Ontology

A few minutes with philosophy. Basically: existence is a spectralmalistic property.

uhh...yeah. Kindof out there, but it makes sense to me

Update July 2011:
My new views on this subject can be found here: http://www.sonicsuns.net/mainblog/archives/ontology-existence-and-jlke45

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People & Blogs

Tags:

• Ontology
• Philosophy
• SonicsunsPhilosophy
• Existence
• spectramalistic

[sonicsuns]

@jlke45 I've written a blog post which summarizes my thoughts thus far and describes my new thoughts, partially inspired by my conversation with you. Unfortunately, it's far too long for youtube comments. Please look in the description box of this video for the link marked "Update July 2011".

[jlke45]

@sonicsuns And (2), as I said before, it's unintelligible as to how a relation could obtain without relata.

[jlke45]

@sonicsuns Defining existence is difficult, and due to it's being so basic, I'm not sure a definition is possible. To be sure, the issue is vexed. You might want to give Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Existence a read.

At any rate, two things: (1) the point of my orange example was to show that from there being two sorts of things it doesn't follow that being a sort of thing is relational. That's just a non sequitur.

[sonicsuns]

@jlke45 Yes, we should not let vocabulary confuse us. So how do you define "existence", then? I'm not sure I can think of a definition that doesn't rely on some arbitrary perspective or assumption.

As for oranges, I have toyed with the idea that perhaps *everything* is relational, and that binary categories are merely simplifications of reality.

[jlke45]

@jlke45 (Make that "one type of orange")

[jlke45]

@sonicsuns True enough, "existence" (along with terms like "being" and "reality" etc.) is infamously slippery, but don't confuse words with things, whatever sense you take it as. But anyway, by your line of argument you might observe that there's more than you type of orange, and conclude that "to be an orange" is relational.

[sonicsuns]

@jlke45 Ah, but I feel that this demonstrates the ambiguity of the word "existence". Someone might say "Pegasus exists" in the sense that Pegasus-concept exists, and also say "Pegasus does not exist" in the sense that Pegasus-physical does not exist. It seemed to me that this was like calling something "big" or "small" depending on perspective, thus my conclusion that existence is relational. (But that was probably an imperfect way of phrasing it)

What's your theory of ontology?

[jlke45]

@sonicsuns Well, then you might be saying "If Pegasus existed, then he would be smaller than the Earth," but the statement remains hypothetical, and doesn't say anything about what actually does (or doesn't) exist. At best you might talking about a Pegasus-thought or Pegasus-concept (and thoughts and concepts surely exist), but both of these are different from a living, breathing Pegasus. Many philosophers today might say that to be is to have properties, so if it has properties, it is!

[sonicsuns]

@jlke45 Hm. Can there really be no relations with things which are thought to be non-existent? If we accept that Pegasus is non-existent, for instance, I think it might fair to say that Pegasus is smaller than the Earth. Of course, technically Pegasus has no physical form and thus no size at all, but in sense of Pegasus's imagined properties (which are the only sorts of properties that Pegasus has), it is surely smaller than the Earth.

By the way, what's your theory of ontology?

[jlke45]

@sonicsuns There are numerous difficulties with your line of argument, but here's the main problem: you claim that being or existence (if existence is even a property) is relational (or 'spectralmalistic' as you say), but relational properties always obtain between relata that already exist. Eg, if x is taller than y, then x and y first have to exist. All relations presuppose the existence of nonrelational objects that they relate. So existence cannot be relation.