of definitions like (D) above.  But there is a  deeper question about existence, namely, the question as  what it is for an existing thing to exist.  What I have just argued is that this second question cannot be answered with any definition like (D).  For even if you find a definition that is extensionally correct and immune to counterexamples, you will at the very most have specified the necessary and sufficient conditions for a thing's  being among existing things.   You will have not thereby have put your finger on what it is for an existing item to exist. 

Suppose you say that, for any x, x exists  =df x has properties.  This proposal has an excellent chance of being extensionally correct: necessarily, everything that exists has properties, and everything that has properties exists.  But the proposal does not get at the existence of an existing thing precisely because it presupposes the existence of existing things.  This is because all such definitions are really circular inasmuch as they have the form:

For any x, x exists =df x is ____ and x exists.

Existence itself eludes definitional grasp.  Even if the existent can be defined, the Existence of the existent cannot be defined.  For more on this fascinating topic, see my A Paradigm Theory of Existence (Kluwer 2002), pp. 2-8. 

 

On the Very Idea of a Cause of Existence: Schopenhauer on the Cosmological Argument

Cosmological arguments for the existence of God rest on several ontological assumptions none of them quite obvious, and all of them reasonable candidates for philosophical examination. Among them, (i) existence is a ‘property’ of contingent individuals; (ii) the existence of individuals is not a brute fact but is susceptible of explanation; (iii) it is coherent to suppose that this explanation is causal: that contingent individuals could have a cause of their existence. It is the third item on this list that I propose to examine here.

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Can Existence Be Ostensively Defined?

Here is a remarkable passage from Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, expanded 2nd ed., p. 41:

Ostensive definitions are usually regarded as applicable only to conceptualized sensations. But they are applicable to axioms as well.  Since axiomatic concepts are identifications of irreducible primaries, the only way to define one is by means of an ostensive definition — e.g., to define 'existence,' one would have to sweep one's arm around and say: 'I mean this.'

Now that's an interesting suggestion! Let's put it to the test.

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Consciousness and Existence: Is Every Consciousness a Consciousness of What Exists?

What follows in purple are two quotations (from separate works) from the Ayn Rand Lexicon. 

If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness. (FNI, 124)

Directly or indirectly, every phenomenon of consciousness is derived from one’s awareness of the external world. Some object, i.e., some content, is involved in every state of awareness. Extrospection is a process of cognition directed outward—a process of apprehending some existent(s) of the external world. Introspection is a process of cognition directed inward—a process of apprehending one’s own psychological actions in regard to some existent(s) of the external world, such actions as thinking, feeling, reminiscing, etc. It is only in relation to the external world that the various actions of a consciousness can be experienced, grasped, defined or communicated. Awareness is awareness of something. A content-less state of consciousness is a contradiction in terms. (ITOE, 37)

This sort of writing is typical of Rand and Peikoff, et al.  It is confused and confusing and will be dismissed out of hand by most philosophers.  Yet there may be a solid point here that someone like Harry Binswanger could develop and make persuasive. It is clear from the above passages and others that Rand wants to show that there exist entities that are transcendent of consciousness.  Indeed, she wants to show that the denial of such transcendent entities is self-contradictory.  But how will she achieve this goal?

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Back to Parmenides: Binswanger’s Defense of Rand’s Block Universe

In response to Harry Binswanger, I wrote:

My diagnosis of our disagreement is as follows. You think that what is causally necessitated (e.g. the lunar craters) is broadly-logically necessary (BL-necessary) whereas I think that what is causally necessitated is broadly-logically contingent. Because you think that what is causally necessitated is BL-necessary, you naturally think that my having my hat on is not causally necessitated. If I've understood you correctly, you do not deny that there are BL-contingent events, an example being my freely choosing to put on my hat. What you deny is that there are any BL-contingent events in nature (the realm of the non-man-made).

Your scheme makes sense if (i) time is [metrically] infinite in the past direction; (ii) nature always existed; (iii) nature exists of BL-necessity (also known in the trade as metaphysical necessity) and nothing about nature is BL-contingent. On these assumptions, every event is BL-necessary. Add to that the assumption that every event in nature is causally determined, and we get the extensional equivalence of the causally necessitated and the BL-necessary. Man-made facts, which you grant are BL-contingent, are not causally necessitated because, for you, X is causally necessitated if and only if X is BL-necessary.

If the foregoing expresses your view, then I think I have isolated the source of our disagreement: we disagree over (iii). I see no reason to accept it. Do you have an argument?

