Questions tagged [existence]
Ontological and metaphysical questions about the study of existence, being and the structure of reality.
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How can we denote objects that no longer exist?
This is a question more about how we can discuss about objects which no longer exist. For example, let's say that Socrates no longer exists (ignore any religious side of this and consider Socrates as ...
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Are various concepts of divine creation based on more basic/simpler/integrated concepts, or are they indefinitely diverse?
For example, take these four notions:
Creation by rearranging/ordering prime matter (AKA from preexisting substance).
By emanation.𓆉
"From nothing."
Modal "toggling": ...
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What is the point of Human Existence?
I have no experience in formal philosophy, so I apologise for the crudeness and generalism of everything I say here.
The Issue-:
Every time I try to motivate myself by logically connecting the ...
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Does Kant's scheme for the analytic/synthetic distinction have room for a (degenerate?) further distinction, for "hyperanalytical" knowledge?
Kant can be easily misread (or: I myself easily misread him, for a long time) as claiming that no "existence claims" are analytically knowable. Technically, though, his system has it that (...
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What is existence?
If I wanted to define "existence" as "that which we encounter but cannot will", what philosophical tradition would that put me in? What authors took up that position or a similar ...
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What does it mean to exist and not exist? Is it possible to be both and/or neither?
Is it possible for something to exist and at the same time not exist?
Also, is it possible for something to neither exist and not exist?
Or am I simply asking the same question, but wording it ...
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Understanding the concept of "Entity"
I was reading the concept for an entity, it says:
An entity is something that exists as itself, as a subject or as an object, real or potentially, concretely or abstractly, physically or not. It need ...
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Does the notion of creation-from-nothingness presuppose the notion of existence-as-a-predicate?
Presupposition of the question. The question, "Does X exist?" is either trivial or empty. On the one hand, as Hume said one time, it seems as if in thinking of something, I always think of ...
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How does a thought imply there is a thinker in "I think therefore I am"?
How does Descartes say a thought necessarily means there is a thinker?
In my opinion, "I think therefore I am" is egocentric because could really stem from an illusion of the thoughts ...
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Proving God and believing only provable things
This question has two, related, parts.
Part 1.
I recently have been on some discussions regarding proving God exists and proving that Jesus is really the son of God; intertwined with that, there was a ...
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Is there an infinite amount of things that are not present?
Sitting here at my desk, there is not a bottle of meth. There is not an elephant. There is not a car. There is not a unicorn. There is not a salad. There is not a cat. There is not a dog. There is not ...
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Are we all in a state of existence and nonexistence?
Why?
Because if something exists it needs something that observes it otherwise it doesn't exist or...?
If this is true then at some point in this universe we all will very likely vanish (Big Freeze or ...
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Any modern context for Boethius' two types of now?
1,500 years ago the Roman senator & philosopher Boethius wrote of two types of 'the now':
“Nunc fluens facit tempus, nunc stans facit aeternitatum."
The now that passes produces time, the ...
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Are all nonexistent things the same?
Is every nonexistent thing identical to every other nonexistent thing? For instance, both the property of being Santa Claus and the property of being a unicorn have empty extension, so does that mean ...
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Does anything exist that doesn't cause effects?
In trying to understand the meaning of the word 'exist', I'm asking if there is anything exists that doesn't cause effects. Or is there anything that causes effects that doesn't exist?
If not then it ...
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Could I (or something like my mind) exist because more complicated (mental) products than me exist?
Starting with a Cartesian-type 'cogito' argument, we might be sceptical that an 'I' exists, but rather suppose that we're embedded in a kind of perceptive process allowing us to experience thoughts, ...
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Is there something that exists by pure logic alone?
Is there something such that its existence is necessary, through pure logic alone? I know that Anselm famously suggested God as such a being, but his argument is widely thought to be fallacious. But ...
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Is being non existent the same as being zero in quantity
For instance,
There does not exist unicorn on earth. There are zero unicorns on earth.
How are these two different?
One could argue being zero in quantity is a temporal property. The number may change ...
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What is "Nothing"? [closed]
What is "nothing" and how can a Universe be entirely created out of "nothing"? The moment we give "nothing" a description or definition, it becomes something. The ...
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Is there any way for me to know if I exist, as such, do I exist?
Is there any way for me to truly know I exist? I mean, I think I exist, but I recently came across skepticism, which says to doubt everything, even one's own existence, so now I don't know if I exist. ...
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Is time fundamental like space or only a tool for measurement? [closed]
Time is to distance or acceleration what progression is to space. Time “exists” like distance as a measurement but is not ‘real’ like me, you or the earth that we stand. Time is a measurement of ...
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Has any philosophy in history coherently disambiguated the state of being “real” from being “existent”? Such that it’s broadly applicable to thoughts?
I suspect that things which simply exist are not bound by limits and are hence unlimited. According to economic thinking, real things are those which are scarce or limited by constraints of physical ...
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Is it possible to define a term that has no extension, without presupposing the existence of members?
For example 'unicorn' has no extension, but we can still provide a definition of one as long as we assume that they do exist. So is it possible to define a term that really has no extension, without ...
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Do nominalists say that unicorns and married bachelors don't exist in the same way?
I'm a philosophy novice that's trying to wrap my head around nominalism. In my current thinking there is a big difference between two categories of things that don't exist: non-actual concepts and ...
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What condition(s) must be met to claim that something exists?
