Existence, Identity, And Consciousness.

Questions about Objectivism
1

The way I see it is this. Existence is a fact. It is a fact that things exist. Identity is law. Consciousness, then, is anything capable of identifying things in existence.

Here is the problem. Does existence preceed identity or is it the other way around? The way I’ve heard it is that a thing must first exist before it has an identity. However, it is also true that a thing cannot both exist and not exist, so in a sense identity WRT existence is automatic. Of course, aside from, must something that exists posess an identity?

The other way it could be is to take the law of identity as an axiom. Then existence comes from the ontological argument for existence. This, too, is problematic, since if one takes existence as a corrilary of identity, then it follows things can have identities without existing. How, then, can we be sure that these identities don’t suddenly become existent, and then interfere with existence itself?

Furthermore, why do they call it consciousness? Why omit volition, which is a necessary corrilary of consciousness? Of course, some things do not posess volition but are called consciousness. How does that fit in with things? Also, consciousness comes into play due to anthropic ontology. In fact, the law of identity is ontologically correct, though it is considered a corrilary of both existence and consciousness.

I hope I have not gotten things wrong. I am just trying to grasp the basic principles of the universe, and by that I mean the WHOLE universe, not just the known universe, which is more properly called a manifold.

Edit: Excuse me, but I appear to have posted this in the wrong forum. Or, at least, that is my assumption. Is that alright, or will somebody move it for me, or do I have to move it all by myself?

2

Does existence preceed identity or is it the other way around?

Why do you think this matters? Without either, you have neither.

I am just trying to grasp the basic principles of the universe, and by that I mean the WHOLE universe, not just the known universe, which is more properly called a manifold.

How can you grasp, that which you do not have knowledge of? What parts of the universe that are unknown do you expect to understand?

3

Why do they call it consciousness? Why omit volition, which is a necessary corrilary of consciousness? Of course, some things do not posess volition but are called consciousness. How does that fit in with things?

I don’t think that volition is technically a corollary of consciousness. Part of the problem may be that consciousness is used in two ways. There’s consciousness as in living things, and there’s consciousness as in the axiomatic - as you said, the capacity to indentify. A robot acting on inputs and a predetermined program would be considered to have a consciousness in the axiomatic sense, but not likely in the living sense. At any rate, perceiving identity doesn’t necessarily require volition. Why do they call both consciousness? Meh, who knows?

Here is the problem. Does existence preceed identity or is it the other way around? The way I’ve heard it is that a thing must first exist before it has an identity. However, it is also true that a thing cannot both exist and not exist, so in a sense identity WRT existence is automatic. Of course, aside from, must something that exists posess an identity?

What’s WRT? In terms of chronological procession, I wouldn’t say that something must exist before it has an indentity.

I haven’t been able to qualify something as (non)existent without basing that (non)existence on (a lack of) identity. E.g. my wife doesn’t exist, because I don’t see her and have no memories of a wedding/marriage life. On the other hand, I can grasp that somethat that is immortal has identity and something that’s immortal and not immortal doesn’t, without expressly invoking the concept of existence (i.e. without knowing whether anything immortal exists.) From that perspective, it might be said that identity (in terms of understanding,) precedes existence. But, I would say that things that have identity exist, and, at the least, existent things have the identity of “existing.”

The other way it could be is to take the law of identity as an axiom. Then existence comes from the ontological argument for existence. This, too, is problematic, since if one takes existence as a corrilary of identity, then it follows things can have identities without existing.

This may (or may not) be more terms used in multiple ways. Two children might be able to agree on the identifying characteristics of a dragon, but disagree as to whether having such an “identity” proves that it exists.

How, then, can we be sure that these identities don’t suddenly become existent, and then interfere with existence itself?

…hmm. I’m not sure what it would mean to interfere with existence itself :smiley:

I hope I have not gotten things wrong. I am just trying to grasp the basic principles of the universe, and by that I mean the WHOLE universe, not just the known universe, which is more properly called a manifold.

Trust me; if you do, people let you know! Best 'o luck.

4

Does existence preceed identity or is it the other way around? The way I’ve heard it is that a thing must first exist before it has an identity.

I think the problem is that you’re conflating two uses of “precedes”. In terms of logical relations between concepts, existence is primary and identity depends on (follows) existence. Chronologically, it is hard to imagine there being “pure existence” without any identity, i.e. metaphysically they are inseparable.

Of course, aside from, must something that exists posess an identity?

Yes: there is no such thing as “pure , unflavored existence”.

5

It depends on precisely what youre asking. You could mean “what comes first conceptually?”, ie which of the concepts ‘existence’ and ‘identity’ is more fundamental. I dont really like this sort of question because I dont think it gets us anywhere, but I suspect most Objectivists would say ‘existence’. Or, you could mean “which comes first in the life of an actual object?” - eg, ‘what did this plastic bottle in front of me have first, existence or identity’? In this case I would say that the question was incoherent and didnt make sense - what would it even mean for the bottle to ‘exist without being a bottle’, or to ‘be a bottle without existing’?

Note that we could say that the individual atoms in the bottle existed before they were part of the bottle (in the sense that the Lego bricks making up my lego brick fire station existed before they were part of it), but this is something different - when we talk in this way, ‘being a bottle’ is a high level strucutural property that arises from the arrangement of more basic entities.

There are more subtle interpretations of the question which do make sense however, and in all cases they can be dealt with by first becoming very clear about what is being asked - we need to untangle the semantics. For instance, I could say that a butterfly existed before it had the identiy that it currently had, because it used to be a caterpillar (as the Zen Buddhists say, “where does my fist go after I flatten out my hand?”). Here we mean something like ‘this object used to be something else, so its identity has changed’. But again theres no real problem here - all we are saying is that the properties of an object changed, to the point where it became different enough that we wanted to use a new word to describe it (‘butterfly’ rather than ‘caterpillar’). After we have described the process of change scientifically and explained why we use different words to describe the 2 states, there isnt really anything left over that needs to be explained.

edit: I think the way we talk about consciousness is very vague, probably because its exceedingly hard to define. I have doubts that the idea of ‘non-self-conscious consciousness’ is valid, simply because there doesnt seem to be a convincing argument why a video camera doesnt possess it. Similarly I’m not sure what it would mean to have a ‘non-volitional self-consciousness’ - would you have self-awareness without being able to actually affect anything? What could this even be like? The problem is that we are trying to form the concept of consciousness by extrapolating from a single example (our own), and this makes it impossible to draw any kind of boundary around it.

6

Yes: there is no such thing as “pure , unflavored existence”.

Indeed. I think the reason why people often get this wrong is because they equate ‘having definite identity’ with ‘falling under one of our concepts’ . The lego brick example again works here - there are lots of things I could build out of lego that we have concepts for. The blocks could be a firestation, or a train, or a castle. And in these cases the question ‘what is this object I have built?’ is clear and answerable. But I could also build something that we dont have a word to describe - I could just join blocks together randomly and make some bizarre construction. And now, there is no good answer to the question ‘what is this?’. But this doesnt mean that the thing, whatever it is, doesnt have identity - it just means that we havent bothered inventing a word for it. The mess of lego bricks still has properties - it weighs X pounds, its Y inches tall, and so on. To say that it was a ‘pure unflavoured existent within the lego brick universe’ would be baffling.