General terms and existence By Timo Schmitz, Philosopher

Transcription

1 General terms and existence By Timo Schmitz, Philosopher In my previous article on logic 1, the identity of a singular term was in the spotlight. A singular term might be Berne, as well as the capital of Switzerland. Both refer to a single thing, in this case a spot which might be located in space and time, and since both terms share exactly the same attrributes, we can say that they both are the same: Berne = the capital of Switzerland. Thus, the name refers to the geographical spot, the geographical spot is the referent. We can say that Berne is identical to the capital of Switzerland, as Berne shares exactly all the same attributes than the capital of Switzerland. If x and y share the same attributes, than everything which is true for x must be true for y as well. This is called the numerical identity. In contrary, the qualitative identity is comparing x and y and they share an identity if at least one attribute is shared by both. A general term is the amount of several singular terms, for example chair and table as furniture. We can say that both singular terms and thus the two objects to which the term is refered to can be classed in one general term. 2 However, how do we know that such a general term really exists? It is useless to ask whether a singular term exists, as we already imply the existence of it by just naming it. 3 Even if we cannot see God, we imply the possible existence of God by giving God a name, so that we can refer to him. When we see a chair and talk about a chair, we do not need to ask whether a chair really exists, since otherwise we wouldn t have called it chair. When we say Mr.X, we already assume that Mr.X must exist, because otherwise we would not call him Mr.X. However, when we say chairs exist, we do not refer to a single object anymore, but we say that there must be attributes and if all these attributes together are found on an object then we call them chair. We actually generalize something here, and we have to prove that this generalization is really valid and that it actually exists. Traditionally, there is the differentiation between essentia (what the thing is) and existentia (whether the thing is). 4 Indeed, if we say that a thing exists, we give it an existentia, however, only if we say what the thing is, we can talk of an essentia. Therefore, there is a separation between essence and existence, and according to Sartre existence preceedes essence. According to Sartre, In making me an object for his projects, the other alienates me from myself, displaces me from the subject position (the position from which the world is defined

2 Timo Schmitz: General terms and existence -2- in its meaning and value) and constitutes me as something. Concretely, what I am constituted as is a function of the other s project and not something that I can make myself be. 5 We can see here the problem that existence seemingly is not anyting concrete, anything objective. Something is as it is, because it is identified as such. In class logic, this is very important. When we classify something as furniture, then all the singular terms must share certain attributes alike which make them be part of the class they belong to. All the furnitures must share a certain essence to be classified as furniture. Again, this goes already very far, as this already assumes that it exists! We must ask, how does something exist? How is it possible that the furnitures exist? We know that chairs and tables exist as we can refer to them, but how can we create a general term? Actually, this issue is very important as well when we want to do scientific research. If one states the proposition Beautiful people are more successful than ugly people., it is not only a bad question for a scientific research, it even asks us what are actually beautiful people? The proposition claims that beautiful people exits, but under all amount of people, what makes them beautiful? This means, how can I find out, whether beautiful people exist at all? To find out, whether beautiful people exist, we must identify a beautiful person. We encounter several problems here as human-beings cannot perceive reality. [...] we always stay subjective as we just can take a part of everything, if at all. [...] whatever we do, we just can measure a part of the reality and never the whole. [...] As a result, if we do empirical science, we can never even prove a thesis or claim that a thesis is right, we are just able to falsify it [...]. However, there is even another barrier: language. All the things we perceive are codified into language, which means that the object we refer to is lost in language, and thus, different people mean different things with one word 6. In addition, it is not only difficult to define beautiful people, they even have to fulfill two conditions, they must be a) beautiful, b) a human-being. This would imply that existence is a property of the individual, the beauty must belong to that individual. However, is property really a form of existence and What does it mean to ask if existence is a property? [...] Properties contrast with individuals. This distinction can be explicated using the instantiation relation. My cat instantiates the property of being hungry, as that is a way he is, and, being an individual, is not himself instantiated by anything. While properties also instantiate the property of being red, for example, has the property of being a color only properties are instantiated; individuals only instantiate. So, our first question is whether existence is instantiated and, if so, whether it is instantiated by individuals like Obama, my chair, and the fig tree in my backyard. Do individuals, in addition