Binswanger responded:

Your "diagnosis" is correct in spirit. I have quarrels over formulation, but there's no need to discuss them here. So we disagree about (iii): the existence of nature is logically necessary and nothing about nature is logically contingent.

You ask for an argument for that. Well, the first part is axiomatic: "existence exists." What makes that logically necessary? The fact that "existence doesn't exist" is a contradiction. "What is, is; what is not, is not" Parmenides wisely said.

The second part is non-axiomatic, and derives from causality. Objectivism holds that causality is the application of the law of identity to action. Things do what they do because they are what they are. For the fragile to act as non-fragile would be the same kind of contradiction as for glass to be not glass. This view of causality rejects the Humean event-to-event idea of causation (which actually originated with Telesio, I believe). We go back to the pre-Renaissance (broadly Greek) view of causation as a relation between entities and their actions.


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Existence, God, and the Randians

This is a follow-up to yesterday's  Rand and Existence Again. The following is by Leonard Peikoff:

Every argument for God and every attribute ascribed to Him rests on a false metaphysical premise. None can survive for a moment on a correct metaphysics . . . .

Existence exists, and only existence exists. Existence is a primary: it is uncreated, indestructible, eternal. So if you are to postulate something beyond existence—some supernatural realm—you must do it by openly denying reason, dispensing with definitions, proofs, arguments, and saying flatly, “To Hell with argument, I have faith.” That, of course, is a willful rejection of reason.

Objectivism advocates reason as man’s sole means of knowledge, and therefore, for the reasons I have already given, it is atheist. It denies any supernatural dimension presented as a contradiction of nature, of existence. This applies not only to God, but also to every variant of the supernatural ever advocated or to be advocated. In other words, we accept reality, and that’s all.

In this passage we meet once again our old friend 'Existence exists.'  And we note the sort of linguistic mischief that Rand/Peikoff engage in.   It cannot be denied that existing things exist, and only existing things exist.  This is entirely trivial.  Anyone who denies it embraces a contradiction:  There are existing things that do not exist. We should all agree, then, with the first sentence of the second paragraph. So far, so good. 

But then Peikoff tells us that to postulate something supernatural such as God is "to postulate something beyond existence."  Now it may well be that there is no God or anything beyond nature.  It may well be that everything that exists is a thing of nature.   But the nonexistence of God does not follow from the triviality that everything that exists exists.  Does it take a genius to see that the following argument is invalid?

1. Existence exists, ergo

2. God does not exist.

One cannot derive a substantive metaphysical conclusion from a mere tautology. No doubt, whatever exists exists.  But one cannot exclude God from the company of what exists by asserting that whatever exists exists.  Now it is not nice to call people stupid, but anyone who cannot appreciate the simple point I have just made is, I am afraid, either stupid, or not paying attention, or willfully obtuse. Here is an example of a valid argument:

3. Nothing supernatural exists

4. God is supernatural, ergo

5. God does not exist.

For Peikoff to get the result he wants, the nonexistence of God, from the premise 'Existence exists,' he must engage in the linguistic mischief of using 'existence' to mean 'natural existence.'  Instead of saying "only existence exists," he should have said 'only natural existence exists.' But then he would lose the self-evidence of "Existence exists and only existence exists."

Conflating a trivial self-evident thesis with a nontrivial controversial thesis has all the advantages of theft over honest toil as Russell said in a different connection.  It would take a certain amount of honest philosophical toil to construct a really good argument for the nonexistence of any and all supernatural entities.  But terminological mischief is easy.  What Peikoff is doing above is smuggling the nonexistence of the supernatural into the term 'existence'  Now if you cannot see that that is an intellectually dispreputable move, then I must say you are hopeless.

It is like a bad ontological argument in reverse.  On one bad version of the ontological argument, one defines God into existence by smuggling the notion of existence into the concept of God and then announcing that since we have the concept of God, God must exist.  Peikoff is doing the opposite: he defines God and the supernatural out of existence by importing their nonexistence into the term 'existence.'  But you can no more define God into existence than you can define him out of existence.

There are other egregious blunders in the above passage.  But if I were to expose every mistake of the Randians, I might attain the age of a Methuselah and still not be done.  Or perhaps I should liken it unto a Sisyphean labor, one of endless and futile toil.  Futile, because the Randians I have so far encountered seem quite unteachable.

