Notes on existence
ANIL MITRA PHD, COPYRIGHT © 2000
Document status: May 31, 2003
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Contents
Preliminary: on meaning and use
Examples. Existence and knowledge of existence. Absolute objects.
Are there an elements of the world whose existence is independent of their being known or knowable?
Existence and knowledge: summary / Metaphysics
NOTES
ON EXISTENCE
August 18, 2000
The purpose of these notes is to provide a supplement to the document The Question of Being where “existence” is introduced without clarification of its meaning. The account is realistic rather than merely analytic. A problem -of which there is common awareness- with the method of analysis as currently practiced is as follows
Consider what is sufficient for the validity of a philosophical system or concept. Concepts occur in relation to other concepts and adequacy of this system of relations falls under analysis. The mapping or correspondence between the system and the world is application or use. Note that the word “mapping” is used loosely in that no complete or exact mirroring or one-to-one correspondence is implied. Meaning is the subjective side of use but does not reduce to use because systems are in-process and because meaning is also brought to a situation by a knower and communicated to other knowers. Meaning is connected to what can be “shown[1] but not said” … The three identified elements for validity of a system are:
1. Meaning,
2. Analysis, and
3. Use or application[2]
Of these three elements the “method of analysis” pays inadequate attention to meaning and application
As a result analysis frequently contains elements of circularity and an indeterminacy in fundamentals. This indeterminacy is increased by an emphasis on piecewise analysis. There is a place for that approach but it should be a practical one and not a metaphysics. There is a place for cycling through a system of concepts but there is also a place for overview and co-analysis of systems of concepts. Here, focus is on application in interaction with meaning. There is an incompleteness in the determination of whether the elements of our world are fully independent of being known. There enter naturally considerations that are similar to elements of the philosophies of Kant and Wittgenstein
“Exist”, “existence” are used in a day-to-day sense both academically and in so-called common use. There is the word or name, there is the idea-percept-concept and there is the property or object -or classes of object- to which the word refers. As for many concepts, once we begin to think about application we find no single use - there are core, peripheral[3] and figurative uses. Omitting the figurative uses, we expect some consistency and coherence but not absolutely. We may find -or posit- a single core meaning and expect, but not necessarily find, that that core meaning will cover the whole field of application. We may introduce a synthetic metaphysics to cover the field of application but may fall short of all experience; we may seek to extend core meanings but success may be partial at best. We may want to go back to the common or everyday range of application or context but what is that - is there a single definite, fixed context?
Indeed, there are contexts - everyday use in specialist and in generalist communities; and there are cultivators and generators of words and ideas. These, however, are not absolutely watertight, there exist interactions at various time scales of which we are, even in limited communities, not completely oblivious; even specialist groups contain their generative, reflective and philosophical aspects. It is a mistake to consider only those groups philosophical that label themselves such or that explicitly cultivate philosophy. Every “context” contains philosophical elements -even if limited in scope and untutored in subtlety- and is in interaction and evolution and therefore all extension of the range of application, discovery and experiment are part of, not separate from, the context. The process of extension -that includes discovery or creation- of meaning [range of application] is part of the common play and use of words and language… for, consider that civilization as it stands today had a dawn at a time after the origins of Homo-sapiens… at a time when there were no words or names to have uses, contexts or application. The technical has origin in the everyday or common. The common use, in turn, derives partly from the philosophical and technical directly and through literature, drama and so on - and this casts doubt on “mere commonness” or “mere technicality” of words and ideas. But this is in the nature of language, its origin and growth… cultivation by a group - a happy individual, a