Existence exists. But does this imply that existents exist among other existents? (Boydstun)

Metaphysics and Epistemology
1

I fully grant that existence does indeed exist. However, that statement is rather ambiguous, as traditional philosophy makes a distinction between existence and Being – with the emphasis often placed on one over the other – because the idea of Being is not present in the empty tautology “existence exists.”

It is not to say that the concept of “existence” exists, as that would be obvious; but that a thing called existence exists that is not itself and can never be an existent. Because existents exist within existence. “Existence” is therefore synonymous with “universe,” as the sum-total of all that exists, that is, of all existents. I had to clarify this because the idea that “existence exists” is a mere tautology; it doesn’t prove that existents exist among other existents. It does not prove that multiple existents exist at all, because a universe or existence containing a single existent, even if it’s just a hydrogen atom, is all that is required for the concept of “existence” to be valid. 

To bring traditional philosophy back into this, existence is Being, but we posit that existents possess the quality of Beingness (to break with traditional ontology). Because Being is traditionally the permanent in ontology. It’s seen as something that is not itself an existent but is an unchanging and fundamental quality that underlies all existents, such as the constants of physics. Individual existents change, but Being itself is permanent. And while existents themselves may exist in a flux, as Heraclites pointed out, they change in a regular, lawful, non-chaotic manner. So the monistic tendency of declaring that “existence exists” falls to the dualism of stating that, yes, existence exists, and not merely as an empty tautology, but that it also cannot exist without at least one existent contained within it (and not just subsumed beneath it as if they were mere concepts). 

That singular existent, however, is not existence. Existence is something more; it contains the regulated lawfulness of the hydrogen atom in my example: the Beingness. Existence not only contains, it controls the existent, the hydrogen atom, as it changes, bringing to it a modicum of predictability. The term “beingness” is simply used to indicate that the existence of the existent is ongoing, permanent, that it may change its form but never cease to exist. “Beingness” only serves as a pointer to the permanence that exists in the existent. I am not therefore saying that “Beingness” is anything more than a concept. The existence is not Being itself, but we can posit that it possesses the attribute of Beingness without declaring that Beingness is itself an existent. 

 

2

When we bought our first real estate, we had just retired. It is a couple of acres with many trees, often large. At first I would walk around thinking this tree is mine, touch another and think this tree is mine, and so forth. Only then could I have a live sense of saying all these trees are mine or this acreage is mine. Similarly, by the time one was reading Atlas Shrugged, one already had known that pencils and telephones and books and . . . . exist. That comes before any live sense in observing “All these things exist. Call that sum Existence. Existence exists.” Not every aspect of a particular belonging to all particulars (such as pairs of electric potential differences between all pairs of objects of non-zero rest mass) is an aspect that can be attributed also to the Universe. Existence is one thing that can be so boosted to the whole from the particular. And one does not know that Existence exists except by knowing that there are particular existents. This particular existent has to sleep now.

Well, OK, one copy-and-paste:

The concept and referent mass-energy is able to hold both stasis and activity. Its amount is constant although mass can be at rest or moving uniformly or accelerating or being turned into pure energy by collision with its corresponding anti-matter. So let the philosophers catch up and get with the scientific program. 

Rand/Peikoff took all of these to be existents: baseball, its striking the bat and motion to right field, the spin on the ball, and the materials of which it was made. I agree.

The shift from Scholastic talk of being to existence is good. One way in which being was divided was as unqualified being (also called absolute being) and qualified being. I’m with Rand/Peikoff and others in thinking there is no such thing as unqualified being (other than non-being, one might sputter). Anything that is is with qualifications, i.e., with identity. We are univocal in our view of existence, as Scotus was in his view of being. I have an Objectivist philosopher friend who disagrees. Against our univocal-existence view, I should try to understand more fully Kris McDaniel’s The Fragmentation of Being (2017). 

When someone says there is at least one absolute being, they are mistaken. Even the totality of existence, i.e., the universe, is qualified by having a certain total mass-energy.

3

I’m arguing that Existence exists isn’t related to the idea that existents exist among other existents.  I postulated a universe (an existence) in which the only existent was a hydrogen atom. The rest was just me trying to use a lot of words starting with E, hopefully while using the concepts in a consistent way, and putting ‘permanence’ together with ‘change’ in a way that makes sense. Permanence, being, is the laws of nature that make change predictable to us. “Beingness,” which may not be a traditional concept in ontology, points to the quality of lawfulness in existents. I was also showing that I can play the ontology game too, even without lots of followers whom I neither want nor need. 

But now that you mention it, ‘Existence exists’ would be nothing but an empty tautology without Being to give it metaphysical permanence. I wouldn’t except a monism of Being. But existence without Being is chaos, or non-existence. 