3 Timo Schmitz: General terms and existence -3- to ordinary properties like being human, being comfortable to sit in, and needing more water, instantiate a property expressed by the English verb exists? 7 At first, we can conclude that beauty is only instantiated to human-beings. If we say a humanbeing is beautiful, we instantiate to the onoma/ subject human-being the rhema/ predicate is beautiful. If we say There is a beautiful human-being it already asserts that there must be at least one human-being in the world that is beautiful and it actually equals there exists a beautiful human-being. For exactly this reason, Frege and Russell denied existence as individual properties. We might ask What is the difference between a red apple and a red existing apple? To be red (or even to be an apple) it must already exist, as only existing things instantiate properties. 8 To say that someone is beautiful, one already assumes from the beginning that there is beauty and that there is a human-being who instantiates the state of being beautiful and the thought is that instantiating any property whatsoever conceptually presupposes the existence of a subject in a way that makes it incoherent to then think of existence as a further property of that thing 9. If we already presume from the beginning that something exsits, it makes no sense to further claim that the thing we think that exists must exist, so that the term beautiful person already includes the existence of a beautiful person, because otherwise it makes no sense to even talk of a beautiful person, and so we do not need to state that a beautiful person exists as a property of beautiful person, since the existence is already in the term by stating it. Or to put it in Nelson s words: To say that foxes exist is to say that there are some things that are foxes; that is, the property of being a fox is instantiated. This is reflected in the standard regimentation of the sentences Foxes exist and There are foxes in first-order quantificational logic as xfx, where Fx is the translation for the predicate is a fox. General kind terms do not, then, designate individuals, which we then (redundantly) say exist when using the predicate exists or (paradoxically) say are not when using the predicate does not exist. 10. To be precisely, when we talk of a beautiful human-being, the person includes the attributes of human-being and the attributes of beautiful. In other words: the object is identical to human-being and identical to beauty. Now, we have to ask the question what are the attibutes to beauty. What makes a person beautiful? And even further, we have to ask, what is success? Which attributes have to come together that something is identified as success? By saying Beautiful people are more successful we already presume the existence of success, but how to identify it? Success is nothing graspable and every person defines it differently, therefore we can only assume qualitative identity here, since we can easily get a lot of definitions of success and they all probably only share a few attributes. We have the same

4 Timo Schmitz: General terms and existence -4- thing with beauty. We can easily presume its existence, but not find its essence. Therefore, the term is highly subjective and we can get a lot of ideas of beauty sharing qualitative identity. However, the real problem that we have about existence is the problem that a thing which was perceived is codified into language. In the moment when we codify it, the thing itself disappears. All attributes that are given to the thing are introduced through language, this means, if we separate a thing in its attributes, we only separate it in the things which we can express. We do not know whether the attribute, for instance the colour of a thing is really the final attribute or whether the colour itself is just an amount of other attributes. If so, does it make sense to talk of red apples if red is not an attribute at all, but just another cluster of attributes? Nelson points out: The Meinongian [...] concludes that reality includes referents for empty names and those referents do not exist. 11 Even further, Meinong goes so far that not everything which is automatically implies existence. Rosefeldt mentions Zwar verwenden wir Sätze der Form Es gibt Fs oft so, daß wir das mit ihnen Gesagte auch durch die entsprechenden Sätze der Form Fs existieren ausdrücken könnten, aber laut Meinong gibt es überdies eine nicht-existenzimplizierende Bedeutung des Ausdrucks es gibt, das heißt wir können diesen Ausdruck auch so verwenden, daß wir uns durch die Äußerung eines Satzes der Form Es gibt Fs nicht darauf festlegen, daß Fs existieren. 12 As a result, we could say that there are witches (es gibt Hexen), but witches do not exist (Hexen existieren nicht). As Pascal Engel points out: Le paradoxe des objets existants ne date pas d hier. Parménide s était prononcé: ce qui est est, et ce qui n est pas n est pas et ne peut même être pensé être. Platon répondait que ce qui n est pas doit en un sens être, puisque nous lui attribuons une certaine propriété, et il admettait notoirement l existence des entités abstraites, telles que les nombres. Aristote et ses successeurs distinguent le sens simple de être (x existe) du sens prédicatif (X est un F) et refusent l existence des abstraits séparés. [...] Le plus célèbre des défenseurs d une telle distinction est le philosophe autrichien Alexius von Meinong, qui admettait que parmi les objets en général, il y a en qui existent (ou ont de l être, Sein), comme la tour Eiffel et d autres qui seulement subsistent et ont un être-ainsi (Sosein), comme les êtres fictifs ou impossibles. Parmi les objets possibles, les philosophes distinguent traditionnellement ceux qui sont simplement possibles sans être contradictoires (comme la montagne d or) et ceux qui sont susceptibles de s actualiser dans l espace et le temps (comme le fils d Albert de Monaco). 13 So while Parmenides said that things which are are, and things which are not cannot be thought of, Meinong differentiates between Sein which describes things we can name and see

