On Sunday, March 05, 2000 1:55 PM Robert Owen rowen@technologist.com wrote:
> > What is my definition of "existence"? I don't offer one. Instead, I
accept
> > Rand's view that existence is an axiomatic concept -- any attempt to
define
> > it results in a circular definition, any attempt to deny it assumes it.
>
> If you are willing, Daniel, to more or less identify "existence",
"actuality"
> and "event", then the definition can proceed along the lines of "that
> which can be located within, and specified in terms of, an n-dimensional
> manifold".
Not necessarily. I could, e.g., say that the universe exists. In fact,
existence is literally everything that exists, which would include
everything, including stuff we don't know about. It's possible that some of
these things could exist in a non-spatial way. Restricting existence
beforehand to some current chic mathematical representation is akin to
restricting it to, say, Platonic solids (if we lived in Ancient Greece) or
the four elements (of the same period).
> Of necessity, this manifold is metric; for example, "time" is
> metrical time, not "duration" etc. If you apply the Principle of
Sufficient
> Reason to the "manifold", you encounter new problems.
You do. I make no such claims.
> This gets us away from the linguistic traps set by the conflation of the
> "is" of predication [description] and the "is" of identity.
>
> The approach I personally prefer is to treat things as "virtual objects"
> which which "exist" only in terms of their relations with each other.
> That is, they are completely specified by their relationships. To have
> relationships is to exist.
To be is to be something. To be is to have an identity, or to be is to be
an identity. To be aware of something, on whatever level, is to enter into
a relationship with it. Indentification, to whatever degree, is a
relational process.
To perceive something, I think one must be able to discriminate it, to
delineate it perceptually -- not necessarily conceptually -- from other
things. Thus, I perceive the window this email is in. I see it as a
distinction entity. Several hours ago, I was perceiving the notes in a
melody -- i.e., discriminating it from background noise, etc. Note the
process is the same in many important aspects for both things. Now it would
be an error of judgment if I thought that the window I'm typing this into
actually is closer than, say, the wallpaper I currently have on my desktop.
(Truth be told, my wallpaper is nothing but blackness.:) Still, I
discriminate the window, regardless of my judgments -- whether they be
correct or no.
Why this little detour? Well, virtual objects exist too, though that
doesn't mean I'm going to bump into one on the way to work tomorrow. And,
yes, to do anything (e.g., "have relationships") implies existence, of what
sort remains to be determined.
> None of the above is a panacea; the major hurdle to overcome is the
> confusion of epistemology and ontology when trying get your bearings.
I agree we must be wary of such confusions. At the same time, we must be
aware of the dialectical relation between what we know and what exists. Our
epistemology can't be totally free of our ontology.
"Extant ergo cogito!"
Daniel Ust
http://mars.superlink.net/neptune/
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