What is the fundamental difference between something that exists and something that doesn't exist?
What exactly are we claiming when we say that something "exists"?
Is there a distinctive ...
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Applying logic to the question of whether all of existence is infinite or not
Here, I use to exist as generally as possible; if it is an object, it exists; if it is conceivable, it exists; if it is anything, it exists; even the properties and relations themselves exist. ...
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Can the "doctrine of degrees of existence" be used to support the well-ordering lemma apart from the axiom of choice?
I was pleasantly surprised to read (in a Wikipedia article) that:
In second order logic, however, the well-ordering theorem is strictly stronger than the axiom of choice: from the well-ordering ...
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Are the A and B theories of time meant to describe actual/ontic/physical reality?
I know this question has been asked many times before but I'm honestly not capable of fully understanding all the many answers that have been given for questions like this. Basically I'm wondering ...
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What should a person do?
Edit 1: As pointed out in the comments, the question implies the existence of a purpose and agency so I would like to re-phrase the question to match what I'm after:
What should a person do? (What is ...
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Modal logic for absoluteness
Modern modal logic has the modalities of necessity and possibility. However, both of these can be seen as relative to the set of possible worlds and the accessibility relation chosen for the semantics....
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The timeline of everything
My friend (catholic) and I (atheist) were taking about religion. We bare both scientists and therefore wanted to look at it scientifically.
After discussing, We have stopped at the question about ...
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On physical existence. Do virtual particles of QFT exist?
Existence is a polysemic and difficult word to define. Almost certainly numbers (and other well-defined mathematical objects) exist in a different way than a real physical object (the chair I sit in, ...
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An argument that everything exists
This is similar to my previous question, here: An argument that everything is possible. I have an argument that everything exists. For, that which does not exist is not a thing at all. For example, ...
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Are there things that don't exist?
This question is tripping me up.
My working definition of exists is "affecting something/someone"
Consider the following frame of reference: My bedroom
I now have two categories.
Things that ...
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Does Kant implicitly commit the paralogism of pure reason when saying that to have a representation it is necessary to accompany it with 'I think'?
In Caygill's Kant Dictionary entry of 'I Think' there is this part:
Kant further claims that 'I think' is the necessary vehicle/form/accompaniment of experience: to have a representation it is ...
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Is gravity a natural manifestation of universal egoism? [closed]
What bothers me is the possibility that egoism could be an intrinsic trait of existence in general.
So we have gravity whereby masses pull each other towards themselves.
An objection could be that ...
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Comparing one modal interchange with another
In the normal systems of modal logic, you can have either of the following:
Possibly X is defined as not necessarily not X
Necessarily X is defined as not possibly not X
I know this is not the same ...
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If everything ends one day why don't we end it today?
Is there any doctrine that gives the reason why to wait till the end of the world?
I'm 18 and not depressed.
I am not asking about the purpose of life. I'm asking why should we fulfill the purpose of ...
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Is faith just a consolation for the common folk?
In reading Dostoevsky, I stumbled upon the perplexing question of faith being a mere consolation. And in spite of considering myself a believer, I still agree to this statement to a certain extent. ...
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How is the beginning of something determined?
Imagine I have an egg, powder, cocoa, flour, etc and want to make a "cake". I have been told the "cake" doesn't begin at any time because it's just the cocoa, egg, flour, etc in a ...
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Is there a difference between "Nothing exists in the universe" and "Nothing exists, not even the universe"?
Is there a difference between claiming "Nothing exists in the universe" and claiming "Nothing exists, not even the universe"? It seems to me that the former implies the universe, ...
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Can you disprove Last Thursdayism for the time since you were born?
Let's take this week for example. I know that I exist now on Monday, and that this coming Thursday won't begin all existence. Therefore Last Thursdayism for the future is disproved. This means that ...
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Something vs Nothing. Reality of 0?
Is nothing really nothing or is it something? Like is 0 something or nothing?
And if nothing is something then would it be right to say that if nothing existed, something existed. And something must ...
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Simultaneity of Astronauts
Let us image a spacecraft in fast orbit. Since it took off its clock has lost several minutes relative to Earth time. From the ground we can speak to the astronauts, although there is 1 second radio ...
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How can anything, such as a gender or sex, be said to exist?
It’s very common to hear people nowadays say that there are two related aspects of humans with regards to perhaps something we could call “dimorphism” or typology associated with form and reproductive ...
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Is Husserl's transcendental ego God?
We will eventually come up against something that cannot be varied
without destroying that object as an instance of its kind. The
implicit claim here is that if it is inconceivable that an object of
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Are idealists committed to claiming that every idea contains its inversion?
Are idealists - does anyone claim - about some domain - committed to believing that every idea contains its inversion?
So that, e.g. when an effect depends on its cause, the cause also depends on its ...
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Existence being analytic of God vs. God being analytic of existence
Elsewhere, in light of the idea that understanding is not a species of knowledge but an epistemic genus parallel to knowledge, and then in terms of an understanding logic, I asked whether knowledge of ...
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A proposal for the meaning of life [closed]
I propose that the meaning of something is "all of the information related to it", and thus that the meaning of life is "all of the information related to life" - all of the causes ...
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The shape and extension of the fundamental particles
You could say that particles are just 0-dimensional points. But point particles are just an idealization. If particles are taken to exist physically, and anything which has physical existence has ...
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