“The analytical approach to ontology stems from the fact that the question "What exists?" presents a fundamental ambiguity. " In a sense, as Quine wrote in 1948, it is a simple question that can be answered with one word: "Everything." All exists because there cannot be anything that does not exist, otherwise it would fall into the tangle of being and non-being (the "beard of Plato") that has plagued the history of Western philosophy. In this first sense, then, the ontological question can only find all in agreement and has no relevance with metaphysics. To say that something does not exist is simply a "contradiction in terms." But there is also a sense in which the question "What exists?" admits different answers. There is everything but not, of course, the chimeras or ghosts, and for Quine did not even exist the properties, possible individuals, or other entities causally inert as the meanings and propositions which philosophers of different orientations were otherwise inclined to include into their ontological inventory.
When Quine said "everything" meant to refer neither more nor less than to the material content of the space-time – one and only one entity for each distinct region of space-time-at most with the addition of those abstract entities that are the essence of mathematics on which govern the physical sciences. For other philosophers the quantifier "all" refers to something else, and their inventory will therefore be different from that of Quine. In this sense, then, the ontological question is far from trivial and no one expects to find a universally acceptable answer. For each of us there exists anything on which we are willing to quantify; but we can be prepared to quantify on different things. "
Being a sole science to have to study ‘matter’, ontology is also " the study of human beings", then "everything" becomes the object of ontology. And of everything "that is" it is necessary to know the principles and causes. Knowledge not only of the substances, but also of the principles and their causes, is for Aristotle the "philosophy prima", prior to any other development of speculation in the fields of ethics and logic.
Even in Aristotle's ontology is still more important than the logic and empirical dimension: only intellectual intuition for him is able to access it. Existence is therefore not a "predicable" of an entity. We can have the concept of god, his essence, in thought, but we can not translate this intellectual knowledge in a test of its real existence. From one side, the difference between real and ideal is illustrated by an example, the difference between "having 100 tolars and thinking of having them", whereby it wants to indicate the size purely empirical of existence. From the other the ideal of pure reason appears to be the ultimate structure of reason, which thinks Being as "the set of all possibilities for a complete determination of all things" but in fact only as an "idea".
Unlike the Aristotelian categories, which have a value both ontological and epistemological as forms of ‘being’ and ‘thinking’, the Kantian categories have a scope only epistemological and transcendental, as a priori forms of the intellect that are not valid for ‘being’ in an ontological sense, but only for logically-formal ‘thinking’, which brought him the accusation of phenomenalism by his contemporaries. According to Kant, in fact, ‘being’ is not caught at the immediate level of the intellectual intuition (which for Plato and Aristotle was the summit of knowledge), but it would be a simple copula assigned and traced by our ‘I’ to the limited scope of the phenomenon, on which reasoning exercises, through the categories, its critical and mediator functions. Kant was essentially accused of having emptied ‘being’of its own ontological dimension, putting the critical reason over intuition.
It was later the German idealism to develop this theme. In Hegel the ontological dimension becomes totally submissive to the epistemological one. With the statement ''all that is real is rational, all the rational is real "and with his triadic dialectics, Hegel claimed the possibility of absolute knowledge, being the" spirit "(Being) logically comprehensible.
Hegel actually ousted ontology from philosophy, assuming that ‘thinking’ was able to justify itself. The Parmenidean staticity became dynamic, and ‘being’ was passed into becoming. Thus Hegel overthrew the Aristotelian logic of non-contradiction, matching ‘being’ with its opposite, that is, with ‘non-being’. The Hegelian ontology is no longer the intuitive and transcendent dimension that led to the thought (as it was in classical philosophy), but it is placed at the end: it is the result of a mediation, of a logical process.
After Hegel the ontological problem, in its possible ramifications, became the central node of many philosophies that followed him. In many replayed the problem, which in truth is treated more or less indirectly in any philosophy.
Physics can help the ontological discussion by providing us with categories of existence. What could be such a category? For example:
- material entities (everything that obeys to material laws, the laws we study in Physics)
- immaterials (the generalization of materials, providing that we drop the constraints)
- medium between mat and immat entities (gray zone of existence)
But, it is the problems of probabilistic discussions that don't allow this task to be completed.
Actually, it is quite simple: Anything in existence has xyz dimensions and location with respect to other things. The rest of the historical discussion involves philosophical obfuscation in the struggle between determinism and indeterminism.
Existence and uniqueness and universe or domain of existence are three important concepts in mathematics and in philosophical discourse in general. Indeed what we say something exists when stated properties and conditions are verified and empirical tests made.