5 Timo Schmitz: General terms and existence -5- as such, and Sosein which descibes things which are fictively or impossible to be (I avoid the word exist here not to produce more confusion). Finally, there is no real conciliation about the word existence until today. Rosefeldt proposes three forms of existence. He says that things which are present might be called existence. Thus, things which are present recently are things that might exist. 14 As second, he proposes that things which are just identical to something might not be called existent as such as at least the thing is identical with the thing itself. Therefore, the thing must do something contiguous to exist. 15 As third, he suggests that one must at least be able to talk of it as es gibt (it is...). For instance There are people who own dogs, therefore the existence of a dog owner is valid. 16 To put it in a nutshell, existence is a very controverisal topic, whih leads to many practical implications. At first it leads to the implication that the individual existence already presumes the existence of the individual existence and therefore, existence in logical discourses normally refers to a general term. The term existence has to state, whether the general term is legitimate or not. However, as of Rosefeldt, the general term always goes back to a singular sentence which is logically true to assume existence. Therefore, if one wants to say that furniture exists, one must at least say that one thing is furniture, and it is just valid as long as such an object is present (= exists). The individual existence however is not enough, since everything at least exists in itself. Notes: 1. Schmitz, Timo: Singular terms and their identity, self-published online article, 25 August 2017, (retrieved on 30 August 2017) 2. Schmitz, Timo: Class Logic and Truth-functional sentences, self-published online article, 20 August 2017, (retrieved on 30 August 2017) 3. compare Tugendhat, Ernst; Wolf, Ursula: Logisch-semantische Propädeutik, Reclam: Stuttgart, 1993, p. 185 f. 4. Tugendhat/Wolf, 1993, p Crowell, Steven: Existentialism, 4.2 Sartre and Marxism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 9 March 2015, (retrieved on 30 August 2017)

6 Timo Schmitz: General terms and existence Schmitz, Timo: Preliminary considerations for scientific working, self-published online article, 30 June 2017, (retrieved on 30 August 2017) 7. Nelson, Michael: Existence, Stanffordd Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 10 October 2012, (retrieved on 30 August 2017) 8. ibid. 9. ibid. 10. ibid. 11. ibid. 12. Rosefeldt, Tobias: Was es nicht gibt Eine Untersuchung des Begriffes der Existenz, Habilitationsschrift an der Philosophischen Fakultät der Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, 2006, p. 14, online available: berlin.de/de/lehrbereiche/idealismus/mitarbeiter1/rosefeldt/pdfs/rosefeldt_was-es- nicht-gibt_online-version.pdf (retieved on 20 August 2017) 13. Engel, Pascal : La logique de ce qui n existe pas, Les chemins de la logique, 2005, %20de%20ce%20qui%20n%20existe%20pas.pdf (retrieved on 30 August 2017) 14. Rosefeldt, 2006, p. 188f. 15. Rosefeldt, 2006, p Rosefeldt, 2006, p. 189 f. Timo Schmitz. Published on 31 August Suggestion for citation: Schmitz, Timo: General terms and existence, self-published online article, 31 August 2017,