Existence Simpliciter: Continuing the Discussion with David Brightly

 One of the points I made earlier was that presentism as a non-tautological, substantive thesis in the philosophy of time cannot be formulated without the notion of existence simpliciter. I then asked David Brightly whether he accepted the notion. Here is his reply:

Do I accept the notion of existence simpliciter? Yes and No. In so far as 'X exists simpliciter' appears to be a shorthand (a computer scientist's macro) for the disjunction of tensed claims 'X existed or X exists or X will exist' then I can guardedly accept it. This does seem to capture what is meant by 'listed in the final ontological inventory', does it not? But I worry that if we aren't very careful it can lead to logical mistakes. 'Simpliciter' here is a strange beast. It isn't an adverb qualifying 'to exist' for that would make 'to exist simpliciter' into a tenseless verb, and there are no such things. Nor, I think, does 'exists simpliciter' attribute a property to an item, so I cannot see 'existence simpliciter' as a concept. There is a whiff of 'grue' about it.

The presentist faces a problem of formulation. He tells us that only what exists at present exists. The problem is to say what the second occurrence of 'exists' in the italicized sentence expresses or denotes. What are the combinatorially possible views?

A. The second occurrence is present-tensed. This reading yields tautological presentism which is of no philosophical interest.  Note that if presentism is a tautological thesis, then 'eternalism,' according to which past, present, and future items are all equally real/existent, is self-contradictory.  If the only viable presentism is tautological presentism, then the dispute between presentists about what exists and eternalists about what exists is of no philosophical interest and is a pseudo-dispute.  This 'possibility' cannot be dismissed out of hand. I suspect that David may be luring us in this direction.  We should also be clear that presentism about what exists is not the same as presentism about existence. This is a distinction the explanation of which must wait.

B. The second occurrence expresses what I will call disjunctively omnitemporal existence: the (putative) property a temporal item has if it either existed, or exists, or will exist, where each disjunct is tensed.  On this approach, the presentist thesis amounts to this:

Everything in time that either existed, or exists, or will exist, exists (present tense).

But this is manifestly false. Kepler existed but does not exist (present tense).  I would also add, alluding to David's 'grue' remark, that while there are disjunctive predicates, it does not follow that there are disjunctive properties.  Existence simpliciter cannot be a disjunctive property any more than being either anorexic or underinflated is a property. 'Either anorexic or underinflated' is true of some basketballs, but surely, or at least arguably, the predicate picks out no property.  Likewise, 'existed or exists or will exist' picks out no property even on the assumption that existence is a first-level property. 

C. There is also conjunctively omnitemporal existence: the (putative) property a temporal item has if it existed, and exists, and will exist, where each conjunct is tensed.  The everlasting (as opposed to eternal) God is both disjunctively and conjunctively omnitemporal.  To save bytes, I will leave it to the reader to work out why this suggestion won't help us with our problem.

D. The second occurrence of 'exists' expresses timeless existence.  This obviously won't work because Only what exists at present exists cannot mean that only what exists at present exists timelessly.  For anything that exists at present exists in time and is therefore precisely not timeless.  So the existence simpliciter of temporal beings cannot be timeless existence. Yet it must somehow be tenseless.   Indeed, it it would seem to have to be irreducibly tenseless, where a definition of tenselessness is irreducibly tenseless just in case the definiens contains no tensed expressions. But then the problem becomes nasty indeed: how can temporal items, items in time, items subject to intrinsic change, both substantial and accidental, exist tenselessly?

At this point we need to note, contrary to David's claim that there are no tenseless verbs, that there are tenseless uses of 'exists' and tenseless uses of the copulative and identitarian 'is.' That the number 7 exists, if true, is tenselessly true. That the number 7 is prime is also tenselessly true. If I tell you that 7 is a prime number, it would be a lame joke were you to reply, "You mean now?" The same goes for the proposition that 7 is 5 + 2. If you object that these truths are not tenselessly, but omnitemporally, true I will say that they are true in all worlds including those possible worlds in which there is no time, and are therefore atemporally true, and thus tenselessly true.

And similarly for the eternal as opposed to everlasting God. If God is outside of time, then all truths about him are timelessly tenseless.