 

 

Rand and Existence Again

One of my Rand posts has inspired some vigorous discussion at Triablogue.  My nominalist sparring partner 'Ocham' over at Beyond Necessity comments here on part of the Triablogue discussion:

Tennant points out the 'Existence exists' is incoherent – existence is commonly regarded as a second-order property. Not by everyone, I should point out, but certainly Frege's view that existence is a second-order predicate is accepted by nearly all those in mainstream analytic philosophy. Nor is Donohue's restatement, "whatever exists exists" in any way useful, because it is either merely tautological and doesn't tell us anything, or it is equally incoherent (for it dubiously assumes that existence is a first-order predicate).

Let me try to sort this out.  Neither Tennant nor 'Ocham' understand what Rand is saying.  Donohue may understand it, but he doesn't see what is wrong with it.


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Is Ayn Rand a Good Philosopher? Rand on the Primacy of Existence

I thank our old friend Ockham for adding links to two of my Rand posts to the Wikipedia Ayn Rand entry. (See note 4.) I am about to repost a slightly emended version of the more technical of the two posts,  the one on existence.  This is from my first weblog and was originally posted May 28, 2004.  But first I refer you to Ockham's post Ayn Rand and Wikipedia in which he reports a disagreement at Wikipedia ". . . about whether the article about her should qualify her as a 'popular' or 'commercially successful' philosopher, or an 'amateur philosopher' (as Anthony Quinton did in his article on popular philosophy in the Oxford Companion to philosophy), or whether she is a philosopher without qualification."

Is Rand a philosopher?  Yes.  But she is not very good if among the criteria of goodness you include rigor of thought and objectivity of expression.  No reputable professional journal or press would publish her work.  So in one sense of the term she is not a professional, which makes her an amateur philosopher.  But then so is Nietzsche.  Both are well worth reading by amateurs and professionals alike.  Both are passionate partisans of interesting and challenging ideas.  If nothing else, they show pitfalls to avoid. If you seek respite from the buttoned-down prose of dessicated academicians, they provide it.

Since I am about to lay into Rand, let me begin with something nice about her.  In the 20th century, she brought more people to philosophy than Immanuel Kant, let alone John Rawls.  That can't be bad.  She came to our shores, mastered our difficult language, and made it her own way by her own efforts.  She understood the promise and greatness of America, and did it her way, celebrating the traditional American values of self-reliance and rugged individualism. She gave leftists hell.

So what's my beef?

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Existence as a Property: A Response to David Brightly

David Brightly commented: “Why bother with existence as a property since everything has it and it does not help distinguish individuals? Is there an argument that convinces you that existence is a property, or is this in some way a matter of ‘philosophical taste’?”

1. Existence can be a property without being a property of individuals. It might be a property of properties or concepts or propositional functions or Tichian offices or some cognate item. But our concern is whether, and in what sense, existence is a property of individuals.

2. If existence is a property of individuals, then one can ask whether it classifies individuals into two groups, the existent and the nonexistent. If existence is classificatory in this way, then the individuals it classifies cannot, in themselves, be existent: they must be nonexistent individuals. But I mention this (Meinongian) theory only to set it aside for the space of this post. I maintain that there are no nonexistent individuals, that all individuals exist. This is not self-evident. Nor is it a logical truth that every individual exists. If it were, then it would be a formal-logical contradiction to say that some individuals do not exist, but it is not. For more on this topic, and a critique of van Inwagen, see here.

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Existence: Some Responses to Pavel Materna

For context see Pavel Tichy on Existence, the posts chained to it, and the comments to these posts.

My view is that existence belongs to individuals in the way it would not belong to them if Frege and Russell and Pavel Tichy were right about existence. These three maintain that existence is exclusively a property of concepts, propositional functions, and offices, respectively. I maintain that there are legitimate first-level uses of ‘exist(s)’ in addition to the legitimate second-level uses. This commits me to saying that, in a suitably broad sense of ‘property,’ existence is a property of individuals. No doubt it is a very peculiar property, indeed a sui generis property, but it is a property nonetheless. Or so I maintain. Sometimes I avoid the potentially misleading term ‘property’ altogether and simply say that existence belongs to individuals in the way it would not belong to them if Frege and Russell were right. If Russell is right, then existence is like numerousness. Plainly, one cannot predicate being numerous of an individual, e.g., ‘Socrates is numerous’ and ‘This pencil is numerous’ are nonsense. I say Russell’s view is mistaken. Although second-level uses of ‘exist(s)’ are like the uses of ‘numerous,’ ‘exist(s)’ has legitimate first-level uses unlike ‘numerous’ which has no legitimate first-level uses.

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