A reader inquires,
I have been wondering about whether existing things have existence. This seems obvious to me, but Bradley's regress makes me think twice. For if existing things have existence, then given that existence exists, existence also has existence. And since this latter existence also exists, it also has existence. And so on.What do you make of this problem?
There is a problem here, but since Bradley's regress concerns relations, we can leave Mr. Bradley out of it. And there is a problem even if there is no vicious infinite regress. (Not every infinite regress is vicious; some are, if not virtuous, at least benign.) Here is the problem as I see it. We start with a datum and we end with a paradox.
1) This table in front of me exists.
2) The table exists, but it might not have, which is to say that it exists contingently. There is no metaphysical necessity that it exist.
3) What accounts for the contingency of the thing's existence? Equivalently, what accounts for the real possibility of the thing's nonexistence? (A real possibility is one that is not epistemic or factitious.)
4) A classical answer is in terms of a distinction between the thing and its existence/existing. This distinction is not merely excogitated by us but corresponds to a difference in reality; it is therefore called a real distinction. 'Real' is from res, thing. A contingent being, then, is one in which essence and existence are really distinct in the sense that, in reality or extra-mentally, the existence/existing of the being is no part of what the thing is. A non-contingent being is one that is either impossible or necessary, and a necessary being is one whose existence is part of what the thing is. God is the prime example of a necessary being. In God essence and existence are one, which is to say: in God, there is no real distinction between essence and existence.
5) Pace Giles of Rome, however, the real distinction between a thing and its existence is not a distinction between two things metaphysically capable of independent existence. A thing metaphysically capable of independent existence is by definition a substance. Clearly, my table is not a collection of two substances, one its essence, the other its existence. Hence the distinction between a thing and its existence is not at all like the distinction between my eye glasses and my head or that between my table and the chair in front of it. They are really distinct and separable. The table and its existence are really distinct but inseparable. The latter distinction is more like the distinction between the concavity and convexity of a lens. It is a real distinction, but neither term of the distinction can exist without the other.
Therefore
6) If the individual essence of the table (its whaness or quiddity in the broad sense) is the concrete table taken in abstraction from its existence, then, pace Avicenna and his latter-day colleague Alexius von Meinong, this essence does not itself exist. The same holds for the existence of the table: it does not itself exist. What exists is the concrete table which is composed of essence and existence as mutually dependent ontological factors. If you think otherwise, and think of essence and existence as substances in their own right, then you have committed the fallacy of hypostatization or reification. (The only difference is that between Greek and Latin.)
7) If the existence of the table does not itself exist, is the existence of the table nothing at all? The existence of a thing is that in virtue of which it exists. If you say that the existence of a thing is nothing at all, then either (i) the table does not exist, contrary to fact, or (ii) the existence of the table is (identically) the table, in which case we have no account of the contingency of the thing. Argument for (i): the existence of my table is that in virtue of which my table exists; ergo, if the existence of my table is nothing at all, then my table is nothing at all and does not exist, which is contrary to our datanic starting point. Argument for (ii): For the table to be contingent, it must be really distinct from its existence: if its essence were identical to its existence it would be a necessary being. (God is a necessary being precisely because there is no distinction in him between essence and existence. Of course, we cannot think about God without distinguishing God's essence or nature and God's existence; but this distinction finds no purchase in God: it is a necessary makeshift in the sense that without it we cannot think of God.)
8) The paradox is now upon us. With respect to contingent beings, we seem forced to say that the existence of such a being both is (exists) and is not (does not exist). Both limbs of this aporetic dyad are reasonably asserted. But of course a contradiction cannot be true. Of course. That is why the dyad is an aporia, an impasse that the discursive intellect cannot negotiate. No way, man!
Limb One. To explain the contingency of the table we have to distinguish the (individual) essence of the concrete table from its existence. It would avail nothing to bring in talk of possible worlds and say that a contingent being is one that exists in some but not all possible worlds. For 'possible worlds' are merely a representational device to render graphic modal relationships. (I cannot explain this any further now. See my Modality category.) So if we want to explain the contingency of concrete particulars and not leave it unexplained, then it seems we must distinguish between the thing (or the essence of the thing) and the thing's existence. Therefore, the thing's existence/existing cannot be nothing. It must exist.
Limb Two. There are no bare existents: necessarily, whatever exists has a nature or at least some quidditative properties. So if the existence of my table itself exists, then it has a nature. The nature it would have, presumably would be that of a table, not that of a turnip or a valve-lifter. But then we have two tables, which is absurd. The pressure is on to say that the existing of the thing is nothing at all.
The paradox is that both halves of the contradiction are rationally defensible.
Is there a solution?
If there is a solution, I'd like to know what it is. Please don't say that the existence of the table is one of its properties, a property that does not exist on its own, and is therefore not a substance, but only in the table in the manner of an accident or in the manner of an immanent universal. If S is a substance, and A is an accident of S, then A cannot be the existence of S for the simple reason that S must already (logically speaking) exist if it is to support any accident, including the putative accident of existence. Similarly if you try to assay existence as an immanent first-level universal. If a property is defined as an instantiable entity, then existence cannot be understood as a property of existing particulars. This is because the particular must already exist to be in a position to instantiate any properties including the putative property of existence. (Bear in mind what I said above about Avicenna and Meinong.) Existence is not a first-level property. I have given just one argument among several.
And please don't say that existence is a property of properties, the property of being instantiated. This is the Frege-Russell theory which I have subjected to thorough critique many times on this blog and in print. Here is one very simple argument. If the existence of a concrete particular a is some property's being instantiated, the only property that could fill the bill is the haecceity property a-ness. But there are no haecceity properties. Ergo, etc.
We are stuck with our paradox: The existence/existing of an existing thing neither is (exists) nor is not (does not exist).
A bowl of menudo and a Corona if you can solve it.
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