Questions tagged [existence]
Ontological and metaphysical questions about the study of existence, being and the structure of reality.
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How would moral responsibility be allocated in existence nihilism/via a "feature-placing language"?
Unfortunately, a few days ago, I asked what should have been a clear and simple question in a desperately labyrinth-like, nonlinear manner. The question should have been, "How is moral ...
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Seeking name of method for interpreting reality of phenomena as only a result or emanation of a more meaningful higher system/agent
I have noticed that a method of interpreting evidence according to a higher system/agent is important to some theology and philosophy - for example, Plato's theory of forms used to interpret material ...
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Is it impossible for something that exists to become non-existent? [closed]
If nothingness does not exist in any form, then everything that exists cannot become nothing, does that mean that everything that exists only changes form?
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Why Did Sartre Regret “Existentialism is a Humanism”?
Why did Sartre regret his essay Existentialism is a Humanism?
Background and Evidence
Existentialism is a Humanism is an essay published by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1946. In an introduction by Mary Warnock ...
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Can it be proven from pure logic that at least one thing exists?
Can pure logic alone prove that at least one thing exists? And if so, how about at least two, three, ..., infinitely many objects? Personally, I believe that logic can't even prove that at least one ...
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Is "presentism" just a proposed redefinition masquerading as a substantive thesis?
Some previous questions here (e.g., How is existence in presentism reconciled with relativity of simultaneity?) asked about apparent conflicts between presentism and special relativity. I have a more ...
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Is Anselm's argument supposed to be understood in terms of hyperintensionality?
Hyperintensionality is something to do with e.g. the difference between, "I believe that Dean is Dean," vs., "I believe that Dean is Ackles." Generally, an operation X on A and B ...
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Did Aristotle think that essence and existence were distinct?
Did Aristotle think that essence and existence are the same thing or that they are different things? Are there references that could help me understand how he saw the difference?
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Is the universe 'necessarily' contingent?
My question arises from a debate I had seen between Mohammed Hijabi and Alex O'Connell (the debate) where it seems like Hijabi was admitting to the fact that all contingent things must come from and ...
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Chicken or Egg. Does everything begin or is the idea of start/first/origin related to the use of language?
The existence of beginning: origin/start/initiate. Do not all beginnings require something before? Are all just arbitrary measurements of traits we find of interest? The globally persuasive ideas of ...
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Can, "Intuitions without concepts are blind," be explained in terms of sentences featuring indexicals?
I.e., imagine an assertion like, "This is that." Taken per se, it is like "thoughts without content [that] are empty," but taken de re, is it blind? If I point at some "this&...
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Are "finding the pain of existence unbearable" and "deciding that life is not worth living" the same?
I have tried to present my views regarding these two seemingly related phenomena.
(a) Thinking that Life is not worth living
When one "thinks" that life is not worth living, that is a ...
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What is the difference in concrete things between being and existing, or is there none?
I am supposing that being and existence must correspond to principles in concrete things, else the notions of being and existence are false precisely because they are attributed to things. So what ...
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Do meanings of statements exist?
It was suggested to me in another thread that materialism is self defeating. But when I looked at the reason for that statement I found confusion in the argument.
(4) MATERIALISM
[Definition] The ...
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What is the meaning of existence? [closed]
What is the meaning of the word 'exist'?
Its etymology reveals it's derived from two Latin words:
ex = from + ist = is
Thus, its inventor intended it to mean from is.
What did the inventor of the ...
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Aquinas on the relation between essence, being, and existence
In Summa Contra Gentiles 2.9.4, Aquinas writes
Just as active power is something acting, so is its essence something
being [Sicut potentia activa est aliquid agens, ita essentia eius est aliquid ens]....
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Did Descartes declare the "Non Cogito" first, prior to "cogito ergo sum"
I took A-Level Philosophy, during which we studied Descartes "Meditations" at length.
I remember our teacher explaining that, whilst "Cogito ergo sum" was the famous phrasing, ...
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What are some logically equivalent formulations of “uniqueness”?
A monoid is a mathematical structure with an associative law of composition and an identity element. It can be proven that if an element of a monoid has an inverse, then the inverse is unique:
Assume ...
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Hugh MacColl and Meinong's position on existence
After researching the Russell and MacColl debate, at first I didn't know about MacColl, but I became very interested in him, so I continued to research him and eventually found out more about theory ...
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Does all the existence have a will to remain existing? [closed]
First of all: i am a layman.
Body/bodies: Material Being/Has mass and volume
And what i mean by the title: Everything that exists (that is composed by any chemical element) has the will/determination ...
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How many things is a blob? [closed]
Imagine you have two types of play-do. You mix them up till you can't tell the difference between them but you have a machine that can split them up. How many types of play-do do you have in your hand?...
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Does the statement "only matter exists" denote a false proposition or a true proposition? [closed]
The proposition denoted by the English statement "only matter exists" has a truth value that's constant in time. I want to know if it's true.
To answer the question, you need to know the ...
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What do you think about all existence following the very same laws? [closed]
So, i was wondering: Planets, Stars, etc. Have a similar behavior to us, humans. I mean, they consume energy to stay "alive" and when this energy ends up they "die". And in the end ...
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Certainty for the existence of tomorrow?
The title might not be the best but it was the best I could do. The question presses on the matter of continuity of time and the necessity of existence as a connected metaphysical phenomena.
Just like ...
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How much philosophy is about terminology and human conceptions?
