{"id":8426,"date":"2013-10-16T13:50:28","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T13:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/10\/16\/existence-neither-accidental-nor-essential\/"},"modified":"2013-10-16T13:50:28","modified_gmt":"2013-10-16T13:50:28","slug":"existence-neither-accidental-nor-essential","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/10\/16\/existence-neither-accidental-nor-essential\/","title":{"rendered":"Existence Neither Accidental Nor Essential"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post continues my ruminations<\/a> on the distinctio realis<\/em>.  If essence and existence are really distinct in a contingent being, should we think of its existence as accidental or essential, or neither?<\/span><\/p>\n

Max, a cat of my acquintance, exists and exists contingently:  there is no broadly logical necessity that he exist.  His nonexistence is broadly logically possible.  So one may be tempted to say that existence is to Max as accident to substance.  One may be tempted to say that existence is accidental<\/em> to Max.  In general, the temptation is to say that existence is an accidental property of contingent beings, and that this accidentality is what makes them contingent.<\/span><\/p>\n

But this can't be right.  On a standard definition, if P is an accidental property of x, then x can exist without P.  So if existence were an accidental property of Max, then, Max could exist without existing.  Contradiction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ought we conclude that existence is an essential property of Max?  If P is an essential property of x, then x cannot exist without P.  So if existence were an essential property of Max, then Max cannot exist without existing.  The consequent of the conditional is true, but tautologically so.  <\/span><\/p>\n

From this one can infer either that (i) Max is a necessary being (because her has existence essentially) or that (ii) existence construed as an essential property is not the genuine article.  Now Max is surely not a necessary being.  It is true that if he exists, then he exists, but from this one cannot validly infer that he exists.  Suppose existence is a first-level property.  Then it would makes sense to say that existence is an essential property of everything.  After all, in every possible world in which Max exists, he exists!  But all this shows is that existence construed as an essential property is not gen-u-ine, pound-the-table existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

We ought to conclude  that existence is neither accidental to a contingent thing, nor essential to it.  No contingent thing is such that existence follows from its essence.  And no contingent thing is such that its contingency can be understood by thinking of its existence as an accidental property of it.  The contingency of Max's being sleepy can be understaood in terms of his instantiation of an accidental property; but the contingency of his very existence cannot be so understood.<\/span><\/p>\n

If every first-level property is either accidental or essential, then existence is not a first-level-property.  But, as I have argued many times, it does not follow that existence is a second-level property.  The Fregean tradition went off the rails: existence cannot be a second-level property.  Instantiation is a second-level property, but not existernce. And of course it cannot be a second-level property if one takes the real distinction seriously, this being a distinction between essence and existence 'in' the thing or 'at' the thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where does this leave us?  Max exists.  Pace<\/em> Russell, saying that Max exists is NOT like saying that Max is numerous.  'Exists,' unlike 'numerous,' has a legitimate first-level use.   So existence belongs to Max.  It belongs to him without being a property of him.  One argument has already been sketched.  To put it explicitly:  Every first-level property is either essential or accidental; Existence is neither an essential nor an accidental first-level property; ergo, Existence is not a first-level property.<\/span><\/p>\n

Existence belongs to Max without being a property of him.  How is existence 'related' to Max if it is not a property of him?  <\/span><\/p>\n

In my existence book<\/a> I maintained that existence belongs to a contingent being such as Max not as accident to substance, or as essence to primary substance, or as property to possessor, or as proper part to whole, or by identity; but as unity to items unified.  In brief, the existence of a contingent thing is the contingent unity of its ontological constituents.  The existence of Max is not one of his constituents but the unity of all his constituents.<\/span><\/p>\n

This approach solves the problem of how existence can belong to a contingent being without being a property of it.  But it raises vexing questions of its own, questions to be taken up in subsequent posts in this series.<\/span><\/p>\n

One question I need to address is whether philosophy would have come up with the real distinction if it were not for the doctrine of divine creation ex nihilo<\/em>.<\/span> <\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Defending the Distinctio Realis Against Anthony Kenny<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post continues my ruminations on the distinctio realis.  If essence and existence are really distinct in a contingent being, should we think of its existence as accidental or essential, or neither? Max, a cat of my acquintance, exists and exists contingently:  there is no broadly logical necessity that he exist.  His nonexistence is broadly logically possible.  So one may be … Continue reading “Existence Neither Accidental Nor Essential”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-constituent-ontology","category-existence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}