Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Existence

  • Defending Barry Miller Against Herman Philipse, Part I: Existence as a First-Level Property

    In his Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews  review of Elmar J. Kremer's Analysis of Existing: Barry Miller's Approach to God, Herman Philipse presents the following sketch of  Miller's cosmological  argument  a contingentia mundi for the existence of God: 1. Existence is a real first-level accidental property of contingent individuals. 2. Concrete contingent individuals are distinct from…

  • Do You Disappear When You Die? Comments on Yourgrau

    Here, by Palle Yourgrau. Comments by BV in blue.  HT: Vlastimil Vohanka. Many philosophers seem to think you simply 'disappear' when you die, 'erased' from the framework of reality as one would rub out a drawing on the blackboard. I think it would be a serious mistake to think this way. Time maga­zine had it…

  • “Only the Present Exists”

    The above title gives the gist of presentism in the philosophy of time. It is an answer to Quine's ontological inventory question: What is there?  What, by category, should we count as existent?  The presentist answer is that only (temporally) present items exist: wholly past and wholly future items do not exist.  Among these items…

  • Feser on Vallicella on Feser on the Truth-Maker Objection to Presentism

    I argued in my first critical installment that Edward Feser in his stimulating new book, Aristotle's Revenge, does not appreciate the force of the truth-maker objection to presentism in the philosophy of time. Ed's response to me is here. I thank Ed for his response. Herewith, my counter-response. So, as I say, I don’t think the…

  • Presentism and Existence-Entailing Relations: A Problem and Feser’s Solution

    The is is the second installment in my critique of Edward Feser's defense of presentism in his latest book, Aristotle's Revenge.  Here is Part I of the critique. ……………………………………. It is plausibly maintained that all relations are existence-entailing. To illustrate from the dyadic case: if R relates a and b, then both a and b…

  • Existence Simpliciter

    Here is London Ed, recently returned from his African sojourn, raising some good questions anent my entry, A Critique of Edward Feser's Defense of Presentism, Part I: >> the presentist idea is not adequately captured by saying that wholly past items no longer exist, since all who understand English will agree to that. The presentist…

  • Presentism: A Bit of Discussion with Dale Tuggy

    The topic of presentism in the philosophy of time came up during Dale Tuggy's visit last weekend.  Dale anounced that he's a presentist.  So I pressed him a bit. I had him consider some such grammatically past-tensed truth as 'JFK was assassinated.' This sentence is contingently true and indeed contingently true at present.  Although the…

  • On Ceasing to Exist: An Aporetic Tetrad

    John F. Kennedy ceased to exist in November of 1963.  (Assume no immortality of the soul.) But when a thing ceases to exist, it does not cease to be an object of reference or a subject of predicates. If this were not the case, then it would not be true to say of JFK that…

  • John N. Deck’s Contrast Argument against the Philosophy of Being

    Here, at MavPhil Strictly Philosophical

  • A New and Improved Argument for the Necessity of Something

    Previous versions were long-winded.  Herewith, an approach to the lapidary. 1) If nothing exists, then something exists. 2) If something exists, then something exists.3) Either nothing exists or something exists. Therefore4) Necessarily, something exists. The argument is valid. The second two premises are tautologies. The conclusion is interesting, to put it mildly: it is equivalent…

  • If Nothing Exists, is it True that Nothing Exists? Well Yes, but Then . . .

    Here is a puzzle for London Ed and anyone else who finds it interesting. It is very simple, an aporetic dyad. To warm up, note that if snow is white, then it is true that snow is white.  This seems quite unexceptionable, a nice, solid, datanic starting point. It generalizes, of course: for any proposition…

  • Existence and Exemplification: Some Problems

     For Francesco Orilia 1) 'Cats exist' is an example of an affirmative general existential sentence. 'Max exists' is an example of an affirmative singular existential sentence. 'Max' names a cat of my acquaintance.  The problem that concerns me is whether there is an adequate analysis that does justice to both types of existential sentence, one…

  • If God Cannot Cause Himself, How Can He Know Himself?

    This from a reader: If we say God cannot create himself since this implies a contradiction (God existing prior to himself to act on himself), how can we say God does anything with regard to himself? For instance, we say God knows himself. But how is this possible, seeing as God would need to first…

  • Half-Way Fregeanism About Existence: Questions for Van Inwagen

     In section 53 of The Foundations of Arithmetic, Gottlob Frege famously maintains that . . . existence is analogous to number.  Affirmation of existence is in fact nothing but denial of the number nought.  Because existence is a property of concepts the ontological argument for the existence of God breaks down. (65) Frege is here advancing a…

  • Is God Beyond All Being?

    This is a redacted re-posting of an entry that first appeared in these pages on 8 May 2015. It answers a question Fr. Kimel poses in the comments to Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse. ………………………………. Fr. Aidan Kimel writes, Reading through Vallicella’s article, I kept asking myself, Would Mascall agree with the proposition “existence exists”? I…