shaman, priest, doctor, specialist, writer, paternalistic politician, charismatic leader, philosopher, an academic: ... cultivation ® diffusion ® use ® cultivation ® ... There is a common view in which we place users in one category and cultivators and generators in another category with labels and bundled up in -say- a university. Is not this view one of a toy environment? In small societies the common and the esoteric are clearly not distinct, clearly mingle - sometimes with sanction. In our large, complex society with its experts and consumers the reverse is sanctioned. This is not intended as a criticism or condemnation of society and its structure. It is a criticism of the concept of context when it is restricted to a group of users and to a time and place. Use must include the “everyday” and the “uncommon” and experimental… and the give and take and overlap among the everyday and the experimental
Meanings and understanding are for us-now in-process; extension of meaning is both experimental and desirable and when in error open to correction though not necessarily correctable
It was my original intention to introduce “exist” by a paradigm case and extend by example guided by metaphor. In working through that approach I found it more efficient, in the present case, to provide a generic meaning and review the significance for different kinds of object
Here is the generic meaning. It is, of course, no discovery. The claim made here is that this commonplace meaning is adequate, within reasonable limits, to the variety of applications of the concept. To exist is to be: if, of something, I can say “it is” then it exists. Here, no monism or pluralism is implied. Existence does not mean existence as a material object. There is no a priori set of categories to which something must belong in order to exist. Even existence as a material object does not imply membership in an a priori category – except, in the case that “material” defines a category. It is not clear that it does. Existing things can be one of a kind
This use of “is” is similar to the “is” in “A is there.” To repeat, “A exists” means “A is”. Why, then distinguish “exists” from “is”? First, because, in day-to-day use, “is” focuses on the fact that something is there; “exist” focuses on the very existence, or to avoid semblance of circularity, we could say that “exist” draws attention to the very “is-ness”. Also, “exist” does not have the meaning of “is” in “A is B.”
A consequence of this meaning of existence, the focus on the very existence, seems to suggest that for something to exist it is not necessary for it to be perceived. If I think I see a chair but find that I am hallucinating I will not say that there is an existing chair corresponding to hallucination. Thus for two identical fragments of experience that one corresponds to an existing object does not imply that the other corresponds to any existing object. If, instead, I see and feel the chair and this is corroborated by other people, and if the chair does not come and go as is the tendency of hallucinations I would then say that there is an existing chair corresponding to the perception. We say the chair exists. Of course, despite extended and common experience, we may all be hallucinating but then the doubt focuses on the perception rather than the conditions of existence. What if no one is perceiving the chair? In that case there are common conditions under which it is known that the chair “is there”. Thus valid cognition is a generalized criterion for the establishment of existence. Again, as for perception, a cognition may be mistaken but then the doubt focuses on the validity of the cognition rather than on cognition as the criterion for establishment of existence
Now, when I hallucinated a chair the chair did not exist. The statement “the chair did not exist” is short for “I am claiming that there is not an existing chair corresponding to the hallucination.” Now change focus from the existence of the chair or chairs to the existence of the hallucination. The question here is “Did the hallucination exist?” or “Do hallucinations exist?” This is not a question about the existence of hallucinations as physical objects but is question about the existence of a mental phenomenon or state. The question is “Do hallucinations exist as hallucinations?” When someone is actually hallucinating, I can say that there is a hallucination - as hallucination - and therefore, the hallucination exists. If I hallucinate, I can know that it is [there] as a hallucination - it exists. I may doubt my knowledge but that doubt does not concern the condition of existence but only whether that condition was satisfied. I know something exists if I know it is [there]. Knowledge of existence requires knowledge of its being [there]. [That does not mean I have to acquire the knowledge - I may have it as innate knowledge in which case, presumably, it was acquired in evolution or as part of the conditions of creation.] However, although hallucinations are mental phenomena and knowledge of the existence of a hallucination requires knowledge that it is there -as a hallucination and not necessarily as something else such as a physical object or phenomenon- the hallucination exists, we think, independently of knowledge of its existence