But proving non existence requires, first listing and knowing all properties that might be properties of phenomena that possibly exist in space time, which is an impossible task to do as we have limited knowledge and limited and relative understanding of things that exist in nature (we know only a small fraction of nature with corresponding small knowledge) and to verify a non existence of a phenomena with set of properties, satisfying set of conditions, which again is an impossible task, as we do not know every phenomena that exists in the universe.
However we can be certain about the non existence of things that do meet set of properties and conditions in a limited space that we know. For instance we can say a solution of a differential equation with a particular conditions over such a domain does not exist easily verifiable. We can certainly say there does not exist a person who lives 1000 years or who lives levitated on top of a city for 10 years.
This is very interesting ,"Platos' beard"? A divide/grey zone that has not yielded fruit.
From Socrates, teacher of both Plato and Aristotle "if a man knows the truth he will act accordingly".
From Plato, of Socrates in the Gorgias. Socrates failed to convince Gorgias that rhetoric was not an authentic skill for the improvement of the person but a device: Socrates argument, holding good weight with Protagorus, emphasizing the loss of honor before ones peers when one misleads to take advantage, held no weight with self--indulging Gorgius.
Aristotle subsequently produced interpretation that side stepped the existence of truth to claim that men arrived with a range of dispositions which guided behavior. In my view thus sufaces Platos' beard; is there a truth in argument with Gorgias about a personal disadvantage occurred for Gorgias" self indulgence. .
I believe Aristotle labored strenuously with this. He produced the "unmoved mover" that both governed and was governed by the universe. He was heavy on forms and shapes with the belief they harbored a truth. I do not think history sees clearly a mutually shared intuition about the existence of an un-extracted truth within the passage from Socrates to Aristotle; instead has pathed notions that disregard the existence of a universal truth knowable to all men of all dispositions regarding the world and disposition itself; instead has produced a world based on statistics and normal curves. 'what are we to say of self indulgence but to point towards righteousness in the establishment of a common good as a necessity that is necessarily and only extended from the righteous man. Gorgias might say "I see fruit, I take and eat it, better off to honor my own mouth with its' taste."
But I do not believe the intended meaning is attached to Aristotles' forms. Bertrand Russell wrote of Einsteins' relativity
"Between two distant events,there is not any one definite interval. But there is one way of moving from one event to another which makes the sum of all the little intervals along the route greater than by any other route. This route is called a ‘geodesic’, and it is the route which a body will choose if left to itself"..
This seems to come from the blue, I do not think Einstein said much about form especially that an object will "take the longest route if left to itself.
Is the self serving rhetoric and indulgence of Gorgias a long or short route with the longest or lesser lifetime? Gorgias' rhetoric obviously involves short cuts to reasoning, things not left to themselves but coerced to coerce, so on. If it is the case that the time ("interval") between events is inversely related to the length of the path taken, Gorgias' rhetoric entails a shorter lifetime of the "body". I believe that Aristotles obsession with forms ensues from Socrates unfound lesson with Gorgias, 'a natural shape , of the path, that could neither be stolen for Gorgias' palate, employed, or avoided, because it is common to the breathing spaces of all men.
Gorgias still indulges within the unkept spaces of Platos' beard because there is not a longest route, (or route at all?), if nothing has taken the path from Socrates to Aristotle .
Dear Marvin,
I thank you for the inspiring contribution which suggests the following considerations and recollections.
Anchise describes a theory of the cycles of rebirth explaining how many shadows of Elysium immerse themselves in the river Lethe to forget about past lives and to be reincarnated in new earthly bodies. According to some scholars, the description of the suffering of these souls for the mistakes of past lives is reminiscent of Plato's Gorgias, where the suffering of soul and subsequent purification are for a refinement of the next life.
Plato’s reflection, although being also metaphysical and ontological, is similarly focused on man and ethics. Among the main works which concern ethics there is just: Gorgias. For Plato the ‘virtuous’ or ‘moral’ consists in the idea of the Good, the source of everything, which is the maximum knowledge, positioned above understanding, discursive or rational: as in Socrates, then, it can not be taught or passed on verbally, not being amenable to a public discussion concerning its essence; only the wise man can recognize the indescribable, absolute of good, possessing the science of what is useful for the whole community.
If it is impossible to say what is good; at least, it can be said what it is not: it is different from the ‘pleasant’ because it is not automatically for the benefit or advantage of man. To come to know the idea of Good it is needed to make use of the Socratic dialogues, in order to purify the knowledge typical of dianoia (reason) and of intelligence, rising above the doxa (opinion) to finally reach episteme (science).