The above examples assume that there are atemporal items, items outside of time.  I expect David to balk.  If he denies that there are atemporal items, I will have him consider the case in which I say to my class, "Hume is an empiricist." A smartass might object, "Hume cannot be an empiricist because he no longer exists." I would then explain that to say that Hume is an empiricist is to use 'is' tenselessly.  Similarly if  I report that for Hume all significant ideas derive from sensory impressions.  'Derive' here functions tenselessly. Same with 'are' in 'Cats are animals.'  The same goes for extinct species of critter. In 'Dinosaurs are animals,' 'are' functions tenselessly. Ditto for 'Unicorns are animals.'

So now I ask David: have I convinced you that there are tenseless uses of verbs in ordinary English?

E. Could we say that the second occurrence of 'exists' in Only what exists at present exists expresses the quantifier sense of 'exists'? In the quantifier sense, x exists =_df for some y, x = y. We would then be saying that 

Only an item that exists at present is such that something is that item

which is equivalent to

Only an item that exists at present is identical to something

which is equivalent to

Whatever is identical to something exists at present.

Socrates, however, is identical to something, namely himself, but he does not exist at present.  The trouble with the existence expressed by the existential quantifier is that it is general, not singular, existence. It is the existence that we attribute to a property or to a concept when we say that it it instantiated.  'Cats exist' says that the concept CAT has instances.  It is not about any particular cats, and because it is not, it does not attribute to any particular cat existence. 'Honesty exists' in ordinary English says that some people are honest, that the virtue honesty has instances. But of course those instances, honest men and women, must themselves exist. Their existence is singular existence. The latter, however, is presupposed by the so-called 'existential' quantifier and cannot be expressed by it.

Interim Conclusion   

Here is the predicament we are in. Presentism about what exists seems to make sense and seems to be a a substantive (non-tautological) thesis about a metaphysically weighty topic, that of the relation of time and existence: Only what exists at present exists. But the thesis collapses into a miserable tautology if the second occurrence of 'exists' is present-tensed.  So I went on a hunt for a sense of 'exists' that is not present-tensed.  But nothing I came up with fits the bill or The Bill.

David, I fear, will simply acquiesce in tautological  presentism, option (A) above. But 'surely' we are in the presence of a genuine metaphysical question!  Or so I will argue.

Your move, David.

Comments

[David Brightly]

Hello Bill,

We have started with the following,

The presentist faces a problem of formulation. He tells us that only what exists at present exists.The problem is to say what the second occurrence of 'exists' in the italicized sentence expresses or denotes. What are the combinatorially possible views?

Your painstaking case analysis of possible understandings of the second 'exists' and your rejection of each of them, apart perhaps from the tautologous (A), suggests to me that this characterisation of presentism is at fault. We have been focusing on the second 'exists'. What about the first? If the 'at present' non-trivially qualifies 'what exists' then this first 'exists' must have more than a present-tensed sense. We have been looking for exists simpliciter in the wrong place. I suggest we start with

Only what presents exists,

where this 'exists' has its ordinary tensed sense. Now I have to explain what 'presents' means. It seems that we have a pre-theoretical understanding that all items can be exclusively categorised as past, present, or future, at least in so far as we freely use these terms in arguments about time and existence. So my suggestion is that 'what presents' means the same as 'those items categorised as present'. My reformulation is,

Only those items categorised as present exist.

Winston Churchill does not present; Boris Johnson does. We are quantifying here over the domain of 'items' which is strictly larger than the domain of 'present existents'.

[David Brightly]

Bill,

You asked me about tenseless verbs in ordinary English. I'm not convinced. Copulative and identitarian 'is' are grammatically verbal and can carry tense but they are hardly 'doing words' as we called them at school. In 'Hume is an empiricist' I think 'Hume' functions metonymically for 'Hume's written works' (which we have in the present). I remember being told by the Latin master to 'open your Kennedy at page 23' and finding this rather odd at first. 'Cats are animals' etc, 'seven is prime', and 'ideas derive from sensory impressions' express relations between concepts. We tend to think of such relations as fixed over time which perhaps explains why 'grue' is such hard work. Are there examples of tenseless usages outside the conceptual sphere (in which I include numbers)?