Thus, generally and commonly, one thinks that the existence of something does not require knowledge of its existence. This is one kind of realism. But ask, is being knowable [perceivable, inferable…] a necessary characteristic of any thing that exists. Commonly, in realism, we think not. But now ask, “What is the origin of the form of knowledge?” - is it not[4] relationship… and is it not true [say, in particle physics] that every particle has interactions, i.e. relations, with the universe[5]? Heidegger reformulates this question as follows[6] “…there is no presuppositionless knowledge - we are always caught up in a hermeneutic circle… But this does not mean that we do not have access to things in themselves. Since the ways things show up are what those things really are, access to appearances is just access to those things. All appearances are presentation, not merely re-presentation.” This is calling into question the existence / essence distinction. A task here is to synthesize Heidegger’s thought with an open cosmology. By open I mean [1] neutral in the sense of neutral monism, and [2] not dogmatic in that even though neutral in its specification it is open to categorial discovery. Through Heidegger and Dasein onto being we now confront being = existence. We then find ourselves still in hermeneutic circle: is-being-exist--appearance
I started with the common sense idea that though I recognize existence through knowing, the conditions of existence are independent of knowing or knowability. But I have just cast generalized metaphysical doubt on this independence; I have been suggesting that anything that exists must be knowable to some knower. Below I will consider an alternative, concrete approach to clarifying the relationship between existence and knowability. I will suggest, contrary to the considerations above, that the existence a hallucination as hallucination or a chair as a chair or, more generally, an “x as an x” is dependent on the knower. I will find, in general, not that there is no real thing but it is not a chair, a tree or even an electron or a quark. I will consider types of things that exist -which is now seen to be equivalent to asking what kinds of things can be known to exist- and find that, in general, the existence of these things as such depends on the knower. This will lead into the ideas of absolute object and absolute existence. An absolute object is one which, as such, does not depend on being known for its existence. Such an object will be said to have absolute existence. I will consider some possible exceptions. On the way I will consider the claims of idealism and materialism - and find them wanting. The kinds of things that exist as such are open and are not mutually reducible. This is a kind of epistemic dualism and it is sufficiently deep that it may be regarded to be an ontological dualism. There is, however, no implied ontological dualism. Finally, I will consider what known thing or things may as such be independent of a knower
August 19, 2000
Does a tree exist? Certainly there is something there… but I have shown that a tree-as-a-tree requires a knower[7]. Trees come into being, transact multiply with the world, die and decay. When did “it” become a tree, what are its boundaries, when did it stop being a tree. These questions have no absolute answers but must require the judgment of a knower. The tree as such has many sub-systems. It has many ways of being seen: it is an object in biology, but also in ecology, and it is a natural entity. The specification of these requires the judgment of a knower. There is no absolute tree; there is no absolute object. There is [1] the tree as experienced and [2] on the view of a realism, granted here, something behind the tree as experienced - in its interactions and constituents… but there is no absolute tree
What is the boundary between the tree and myself? As objects, there are transactions that are essentially in process - the give and take that constitutes us as ecosystem. In perception, a photon from the sun strikes “the tree” is reflected is refracted by the lens of my eye, strikes my retina… Is the photon part of the sun, the tree or myself? Where, in perception is the absolute boundary between the tree and myself?
