Here’s an updated version of how I explain the meaning of “exists” in one essay:
Despite what Kant said, existence is a predicate. “Existence” refers to a concept, or we could not speak of it, and what is the nature of this concept? In some contexts, “existence” acts as an imaginary container for everything that exists, but here I’m talking about “existence” as the quality of whether a particular thing exists or not. It seems that some people like to pretend that the existence of something is somehow more fundamental than the thing itself, but both the thing itself and its existence are concepts inasmuch as we can possibly speak of or think about them, and its existence or nonexistence is a concept applied to the concept of the thing.
Think of the example of a unicorn. You would probably say that no unicorn actually exists, yet if you happened to witness one, you would upgrade your notion of its existence-status from nonexistent to existent. Note that the concept of the unicorn preceded its existence-status, and when its existence-status changed in this scenario, the concept itself didn’t change much. This would not be possible if the unicorn’s “existence” were not a predicate that describes the unicorn.
And the “existence” predicate is purely abstract. Supposing there is a unicorn (or whatever other object may exist; we could consider something more realistic), it’s not as if in reality there is that thing plus its existence; there is only that thing. So, it’s not as if existence is something that’s also there in reality beyond our concept of it; it’s purely a concept, and that concept is purely a predicate.
Of course, whether we ascribe existence to something depends on a lot more conditions than merely whether we directly witness it or not, and the actual meaning of “exists” is not exactly that we witnessed something, so what is it? Essentially, it’s a statement qualifying what we would expect to perceive or not perceive under various hypothetical conditions, conditions imaginable within the model of reality we hold. For example, “that chair exists” means that if I, hypothetically, will myself to do what I believe is activating my motor neurons in order to do what I believe is “walking over to where the chair,” or if I otherwise find myself in that “location” (“location” also being an idea pertaining to world-model that’s ultimately based upon sense impressions), then I should visually perceive “that chair,” meaning I should perceive some image/visual qualia that I abstractly determine meet whatever criteria are attached to the meaning of “a chair,” as well as other criteria attached to the specific chair in question.
(I speak of will, belief, motor neurons, etc. instead of simply “walking” because the latter implies the existence of legs and the rest of your body, so in that case my explanation of something’s “existing” would depend on the existence of something else, which isn’t very consistent or useful. (Motor neurons themselves aren’t posited to exist, only the belief in them. And yes, I could have said “I believe I’m walking” directly instead, but brain processes are closer to the will than the legs, and will is a part of mind itself, which is the thing that decides if something “exists.” And yes, the will also is thought to exist (at least in an abstract sense), but its existence is known directly and that knowledge is infallible because mental states are definitionally equivalent to our experience of them, and you can’t think you’re having an experience other than what you’re experiencing, so the “existence” of the will is a more special case than most “existence.” But it boils down to the same principles of influence, object permanence, etc. which I get into later.
In other words, the reason I give such a seemingly solipsistic account of “exists,” going all the way back to sense perceptions and motor control volition, is that if we were to simply say something like “if something exists, that means it’s a part of reality,” that would merely defer the question to how we know something is a part of reality, and even more pertinently, what would it mean to say that reality itself exists, and how would we know it?
But, to veer off into a different, but important, subject: if I wanted to make an argument that “the chair” doesn’t actually “exist” in any sense beyond our knowledge of it, I would say that material reality is a specific pattern of molecules that we arbitrarily segregate into conceptually discrete forms. For example, consider the group of molecules comprising “the floor” and “the chair.” At some fuzzy place in that set of molecules, where “floor” molecules and the “chair” molecules intermingle, we say “the floor” ends and “the chair” begins. In reality, it’s all just a large group of molecules, and it simply suits our purposes to consider it as two separate, discrete objects, and there isn’t even an absolutely exact boundary at which “the floor” ends and “the chair” begins. Is a splinter on the chair part of the chair? Is the paint on it part of the chair? What about the flake of paint that’s about to fall off? What about the flake that just did fall off? Is the rust on it part of it? The dirt left from sitting on it? Etc. It’s all arbitrary.
Now, instead of considering only the particles/energy-patterns composing “the chair” and “the floor,” extend that concept to the universe a whole. Now all objects are merely concepts afforded by arbitrary delineations, except for two things: The universe, and individual molecules. And even molecules are, of course, made of even smaller particles (atoms), which are in turn made of even further smaller particles (subatomic particles), some of which are made of (a) smaller particles (such as quarks), and (b) nobody even knows. Even subatomic particles are not solids with clearly defined borders, as any physicist will tell you; it all boils down to fields. The presence of an electron, for example, actually tapers off gradually with distance and has no solid part. And particles are thought to be local excitations of probability fields that extend everywhere in space. Quantum entanglement even puts into question the actual, metaphysical separateness of things that are at a distance and differentiated from each other by their distinct locations. And if you accept string theory, it almost seems as though the universe is supposed to be made out of pure math. So, even imagining that the universe composes a set of objectively discrete entities called “atoms” (or whatever scale of entities you want to use as a base) doesn’t really work.