As for philosophers catching up and getting with the scientific program, Objectivism, with its reliance on the validity of the senses, can’t make sense of any physics after Newton. David Harriman, author of The Logical Leap, and Leonard Peikoff say that modern physics must comply with Objectivist principles. But if it does, Relativity and QM will vanish overnight. 

https://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/2010/09/objectivism-metaphysics-part-12.html

Quote

 

Consider some consequences of these three principles, starting with Peikoff’s assertions about philosophy’s veto power:
 

Philosophy certainly has a veto power over any subject if it violates principles established philosophically. So, if Heisenberg says for instance in the principle of uncertainty that causality is a myth or has been overturned on the subatomic level, you can throw out Heisenberg’s theory on that grounds alone. And the same is true for the idea of something proceeding out of nothing. In other words, that is something proceeding causelessly, because there was nothing before it and it violates the very meaning of nothing….

Now, if you consult Dave Harriman’s course, you will see that quantum mechanics, the theory of everything, string theory, is riddled with contradictions and is arbitrary, 'cause it reflects the corrupt epistemology dominant in the intellectual world.

This Dave Harriman, mentioned by Peikoff, is an amusing enough fellow. His attacks on relativity, quantum mechanics, big bang theory, etc. are filled with clever quips and amusing juxtapositions. Consider what he has to say of space:
 

I want to start by stating unequivocally, there is no such thing as “space,” whether viewed as the infinite void of the Greek atomists, or the receptacle of Plato, or the absolute cosmic reference plane of Newton, or the acrobatic and curving frame of Einstein, or the final frontier of James P. Kirk [sic]. There is no such entity.

 

 

 

4

Greg Nyquist linked Peikoff’s desperate attempt to subordinate science to HIS philosophy to ancient Greek philosophy: 

Quote

Let us assume, for argument’s sake, that the interpretation offered in this video [on the double slit experiment] is wrong. If so, then what would Peikoff or Harriman put in its place? What would constitute a “logical” interpretation of this bizarre phenomenon? Objectivists seem to believe that ordinary perception provides us with a “logical” world, and therefore that all of reality should behave as grosser objects do in perception. Since tennis balls don’t divide in two and reunite when shot through double slits, it is assumed that photons can’t do likewise. But who decided that human perception, interpreted via common sense, is the final arbiter of what’s possible in reality, particularly at the quantum level? Where’s the justification for that? Nature, not the human mind, is the standard of what is possible in nature. The reason quantum reality seems so strange is that our minds have not evolved to understand it. Our ancestors had no experience of it; knowledge of it was not necessary for their survival and reproductive capabilities; so the mind, being innocent of its oddities, is perplexed by them. But nothing is truly perplexing to a mind willing to accept nature on nature’s terms, rather than the mind’s terms. Peikoff and Harriman, by allowing the Objectivist metaphysics to lead them astray, are no different than earlier metaphysicians who attempted to impose their sense of things on reality. Plato thought that the orbits of the planets had to be circular because the circle was a “divine” form. Peikoff’s conviction that reality must be “logical” is no more credible.

https://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/2010/09/objectivism-metaphysics-part-12.html

5

Quote

Objectivists seem to believe that ordinary perception provides us with a “logical” world, and therefore that all of reality should behave as grosser objects do in perception.

That is to say, logic and lawfulness comes, not from us as with Kant, but from outside of us. And since this determination of order comes through the senses, it appeals to the idea that all reality, not just the macro realm, must conform to the same logic and lawfulness that we perceive. Therefore, Objectivists such as Harriman or Peikoff, who are following their philosophy’s conclusions to the letter, will declare that quantum particles cannot behave a-causally. Nor can they come into and go out of existence. 

6

It may be humorous to non-Objectivists that Objectivism recognizes that a baseball bat can be used to hit a baseball. But when Leonard Peikoff declares that science must conform to HIS philosophy, and you find out that his philosophy can’t accept 20th century science because it doesn’t agree with whatever Peikoff’s senses tell him is true, it ceases to be funny.

It becomes hilarious.

This is what happens when philosophy rejects the noumenal domain, the realm of amazing possibilities that lies just out of reach of your senses.

7

Quote

Existence exists. But does this imply that existents exist among other existents?

In my opinion, it doesn’t. I briefly explain why in this post.

8

6 hours ago, Ogg_Vorbis said:

This is what happens when philosophy rejects the noumenal domain, the realm of amazing possibilities that lies just out of reach of your senses.

Even though things like X-rays are out of the reach of our senses we can infer their existence from evidence.

So what’s the noumenal domain needed for? Sounds to me like it’s nothing but a cover for bullshit.