I see a lot of sentences like "If a tree fell and nobody hears it did it really fall", or many questions related to infinity. But each of this questions can be true or false according to ...
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Is Alzheimer’s disease evidence for the non-existence of the soul?
As Alzheimer's disease kills off neurons, a person's personality and cognitive abilities gradually fade away. Doesn't this suggest that the self or "soul" is simply an emergent property of ...
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Would presentism and vagueness of the present imply that every event has borderline existence?
Would presentism and the vagueness of the present imply that every event that occurs is in a borderline state of existence? Since vagueness is characterized as having borderline cases.
I take ...
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Nothingness: What philosophical concept relates to how the empty set is a subset of every set?
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:
“Where do vanished objects go?"
"Into nonbeing, which is to say, everything," replied Professor
McGonagall.
"Nicely phrased," replied ...
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Is there a difference between "there is" versus "there exists"?
I have heard the phrases "there is" and "there exists" used interchangeably, but I am now wondering, is there a difference between them, and if so, what is it? Also, have ...
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How can something exist and then cease to exist?
Let's imagine a system that sequentially goes through three configurations. At time t1 the system is in configuration A, at time t2 in configuration B, and at time t3 in configuration C. That is, ...
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Can we know that something exists even if we can't explain or define it?
Can a person know that something like "free will" must exist even though an exact definition in words, using language, cannot be provided, and in the absence of a complete theory that ...
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Can anything happen at any time right now if there is infinite Possibilities in life?
If we live in a world with possibly infinite realities, and infinite space, doesn't that mean that there is an chance that anything could happen?
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Life: Pessimism vs optimism
I was reflecting a bit on the history of philosophy and religion and how they view human life. My question is the following: Why does it seem ( at least from my readings and knowledge, I might have ...
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Do we live forever (in our own specific universes)?
*I would like to preface this by saying I am not philosopher and have not studied any philosophy. This is just something I have been curious about for a long time and finally decided to ask. I am ...
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Implicit assumptions of the statement "If I've come to exist once, I will come to exist again" and if it could be disproved
"If I've come to exist once, I will come to exist again".
It could be thought of as of an alternative to "reincarnation" but in a much more general sense, abstracted from any ...
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What's the reason to live in this life?
I'm scared of life too much.
What will happen after this life ends? Even in this life, what is happening? Are we just some animals who have higher consciousness and are interacting with each other? ...
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Is it true that no philosopher disagrees that everything exists?
I am baffled by what Quine claims here:
A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: 'What is there?' It can be answered, ...
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What would it be like for a person with no senses and no motor functions at all since birth?
As a sort of thought experiment trying to go to the farthest lengths of knowing oneself from the distractions of this world, I wanted to know what it would be like for a person that was born with none ...
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Unperceived Existence
My daughter is at university reading neuroscience. One of her modules this year is philosophy and she is struggling with this question.
"Do we infer the unperceived existence of what we perceive ...
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How does the claim that existence is not a predicate of objects interact with abstract objects?
It's occured to me that Kant's famous argument that "existence" is not a predicate whatsoever, which eventually became the prevailing position on the subject due to Frege and Russell, seems ...
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Does any philosophy define 'existence' such that unobservable things exist?
In Science and the Unobservable Nature (1937) it says
An outstanding characteristic of modern physics is that only that
which is observable is significant.
... the followers of Einstein maintained ...
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If something is temporally and spatially vague, then can it be individuated by its absence?
1 If something is temporally and spatially vague, then can it become nothing?
I am thinking that it cannot be entirely individuated from its absence while it exists, because e.g. the space where it ...
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Do arguments arising from probability convincingly argue a mass human extinction event in the near future? [closed]
One such argument is the Doomsday argument which is taken seriously by a number of academics. But more simply, if we look at the modern population trajectory, it's something of an exponential curve. ...
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Does something that exists hypothetically exist at all?
So, I was asking myself the question: if something will exist in the future, with almost absolute certainty, but has not come to existence yet, can one claim that it exists? And, can one claim that it ...
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What's the least amount of things that can possibly exist?
Suppose there only ever existed one indecomposable, irreducible object.
What could distinguish it from nothingness? From not existing, as there is nothing besides it that could deduce its information?
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Existence, Stating/Proving in Logic
Proving dogs exist
If x barks then x is a dog: ∀x(Bx → Dx)
t: Timmy (a dog)
PROOF:
∀x(Bx → Dx) [Premise]
Bt [Premise]
Bt → Dt [1 UI]
Dt [2, 3 MP]
∃x(Dx) [4 EG]
QED
Proving ghosts don't exist
If the ...
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Does 'cogito ergo sum' actually establish the existence of an objective truth/reality?
Before I start describing my questions, I would like to draw some background on my understanding and knowledge of Descartes' ontological(metaphysical) views regarding the cogito and philosophy in ...
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Is consciousness universal?
I have just read "Why" by Philip Goff. He proposes that matter consists of conscious entities. Physics based on mathematics tells us what matter does, not what it is. This has implications ...
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Can existence only be reasonably defined as a relation? [closed]
Here is an observation:
Things that exist are verifiable, i.e., there is some external object, within its scope of accessibility, that can construct its information. By ‘construct its information’, I ...
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Why is Sextus Empiricus not self-contradicting and where can I read about his works?
Firstly, Sextus states: "By way of preface let us say that on none of the matters to be discussed do we affirm that things certainly are just as we say they are: rather, we report descriptively ...
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