Then there is the second part to the argument that “the chair” doesn’t exist beyond our knowledge of it: anything we can know of, insofar as we can know of it and therefore can speak of it, can only be ideational/mental, as knowledge is ideational. (We can also say ‘mental,” “conceptual,” “cognitive” or whatever other word that does not seem too limiting.) Our entire understanding and definition of “the chair,” including all its attributes, is ideational, whereas “external reality” is presumably not ideational, outside of worldviews like metaphysical idealism (we’ll ignore idealism for the sake of this argument, because it’s not what most people believe). Since any two things we can compare must be ideas (inasmuch as we can even compare them), the difference between the ideational and the non-ideational (that is, “external reality”) is necessarily of a higher order than any other difference we can conceive; in fact, we can’t even fully conceive of this difference, because one of the things we’re differentiating isn’t a concept. Given that fact, to presume that such “reality” has anything like what we think of as “a chair” in it seems to be a shot in the dark, at best.
I actually believe consciousness is primary and that matter is in some way a derivative of consciousness (see more at https://exalumen.blog/2020/02/07/why-im-an-idealist/). I just wanted to take the more common view of reality to its logical conclusion. Though even if idealism or something similar is true, it’s possible that whatever super-mind(s) or super-consciousness(es) the universe belongs to doesn’t particularly think in terms of chairs and floors…
In another essay, I explain “exists” like this (with a lot of overlap with the above explanation):
The concept of “existence” is a tricky one. Emmanuel Kant said, in response to the ontological proof of God’s existence, said that “existence is not a predicate.” While his reasoning surrounding this statement was valid, the statement alone isn’t exactly true. Existence is a predicate, it’s just not a normal one. If existence weren’t a predicate, why would we say that a unicorn—or anything else—is either “existent” or “non-existent”? That’s exactly how predicates work.
You could say that the unicorn that’s non-existent can’t have any predicates because it doesn’t even exist, but if you think about it, all objects we can possibly think or talk about are mental objects; they exist primarily in the mind. They may or may not “point” to objects outside of us.
How do we know if a mental object points to something outside of us? Presumably, we can’t directly know of anything that exists outside of our minds. We only infer as a result of sensation. So, how do we know the chair exists even while we’re not sensing it? If we expect that, when we will our muscles to contract in certain ways we call “walking into the dining room,” we will see a chair with specific properties there, then we say that that chair “exists” and that our concept of the chair therefore points to something outside of us. But insofar as we can think of or talk about the chair, it exists in our minds.
We don’t even know if reality outside of our minds (if there is such a thing) is made of objects, or if it’s just some continuous field that wouldn’t even look like objects if we could have a “view from nowhere” (or, to be more epistemologically coherent, at least a “more objective” viewpoint). Indeed, “the chair” is just an arbitrary collection of atoms that we separate as “a chair.”
Let’s say the chair is made of wood and, due to attrition, some wood particles on the bottom of the chair’s legs get scraped onto the floor. Exactly which particles belong to the chair, and which belong to the floor? Where does the chair end and the floor begin? What if a child marked the chair three years ago with a magic marker? Are those ink particles now part of the chair, or not? If you break apart the chair with a hammer piece by piece, or burn it to the ground, at what point during the process does it cease to be a chair? Etc.
Since any two things we can possibly compare and contrast to each other (presumably using thought) must necessarily be ideas, the schism between the ideational (that in our minds) non-ideational (that outside of us) must necessarily be the biggest possible schism we can imagine—or, arguably, bigger than any schism we can possibly imagine.
So, back to the existence of the chair. To say that it exists is necessarily merely to say that we expect to perceive particular sensations in response to willing (what we think are) our muscles to do certain things. (We don’t know for certain that we have muscles, but we know for certain what we’re willing since that’s a part of our mind and therefore is directly known.)
If you posit something extant that can’t possibly affect us, any possible description of that thing is equally valid, since none of it is provable/demonstrable or falsifiable.
So, to validly posit that something “exists” must imply positing that it can potentially affect us in some way. If we will X, we expect to sense Y, hence Z exists. E.g., if we will walking to the dining room, we expect to have the visual sensation of a brown geometric form whose shape is determined by our perspective, hence the wooden chair exists. Of course, there are a million other ways we could less directly test its existence, and we can guess they’d all work because reality seems to be self-consistent, but that’s beside the point.