But what of the constituents that make up the tree? Is the tree not ultimately made up of absolute objects such as quarks and leptons? Particles and fields are processes, as such they are transactional, have beginnings -creation- and ends. We may experience electrons as absolute objects, but does this agree with knowledge from modern physics? The electron is our name, identified in our knowledge, as an “approximation” to something that underlies the referent of “electron” but which we do not know. And when we find something underlying the electron - the fundamental forces / fields, or even the creation of matter-energy… the same critique will apply. The fundamental entities of modern physics are not absolute objects[8]. But electrons and trees exist as such and for the appropriate duration in the sense of “is”; but as independent of all knowers and all knowability, electrons and trees do not have existence. Presumably, there is something there but that is not the same as our percept/concept/knowledge. We are not questioning reality but our perception of it. There is a difficulty that our sense of reality is based on our perception; it is the hermeneutic circle out of which we cannot get. We are so constituted as to assign reality status to our cognition. However, our constitution is not viable beyond its limited domain. Thus, trees, electrons and the natural objects of our world certainly exist but not as absolute objects. The intrinsic object-hood of a tree or an electron obtains in a limited domain of being. Thus, any intrinsic faithfulness of knowledge is at least two times removed from absolute status. This limitation is, of course, limited to the concept of knowledge as something that is acquired by being rather than being constitutive of being
Go back to hallucinations - do they exist? Certainly, hallucinations-as-hallucinations exist: one may experience or recall the hallucination, have theoretical knowledge of the nature of hallucinations. What of perceptions or, more generally, of cognitions? A cognition is about something - I am not asking here whether that thing exists or matches the cognition… rather I am asking whether the cognition exists. I have knowledge of the cognition: as cognition it exists
[Because of common use, I may be tempted to conclude from existence of the cognition that its mode of being is identical to the mode of being of all other existents, e.g., if I have materialist sensibilities, I am tempted to and may succumb to the temptation to conclude from existence of the cognition and the materialist’s absolute-existence-of-matter-and-nothing-else that cognitions are essentially material - or that they do not really exist. However there is no such conclusion made or implied here and no such conclusion is possible from the meaning for existence used here.]
However, again, though there is something in itself that is there when I recognize a cognition… what that is not identical to the referent of a cognition as cognition nor is there any exact correspondence between my associations with “cognition” and the cognition. This does not mean that there is any essential limit to my naming or knowing a cognition for I always know with cognitions or other objects in interaction with myself. Nor, though I say that there is something there, does this imply that there is any cognition in itself. This is another way of making Heidegger’s point. The psychology that identifies name and named is useful as adaptation in our limited environment but not a complete or exact identification. The usefulness is immediacy, reality-sense, brevity, various forms of functionality which are all proper [useful, adaptive] in context and which for usefulness does not require exactness. But the inexactness is significant when we want to push beyond context- we then enter the empirical domain- or use the idea as absolute. Thus cognitions as cognitions -erroneous or otherwise- exist but not as absolute entities
The question being asked is whether thought or knowledge can go beyond the mind. The seemingly obvious first answer is “no” but this depends on an assumption that putative boundaries are real
Regarding cognitions that are “products of minds” and include ideas, percepts, concepts, an interesting phenomenon arises as to their reality status. Consider, as a prime example of the case to be made, the idea of “number” - a mathematical concept. For humans, numbers arise in interaction with the world. But number, in the minds of individuals, takes on a life of its own. Everything is neat, exact. Consider 10 men and women - they may have all the properties, perplexities, beauty, unpredictability of any individual man or woman. But “10” itself is simple. 10 men and 10 men are 20 men without fail regardless of the unpredictability, infidelity, and creativity… of the individual men. Number and arithmetic can be reduced to a set of simple postulates. Then enter the realm of higher arithmetic. This is a realm of almost fantastic properties and relationships among numbers. For any one with the requisite sensitivity this is a realm of beauty and for many a realm of permanence, existing without regard to the lives of men and women or the world in which they live. There is a strong motivation to assign absolute existence to number. That is, although for humans numbers are cognized by humans, it may be felt that numbers require no cognition to exist. This kind of thinking is the foundation of Platonic Idealism -the idea of ideal forms behind the forms of the world- which is a form of realism; it is the force behind the idea of the existence of universals - also a realism; and it is the motivation -after 2500 years of Euclidean Geometry and after 150 years of Newtonian Mechanics and its universalization-in-process at the time of Kant- behind the synthetic a priori of Kant. However, regarding number it can be seen -equally at least- to be a property of part of the world -of collections- just as “tree” points to the world. As such do numbers point to something that is independent of all knowability? This is an open question with a history of debate among formalists, logicists, and intuitionists… and, on the periphery, pragmatists, realists, and idealists
However consider that if numbers are absolute properties of the real world [of collections] then they must be about [collections of] absolute objects - but we have not yet identified any absolute objects. Alternatively numbers are cognitive creations and as such they exist but are not absolute. The only way numbers as cognitions can be absolute is if our idea of number exists in a Platonic universe. As we have seen, despite the strong temptation to believe in the existence of a Platonic Universe, this has not at all been demonstrated in the literature on the foundations and the nature of mathematics. What might it take to demonstrate the existence of a Platonic universe - one that contained number and numbers?
