Questions tagged [existence]
Ontological and metaphysical questions about the study of existence, being and the structure of reality.
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Is Anselm's argument supposed to be understood in terms of hyperintensionality?
Hyperintensionality is something to do with e.g. the difference between, "I believe that Dean is Dean," vs., "I believe that Dean is Ackles." Generally, an operation X on A and B ...
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Did Aristotle think that essence and existence are the same thing or that they are different things?
What did Aristotle think about this distinction?
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Is the universe 'necessarily' contingent?
My question arises from a debate I had seen between Mohammed Hijabi and Alex O'Connell (the debate) where it seems like Hijabi was admitting to the fact that all contingent things must come from and ...
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Chicken or Egg. Does anything begin Or is the idea of start/first origin. A misunderstanding of language
The existence of beginning. Origin/start/begin. All require something before. Are all just arbitrary measurements of traits we find of interest. Mapping how they change over time? The global Idea of ...
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Can, "Intuitions without concepts are blind," be explained in terms of sentences featuring indexicals?
I.e., imagine an assertion like, "This is that." Taken per se, it is like "thoughts without content [that] are empty," but taken de re, is it blind? If I point at some "this&...
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Are "finding the pain of existence unbearable" and "deciding that life is not worth living" the same?
I have tried to present my views regarding these two seemingly related phenomena.
(a) Thinking that Life is not worth living
When one "thinks" that life is not worth living, that is a ...
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What is the difference in concrete things between being and existing, or is there none?
I am supposing that being and existence must correspond to principles in concrete things, else the notions of being and existence are false precisely because they are attributed to things. So what ...
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Do meanings of statements exist?
It was suggested to me in another thread that materialism is self defeating. But when I looked at the reason for that statement I found confusion in the argument.
(4) MATERIALISM
[Definition] The ...
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What is the meaning of existence? [closed]
What is the meaning of the word 'exist'?
Its etymology reveals it's derived from two Latin words:
ex = from + ist = is
Thus, its inventor intended it to mean from is.
What did the inventor of the ...
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Aquinas on the relation between essence, being, and existence
In Summa Contra Gentiles 2.9.4, Aquinas writes
Just as active power is something acting, so is its essence something
being [Sicut potentia activa est aliquid agens, ita essentia eius est aliquid ens]....
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Did Descartes declare the "Non Cogito" first, prior to "cogito ergo sum"
I took A-Level Philosophy, during which we studied Descartes "Meditations" at length.
I remember our teacher explaining that, whilst "Cogito ergo sum" was the famous phrasing, ...
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What are some logically equivalent formulations of “uniqueness”?
A monoid is a mathematical structure with an associative law of composition and an identity element. It can be proven that if an element of a monoid has an inverse, then the inverse is unique:
Assume ...
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Hugh MacColl and Meinong's position on existence
After researching the Russell and MacColl debate, at first I didn't know about MacColl, but I became very interested in him, so I continued to research him and eventually found out more about theory ...
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Does all the existence have a will to remain existing? [closed]
First of all: i am a layman.
Body/bodies: Material Being/Has mass and volume
And what i mean by the title: Everything that exists (that is composed by any chemical element) has the will/determination ...
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How many things is a blob? [closed]
Imagine you have two types of play-do. You mix them up till you can't tell the difference between them but you have a machine that can split them up. How many types of play-do do you have in your hand?...
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Does the statement "only matter exists" denote a false proposition or a true proposition? [closed]
The proposition denoted by the English statement "only matter exists" has a truth value that's constant in time. I want to know if it's true.
To answer the question, you need to know the ...
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What do you think about all existence following the very same laws? [closed]
So, i was wondering: Planets, Stars, etc. Have a similar behavior to us, humans. I mean, they consume energy to stay "alive" and when this energy ends up they "die". And in the end ...
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Certainty for the existence of tomorrow?
The title might not be the best but it was the best I could do. The question presses on the matter of continuity of time and the necessity of existence as a connected metaphysical phenomena.
Just like ...
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How much philosophy is about terminology and human conceptions?
I see a lot of sentences like "If a tree fell and nobody hears it did it really fall", or many questions related to infinity. But each of this questions can be true or false according to ...
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Is Alzheimer’s disease evidence for the non-existence of the soul?
As Alzheimer's disease kills off neurons, a person's personality and cognitive abilities gradually fade away. Doesn't this suggest that the self or "soul" is simply an emergent property of ...
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Would presentism and vagueness of the present imply that every event has borderline existence?
Would presentism and the vagueness of the present imply that every event that occurs is in a borderline state of existence? Since vagueness is characterized as having borderline cases.
I take ...
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Nothingness: What philosophical concept relates to how the empty set is a subset of every set?
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:
“Where do vanished objects go?"
"Into nonbeing, which is to say, everything," replied Professor
McGonagall.
"Nicely phrased," replied ...
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Is there a difference between "there is" versus "there exists"?
I have heard the phrases "there is" and "there exists" used interchangeably, but I am now wondering, is there a difference between them, and if so, what is it? Also, have ...
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How can something exist and then cease to exist?
Let's imagine a system that sequentially goes through three configurations. At time t1 the system is in configuration A, at time t2 in configuration B, and at time t3 in configuration C. That is, ...
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Can we know that something exists even if we can't explain or define it?
Can a person know that something like "free will" must exist even though an exact definition in words, using language, cannot be provided, and in the absence of a complete theory that ...
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Can anything happen at any time right now if there is infinite Possibilities in life?
If we live in a world with possibly infinite realities, and infinite space, doesn't that mean that there is an chance that anything could happen?
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Life: Pessimism vs optimism
I was reflecting a bit on the history of philosophy and religion and how they view human life. My question is the following: Why does it seem ( at least from my readings and knowledge, I might have ...
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Do we live forever (in our own specific universes)?
*I would like to preface this by saying I am not philosopher and have not studied any philosophy. This is just something I have been curious about for a long time and finally decided to ask. I am ...
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Implicit assumptions of the statement "If I've come to exist once, I will come to exist again" and if it could be disproved
"If I've come to exist once, I will come to exist again".
It could be thought of as of an alternative to "reincarnation" but in a much more general sense, abstracted from any ...
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What's the reason to live in this life?
I'm scared of life too much.
What will happen after this life ends? Even in this life, what is happening? Are we just some animals who have higher consciousness and are interacting with each other? ...
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