Existence Explained

Existence Explained

Probably the most infuriating question in philosophy is the nature of existence. I have racked my brains over it lo these many years and come up with nothing.[1] Now at last I think I have found the solution, and it’s not what you would think. It fits the facts. So, right here, right now, I will give you the solution—dim the lights, Geoffrey. But first a quick reminder of all the dud solutions, the runners-up, the heroic also-rans (let’s have a round of applause for them): to be is to be the value of a variable (or the reference of a pronoun); to exist is to have the second-order property of instantiating a property; to exist is to have an unanalyzable first-order property of existence; to exist is to be an occupant of space; to exist is to be an idea in the mind of God; to exist is to be spoken of in a text; to exist is to have causal powers; to exist is to be an object of thought; to exist is to be a sense-datum; to exist is to be socially constructed; to exist to be not imaginary; to exist is to be material; to exist is to be mathematical; to exist is to be useful. A rum lot really. Hardly worth refuting. So, let’s get to the winner, the star of the show, the incontestable champ.

And the winner is: to exist is to be detachable. Yes, I know it sounds a bit bathetic, but stay with me awhile, be patient. The intuitive idea is that an existent thing is a thing that can be detached from other things—separated, disconnected. A non-existent thing is a thing that cannot be detached from other things. This is intended as a statement of necessary and sufficient conditions, a classical conceptual analysis. We are not pulling any punches or speaking metaphorically. This is what existence is. You need to see the analysis in action to appreciate its merits. What is the paradigm of an existent thing? Material objects, of course (the paradigm of our modern sensibility anyway—not the gods or anything like that). Perceptible objects in space—substances. They can be separated from each other, detached, disconnected. They come to us in conjunction with other things, but they can be physically moved and detached in thought. They don’t depend on anything else to be what they are. The table is detachable from the chair, even though they are next to each other in actuality; they will still be there if separated spatially. They are also detachable from the perceiver. They are independent things (the old definition of a substance). To think about one, you don’t have to think about the other. Contrast these things with imaginary objects: here you can’t detach the perceiver; no perceiver, no object. If no hallucinating perceiver, then no pink rats. Pink rats are necessarily attached to perceivers (as things are), unlike brown ones. The latter exist, the former don’t.

Now consider some intermediate cases, starting with universals. Plato thinks they are detachable from particulars: this is what constitutes their clear existence for him. Aristotle disagrees, so universals for him have less than complete existence—perhaps no existence at all. Fictional entities are not detachable from the minds of their creators, so their existence is in doubt; some say they are the paradigms of the non-existent (even more so than hallucinated objects). Meinongian objects seem indissolubly connected to minds (e.g., the golden mountain), so their existence is questionable, though a dose of subsistence is sometimes allowed. Then we come to some hard cases: numbers, mental states, ethical values, space, time, God, meaning, events, shadows, holes, shapes, concepts, selves. All of these have had their existence rudely denied: the question is why. Is the number 2 separable from other things—other numbers or mathematical minds? Could it exist on its own? If yes, it indisputably exists; if not, its existence comes into question. Does a particular thought exist? That depends on its detachability from other thoughts and from the brain. Holism undermines individual existence, and so does inseparability from the brain (materialist reductionism). Ethical values strike people as not detachable from natural facts, e.g., societal norms, so their existence comes into doubt. Ethical realism is better off under ethical autonomy (ethical truth before moral agents). Space looks in danger of disappearance if it cannot be detached from the matter it contains. Time starts to look wispy if events are removed. God cannot survive dependence on human belief. Meaning becomes existentially questionable if it cannot be detached from words—a mere shadow of language. Events lose all substance if they are constituted by objects and properties and are incapable of existence without them. Shadows are too attached to the bodies that cause them to be accorded genuine existence. Holes cannot be detached from what they are holes in. Shapes go up in smoke if detached from physical things, or are thought to. Concepts are found wanting if not detachable from language. Selves can have no being if they cannot be disconnected from bodies and mental states. In all these cases, the applicability of our basic concept of existence is called into question: the more attached a thing is, the less real. Those who resist these conclusions do so by insisting that the questioned items are detachable; they picture worlds in which the items exist autonomously. They can exist in splendid isolation! I needn’t go into all this; the point is that existence turns on the detachability question. If it turns out that material objects are really constructions from sense-data, then they too will have their existence queried. If it turns out that mental states are completely dependent on brain states, then they will be in peril of being relegated to the ranks of nonbeing. The central point of the concept of existence is that the thing in question can exist separately: the more detachable, the more real. This is why the primary cases are material objects in space and imaginary objects in minds: the former can exist in the absence of minds, but the latter cannot. The idea of existence is closely linked to the idea of objectivity, and objectivity is a matter of detachability from the subjective perspective. We say something is merely subjective when it doesn’t really exist. Realism is typically an affirmation of detachment from human concerns. Anti-realism is a claim of attachment to human concerns.

One nice feature of this theory is that it applies to any category of object: we don’t end up favoring one kind of object over others—physical, mental, or abstract. The definition covers all these cases. It also prescinds from epistemological considerations; it is purely ontological. And it brings out a latent relational aspect of existence: for x to exist is for x to be detachable from y. It thus provides a genuine analysis not just a trivial synonym (“to exist is to have being”). We have fashioned a concept that encapsulates the facts of detachability. If I want to say that pink rats are not separable from a perceiver’s mind, I simply say they don’t exist (are not real). If asked to explain what I mean, I say “Pink rats are inseparable from the perceiver’s mental state and dependent on it”. The word “exists” is very much a catch-all term, topic-neutral, quite abstract; and also, essentially contestable. It is a philosopher’s term with a theoretical meaning (more so than “true”). I like the definition because it injects new content into discussions of existence and doesn’t leave us with nothing substantive to say. It gets at the deep structure of the concept, lying just beneath the surface. Is there anything better out there?[2]

[1] See my Logical Properties (2000), chapter 2, as well as several essays on this blog. I came up with the present theory by going through every possible theory I could think of until something gelled.

[2] Why has it not been thought of before? Because of a tacit commitment to empiricism (the usual culprit): there is a hankering for something close to the perceptual—an existence sense-datum. But the concept of existence is a highly intellectual concept—it connotes an abstract structure. It involves a quasi-geometrical modal structure: the mind has to detach in thought one thing from another in an act of modal separation—a possible world, in effect. The concept of existence is a modal concept in that it requires conceiving of a possibility—this without that. For example, for me to recognize that a part of an object exists I have to construct a possible world in which the part is detached from the whole and considered by itself. This is nothing like seeing red. I doubt that any animals have this concept. We also have the difficult task of deciding whether one thing can exist without another—whether, say, a property can exist without a bearer. The concept is much more complex and problematic than traditional theories have realized.