What of social artifacts? These exist but, clearly, not as absolute
We have now considered three great realms of being: nature, mind and society… and have found no absolute objects. What of the universal which lies silently behind and contains the immediate realms in its womb? Beyond the known realms, the universal contains the unknown and regarding that nothing need be said here-now
We can say more of mind. Idealism -in the version considered here- holds, not that objects in the world are not real but that they are special cases of ideas which include sensations, percepts, concepts and cognitions. The counter-intuitive aspect to this form of idealism -that the world substance is the idea- is the ephemerality of ideas when contrasted against stones and kicks… The response is a redefinition of the idea which expands the scope -just as the scope of matter and of being were expanded as part of the histories of those concept-percept[s][9]- of the idea in a way that corresponds naturally to the way we live and that incorporates structures and grades so that matter is a form of idea. Projection to the universal and consistency remain problematic: the objects of the idealism will exist as such but not as absolute. An appeal of idealism that it promises to embrace mind in such a way that existence becomes independent of cognition by being constituted by cognition. The problem, unresolved, is to show that the world is constituted as such
Clearly these considerations border on phenomenalist realism and on Heidegger’s realism “appearances are just access to objects”. World and appearance [awareness] are integrated. [Heidegger and phenomenalism go half the bay from external realism to idealism and in doing so they attempt to incorporate the virtues of both and to expound a non-Cartesian metaphysic.] Dasein itself, as we have seen, is not absolute: its status within being is incomplete even if “promising” and its status as generative of being is open, undetermined
Finally, consider the claims of materialism. Certain material objects are designated as fundamental material entities. Matter is constituted of these entities. The world is constituted of matter. Materialism can be sophisticated in various ways. At the level of naïve[10] materialism, physics has an elaborate though incomplete foundation to its fundamental particles and forces. The successes of reduction, though questioned, are striking and manifold. There is a temptation to hold that the objects of physics are absolute objects and only those things exist that are constituted of the fundamental physical objects. The criticisms of this view are:
1. The foundation of fundamental physics is neither complete nor completed - it is in process despite extensive academic and otherwise putative belief in its finality… there is a history of such finalities. If in some future “physic” an absolute foundation is given to existence, that physics will necessarily incorporate or synthesize with other modes currently regarded as not physics
2. Physical objects are not absolute objects
3. Despite attempts [2500 years old... and considering ongoing attempts in philosophy in science and philosophy] the claims of materialism have not been demonstrated
All objects that I know are known, not in themselves, but as known to myself. This observation starts with the idea of the separateness of knower and known - a posited rather than a given dualism. Rather, I may suggest that access to appearances is access to the object… that, before the theoretical dualism there is an actual monism from which the dualism results when certain gradients in the world are experienced or posited as absolute boundaries. The process of extending this monism to the universe is incomplete
When I used the word “known” in the previous paragraph, I used it in its most general application. Thus, my knowledge comes about through some combination of direct contact -from interaction with the object of knowledge- and from indirect sources such as the words of others. Direct contact is not limited to perception but also includes cognition - thought, imagination, criticism… When I think of something real behind the appearance that real is known only as another appearance or mode of appearance. When I think of the universe beyond the known universe… I must be using “known” in some limited sense
We want to have a monolithic conception of “knowledge” but there can be no such concept. We like to think of knowledge that is certain... but we know that in the theoretical domain, i.e. in the domain of knowledge that is inductive, there is no certain knowledge. We have seen above that there is no certain knowledge even in the empirical domain and that the necessary lack in certainty has to do not with any lack in precision but with the necessary “intrusion” of concepts into the perceptual realm. Knowledge is plural according to its mode, according to reliability or certainty... When I think of objective knowledge, I am judging one mode or degree of knowledge from the vantage point of another mode and degree and not from a viewpoint from “the outside”