In a third essay, I say this about the concept of existence:
Another way to tackle the issue starts with an analysis of the meaning of the term “exists”. In order to coherently claim something exists, you must imply that it’s in some way, at least in principle, detectable or otherwise noticeable. If something is not noticeable under any potential circumstances, then what does it mean to say that it exists? To claim that something exists includes defining what the basic form is of the thing that exists; otherwise, you’re not saying what it is that exists, and it might as well be the most contentless thing imaginable, with the limit being nothingness. And how can you imagine the form of something without imagining interacting with it in some way to see the form? (Form is function, and the function of something is how it interacts with its environment. See this essay and this essay on why form is function.) And if the thing you posit exists can’t be interacted with (or, more specifically, can’t affect you) even in principle, then imagining such an observation of it (which is necessary to ascribe some particular form to it) is self-contradictory when you take the whole context into account, i.e., the whole world, from you to the claimed existent thing. And if you don’t hypothesize some particular observation of it then there’s nothing to ground or justify any claim of its particular nature, and therefore that proposed thing could just as well be any other possible thing.
Another way of saying the above is that existence of a specific thing requires a form, form is function, function is how something interacts with its environment, and if there’s no way for something to influence you (i.e., you can’t observe it), then it’s not interacting with your environment and isn’t a part of it. And if you were to posit that it’s interacting with some distant, disconnected, unobservable environment, that would only defer the issue to the fact that the existence of that entire environment with respect to you (and therefore also the existence of it categorically) is indeterminable and, furthermore, meaningless.
And not to mention that the idea that something that exists that doesn’t affect us is (a) unfalsifiable, and (b) in violation of Occam’s razor.
One problem with the above descriptions is that they only account for physical objects, yet we may claim that some nonphysical things, like souls, exist, or that some abstract things, like numbers, exist too.
I think that the more general answer to the question of “exists” is that it’s intimately connected with object permanence. Perhaps our concept of conceptualization of existence is connected with object permanence because it’s one of the first things we learn about how the world works. Perhaps it’s also how we realize that things persist independently of our current thoughts about or perceptions of them, which is of course a main aspect of what we mean when we say something exists.
“But numbers don’t have object permanence!”, you say. Well, I’m talking about a more generalized kind of object permanence, one which I might call “concept permanence” (remember, all supposed objects, as far as we can know of them, and probably further, are ultimately concepts.)
The number “1” seems to have concept permanence in that you can stop thinking about it, then come back to it, and it’s still there (in your mind) in exactly the same way. It seemingly doesn’t change one bit from mental invocation of it to another. I mean, yes, you may imagine its numeral pictured differently, or anything else about it differently, but its purely functional/analytical nature is identical across imaginings, so it’s immutable, and of course in modern society we’re highly trained to think analytically and functionalistically.
Furthermore, “1” seems to be discovered rather than arbitrarily imagined. Even though we don’t perceive it sensorially, it seems discovered because it’s an integral element of a framework that’s itself integral to how we think/how we model and manipulate reality. I.e., we group objects together according to similarity or proximity or something else they have in common that makes the grouping useful, and the cardinality of that group is the number “1”, or “2”, etc.
And, if you were to take “1” out of the picture, you could immediately deduce its “existence” again using math—algebra, arithmetic, whatever. This is another facet of its apparent object/concept permanence. You totally remove it from your mind, then you go looking for it, and there it is again. Not that you could really forget the number “1” even if you wanted to, but if you temporarily pretended it was just something arbitrarily imagined, you know you would soon be proven wrong.
Not that I think numbers really do exist anywhere but in the imagination, as I explain in https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2019/09/21/why-mathematical-platonism-is-silly/.
(Some of these attributes of numbers—the permanence, the discoverability, etc.,—can be applied also to one’s will as mentioned earlier, only the permanence of the will is less absolute/more transient, like most other things that are said to exist, whether as mental states or concepts or as external things.)
This, by the way, opens a whole other can of worms: why do we only say things exist if they’re not merely imaginary, unless we say they “exist in the imagination” or something “exists as a concept”? What does “exists” mean in that case? Maybe it comes from casting the entirety of the imagination as if it were a world of its own, in which case the imaginary concept exists “in that world”?
Or maybe when we say something is “in one’s imagination,” we inadvertently imagine that we take a freezeframe of the person’s mind with the imaginary element in it, thus seemingly stripping it of its ephemerality that’s otherwise intrinsic to imaginary entities?
Or maybe in this case we use a looser conception of “exists” that doesn’t require the element of discovery or object/concept permanence, but merely the element of its being regarded (in this case, by the mind’s eye), because we reason that it must have some kind of existence or exist somewhere or else how would we possibly know about it?
Then there is the issue, as mentioned above, of something like a soul being considered to “exist” (where the concept of the soul is itself considered to be legitimate). Does it have object permanence? I guess we imagine it to.
To be honest, another factor in whether something is considered to exist or not, besides object/concept permanence, is probably its apparent objectivity, by which I mean its propensity to be discovered in the same way by others (as believed by the beholder). But it’s hard to think of a case where this property would exist without the property of object/concept permanence or vice versa.
That’s all I have to say about existence.