Nominalists aspects can be traced in the philosophy of Gorgia, more specifically in the Stoic doctrine that distinguishes the sound, perceptible through the senses that give appearance, from the meaning of the word which is not part of the sound, and that is not due to any corporeality and therefore must be considered as non-existent in reality.
Gorgias reveals the secret of his long and serene life by saying : "I have never done anything to seek pleasure" but Isocrates disavows him by saying that his happiness depended on the fact that "... he never married, had no children and was therefore relieved of this task consuming and relentless. " For the Sophists thus happiness, understood as material serenity, was the result of a life of ease throughout selfishly dedicated to themselves.
Best wishes, Gianrocco
"Unreal has no existence and real never ceases to be," was explained in details in Gita, a discourse by Krishna to Arjuna, written by Rishi Vyasa around 3000 years BC.
Regards
Suresh
In quantum physics something that cannot be measured does not exist. For instance if the position of an electron is exactly determined by a measurement the simultaneous conjugate momentum does not exist in the sense that no value can be attributed to it.
:To say that something does not exist is a 'contradiction in terms'. But there is a sense in which the question admits different answers.
it is not true that a precise value of the position admits different values of the conjugate momentum. The reason is that the determination of any of these values would destroy the premise that the position has a precise value.
"Someting Does not exist" makes absolutely perfects sense. That is why we use this expression. The natural language is older than philosophy.
"Something" is a label that identifies an object or a concept or a class in our brain, known to have some set of attributes.
Someone might say for whatever reason that such thing exists (Santa Clause) while somebody else would disagree that such collection of attributes can be demonstrated or is physically viable (a square circle).
Do you agree that square circle does not exist?. I do not agree because the two concepts are mutually exclusive. But may be I am too old. Modern physics sometimes has no limit to what exists or does not for that matter.
It is however quite frequent that people think things exist just because there is a name for it. This fact is exploited by dictators and political or other systems to make non existent things alive.
Its an entirely different matter that non-existence is extremely hard to prove and only for limited category of "things".
If it is possible to talk about non-existent then it highly proves it is existence.
"X is a non-existant being" is short for:
The concept X is not instantiated.
No contradiction.
By the use of the word ' something' it implies that one is affirming an existence/presence of some sort which maybe either clear or vague.
Difficult question. My, probably imperfect, proposal of a take on an answer:
1. Concepts always exist
2. Something always exists if there exists at least one real object (a concept can be believed a real object too).
3. A specific object (subset or element of "something") exists if and only if it represents a concept in a materially adequate manner.
It follows from the foregoing that a proof or demonstration of existence of a specific object (or process) is needed in each and every case. [Material adequacy of representation needs to be justified.]
Something is the place-holder of an undetermined thing. From this follows Konopka's statement that "Something necessarily exists if there exists at least one real thing.".and if this condition holds then "to say that something does not exist is a contradiction in terms."
Good points @Harry Friedman and @Andrew Wutke. Perhaps a concept of "something" is not really ontologically interesting. A question if a given specific thing exists appears to be much more pertinent to the original "what exists?". Again, it looks as though an examination of material adequacy of a concept's representation by a specific thing cannot be avoided. Thereby a judgement of existence of a specific thing can be more complex than just observation or imagining this thing.
The scientific answer to the exisence question requires 1.to ask the right question by 1a.proposing a meaningful hypothesis and 1b using a correct experimental setup to test this hypothesis 2.getting experimental confirmation of the hypothesis. What Heidegger calls the question is an empty intentionality in Husserl's language and the experimental result is a categorial intuition. This procedure is the way science conducts a dialogue with nature.
@Roland,
A vote of intuitive thinkers as well as opinions of acknowledged experts (Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, plus modern cognitive scientists) indicate that concepts exist. Some scholars believe that concepts constitute a truly fundamental form of existence. That is, a "reality of mind" is believed to be a case (I share this belief albeit I'm not easy on it.)
At any rate, it is convenient to accept that some "mind objects" can exist a priori (without any experience). [Some concepts, objects of beliefs, and axioms are examples here.]
P.S. "Perfection" (a concept) exists because each of us has a clear intuition about the meaning of the word "perfection". It does not need to mean the same thing(s) for all of us. The fact that it can have a meaning is sufficient for a concept labelled by a word or a symbol to exist. Just a thought. [I guess thinkers who care about semiotics would have much more to say about this matter.]
I would like to announce the release of "The Spaces in the Looking Glass: Stilling the frame/ framing the still"
Human patterns I think arise from a catalogue of concepts reflected from and/or into life experience via nature/environment.
http://www.ispcjournal.org/en/2016.html
http://en.bazaluk.com/journals
Article The Spaces in the Looking Glass: Stilling the frame/ framing the still
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