The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

SCANNED PDF

"Existence" is yet another term having different senses that can be clarified by a threefold analysis. Actually, to take account of all the relevant senses in which it can be understood, two such analyses are required.

According to the first analysis, "existence" can be understood:

(1) in the proper sense as the property of being real in one of the two main ways in which something can be so, i.e., concretely real, as distinct from being abstractly real;

(2) in the broad (and improper) sense as the property of being real in either of these two main ways, i.e., either concretely real or abstractly real, as distinct from simply being unreal, merely apparent, or fictitious; and

(3) in the narrow sense as the property of being concretely real in the way of an individual, as distinct from the ways of other concretely real things, i.e., events and/or aggregates.—N. B.: As understood here, an event, being real, is real for something else; and, being concretely real, is also such that other things can be real for it. But an event is not, and cannot be, real for itself in the way in which an individual can be and is. Thus whereas the identity of an event is strict because it has, or is essentially qualified by, all of its properties, the identity of an individual is genetic because it has, or is essentially qualified by, only some of its properties, having, or being qualified by, any others, not essentially, but only accidentally. In other words, an event becomes and perishes but does not change, whereas an individual changes whether or not it becomes and perishes. Both an event and an individual, however, are, in their different ways, singulars as distinct from aggregates, an aggregate being a group of events and/or individuals that has less unity than any of its several members.

Before turning to the second threefold analysis, we note that "existence" in the narrow sense as the property of being concretely real in the way of an individual is to be defined in relation to two other terms: not only "essence," but also "actuality." So defined, "existence" in the narrow sense means the property of being an "essence" actualized somehow in some "actuality(-ies)," or, as may also be said in the light of the preceding clarification of terms, "existence" in this sense means the property of being an "individual" actualized somehow in some "event(s)."

Given this definition, the second threefold analysis builds on the first by further clarifying three distinct senses in which "existence" in the narrow sense can, in turn, be understood, viz.:

(1) in the ordinary sense as the property of an individual whose essence is to be only contingently actualized in some event(s) and which therefore is a particular individual that exists contingently;

(2) in the extraordinary sense as the property of the individual whose essence is to be necessarily actualized in some event(s) and which therefore is the universal individual that exists necessarily; and

(3) in the emphatic sense as the property of an individual in the ordinary sense whose essence is to be contingently actualized in some understanding event(s) and which therefore is a particular individual that exists not only contingently but also understandingly.—N. B.: The distinctions between a particular individual, the universal individual, and a particular understanding individual—like those clarified previously between an event, an individual, and an aggregate—are all distinctions of logical-ontological type.

25 November 2004 (Thanksgiving)  

  • No labels