{"id":9858,"date":"2012-03-14T06:01:32","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T06:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/14\/existence-and-property-possession\/"},"modified":"2012-03-14T06:01:32","modified_gmt":"2012-03-14T06:01:32","slug":"existence-and-property-possession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/14\/existence-and-property-possession\/","title":{"rendered":"Existence and Property-Possession"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Necessarily, whatever exists has properties, and necessarily, whatever has properties exists.  So, necessarily, x exists iff x has properties. But it does not follow that existence is the property of having properties.  Why not? <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Peter and Paul differ in their existence. But they don&#39;t differ in point of having properties.  They have different properties, of course, but they don&#39;t differ in respect of the property of having properties.  So singular existence (the existence in virtue of which each<em> is <\/em>and is not nothing) is not identical to the property of having properties. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">And yet very competent philosophers make this mistake.  To name names: Dallas Willard, J. P. Moreland, J. K. Swindler.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">One source of the mistake (though it might not be the source of the mistake in any of the above-mentioned) is the confusion of (broadly logical) equivalence with identity.  Necessarily, x is triangular iff x is trilateral:  there is no broadly logically possible world in which the extensions of  the terms differs.  But it doesn&#39;t follow that triangulariy = trilaterality.  They are distinct properties despite their being necessarily coextensive.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">So from the fact that nothing can exist without having properties, and nothing can have properties without existing, <em>pace<\/em> Meinong, it does not follow that to exist = to have properties.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Besides, is it not obviously circular to say that the existence of <em>a<\/em> is its having properties when <em>a<\/em> cannot have properties without existing?  Think about it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Necessarily, whatever exists has properties, and necessarily, whatever has properties exists. So, necessarily, x exists iff x has properties. But it does not follow that existence is the property of having properties. Why not? Peter and Paul differ in their existence. But they don&#39;t differ in point of having properties. They have different properties, of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/14\/existence-and-property-possession\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Existence and Property-Possession&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-existence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9858","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=9858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}