A common view of the domain of knowledge is that it is comprised of metaphysics, epistemology and ethics or value theory. This is the subject matter of philosophy. The specialized disciplines fall within one of these three branches. There is a sense in which metaphysics is the most general of the three “main” branches and includes the other two; epistemology and ethics are seen as divisions within metaphysics that have specialized foci or emphases. Ethics is thought to be distinct from metaphysics due to its normative aspect - whereas metaphysics concerns “what is”, ethics concerns “what should be” or the right e.g. right action. However, ethics may be seen to be a discipline within psychology, biology, or anthropology and as such is ontological. Thus ethics falls within metaphysics. Further, if it is anthropomorphic to claim that the universe is ethical in nature, it is anthropocentric to claim that the universe is not ethical. It would, however, be anthropocentric to assume that any universal ethic would be the ethics of humankind. In any full view of being, ethics and metaphysics are inextricably interwoven. Now consider epistemology. We have seen how, at both human and universal levels, epistemology and metaphysics are bound together. From an egocentric viewpoint we can view knowledge as a specialized function of life. However, as we have seen, at the human level epistemology and metaphysics are inseparable. The argument for inseparability at the universal level is the same as that for ethics and metaphysics. Additionally, even if epistemology and metaphysics are not necessarily inseparable, the possibilities for existence must condition the possibilities for knowledge. Although we know no absolutes in the realm of knowledge we know no absolute limit. For we do not know the potential of growth
These considerations point to one idea: there is one and only one absolute object and that is nameless
[1] This is related to the classic distinction of knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. In order to communicate, knowledge by acquaintance needs to be shown while knowledge by description can be said.
[2] Application studies the relationship between deployment [or referent, if one exists] of a word, name or concept with regard to significance and action – and, in the context of a field of concepts, studies the consistency of the system and the applicability of the field as a whole with emphasis on the particular word in question. Meaning studies the significance and range of application of the word or concept and, in doing so, relations to other words and their meanings may be invoked.
[3] The peripheral uses include ones in which some objects do not exist that are otherwise commonly assigned existence status. “Exist” then has some special meaning. Why use the word in such senses that are likely to be confused with existing meanings when other words could be used? Presumably, the writer sees that in prior core uses some objects have a “lower” mode of existence; in the new use such objects do not actually exist; and this new use results, according to the writer, in a better system. Criteria or motives for “better” could be [1] an identification of what objects are ontologically central in our world or universe, [2] etymological soundness; I find etymology to be suggestive but do not find etymological continuity to be, in general, necessary for sound use, or [3] a psychological or other agenda. My use below, perhaps the core use, is egalitarian, not elitist. Regarding “existence” I find this to be the most sound and useful approach - for reasons given in these notes. This egalitarianism is not a general principle and in other contexts, such as when considering consciousness, I have found it most sound to focus on the core use of the word but to reject some suggested peripheral and alternative meanings.
[4] On the conception of the world as structure-relationship-process or, more generally, as being-meaning-action.
[5] One issue here is whether the initial objects of creation [in cosmological theories, for example] are purely physical.
[6] This is a selection/paraphrase from the introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, Charles Guignon, ed., Cambridge University Press, 1993.
[7] Log 99 notes to five weeks in the mountains, fall, 99.
[8] Consider the analogy: an oscillation is characterized by a single frequency if and only if it is of infinite duration: t = - ¥ to t = + ¥.
[9] I am purposefully combining concept and percept into one word.
[10] For criticisms of recent versions of materialism -from behaviorism to functionalism to strong artificial intelligence, eliminative materialism and the naturalizing of intentionality- see Problems in the Science and Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness and the sources quoted therein.
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