[BV]

David,

Your comments are provocative and challenging as usual.

>>We have been focusing on the second 'exists'. What about the first? If the 'at present' non-trivially qualifies 'what exists' then this first 'exists' must have more than a present-tensed sense.<<

That's right. 'What exists at present' is to be read as a redundant expression. My meaning is better conveyed by: "Only what exists (present tense) exists." If that is not a tautology, then the sense of the second occurrence of 'exists' needs to be specified.

>> My reformulation is,
Only those items categorised as present exist.<<

Categorized by whom? Presumably by us. But now the question assumes an anti-realist form. The question, however, concerns existence itself independently of us and its relation to time, which is independent of us. So I cannot accept your reformulation.

You may also be conflating temporal presentness with experiential/phenomenological presentness. What is temporally present need not be present to any mind.

These are all different: temporal presentness, spatial presentness, phenomenological presentness, and presentness as existence.

Agree?

[BV]

David writes, >>We are quantifying here over the domain of 'items' which is strictly larger than the domain of 'present existents'.<<

A. That is a natural thing to say, but it raises nasty questions. Are you saying that there is a class of items that exist tenselessly only some of which are temporally present? You are presumably not saying that. (Garden variety B-theorist)

B. Are you saying or implying that there is a class/domain of items that ARE tenselessly but do not EXIST tenselessly such that the all and only the existing ones are temporally present? I don't think you want to say that either.(Palle Yourgrau)

C. Are you saying or implying that there is a class/domain of items that have no being whatsoever, but yet come within the range of our quantifiers when taken 'wide open'? (Meinong) Presumably not.

Please tell me what you mean.

[David Brightly]

I accept your four distinct senses of presentness.

I am closest to your (C) since it avoids talk of tenselessness but I would quibble with the wording of 'within the range of our quantifiers when taken 'wide open'' since the latter is to close to 'everything' and this is ill-defined. In my view when we make quantified statements we are free to choose the domain of quantification. In no way is the domain 'forced' on us though clarity behoves us to specify it.

Let me try to embed the presentism question in a somewhat larger context.

My mind is populated with ideas of things. I acquire these ideas (a) directly through acquaintance with external objects and (b) indirectly by description in language and image. These ideas of things guide my interaction with the outside world. Having seen a bear go into the cave or having been told 'There's a bear in the cave', I approach the cave with caution.

Through my contact with the external world I come to accept that all external things come into existence, exist for a while, and then pass out of existence. The ceasing to exist of things that I am familiar with and am attached to is an everyday experience. When I have such an experience, or have a thing's passing described to me, my idea of that thing becomes modified. None of the idea itself passes away, at least not initially. Instead the idea (not the thing it's an idea of) acquires a new attribute, analogous to the label 'Account Closed' on the front of a business ledger, signifying that, to a first approximation, the content of the idea can be safely ignored for purposes of guiding my life. I might express this label by saying 'The thing is past' or 'The thing is in the past' or 'The thing has ceased to exist'. The important point here is that, despite appearances, these assertions are not predicating something of the thing itself but rather of my idea of it, namely that the idea is redundant.

Something to similar effect occurs when I read fiction. My mind acquires an idea of Captain Ahab, say, but labels it fictional. I might express this by saying 'Captain Ahab is a fictional man', but if we see this as asserting the property 'fictional' of some man then we quickly get into logical deep water. What I really mean implies that the content of the idea fails to represent or to have a referent.

And likewise when reading history. My mind fills with ideas of people and events all labelled as past. But I need not concern myself with bumping into Winston Churchill or becoming embroiled in WWII.

I am clearly influenced by neo-Meinongianism. Ideas both encode properties of their objects and exemplify properties of their own. But I wouldn't want to say that 'there is a class/domain of items that have no being whatsoever'. That sounds ontologically much too strong as well as contradictory. On the other hand I don't want to rule out quantification over mixed domains of existents and non-existents. We may well consider those men, past and present, who were or are US president, and compare and contrast among them, to the exclusion of all others. This doesn't seem to cause trouble though we gloss issues of tense: Lincoln was/is taller than Trump; there are/were 45 such men.

In short: The existents are the encounterables, and that does not include the past.