A beginner question
Hello
I am beginner in philosophy and in this forum but I want try things like this!
It's my first question on this site:
Does "everything" include potential entities that could and could not happen, exist in our world or not exist, and are abstract, fictitious, or imaginary?
Do we include "everything" in addition to material things, non-material things, spiritual things, etc.?
Thanks
Sorry, my English is bad.
I am beginner in philosophy and in this forum but I want try things like this!
It's my first question on this site:
Does "everything" include potential entities that could and could not happen, exist in our world or not exist, and are abstract, fictitious, or imaginary?
Do we include "everything" in addition to material things, non-material things, spiritual things, etc.?
Thanks
Sorry, my English is bad.
Comments (81)
I don't know if I could persuade our good friend @Mariner to give his explanation for why materialists and non-materialists aren't as different as they appear to be. But who knows?
Only as something imagined in my opinion.
It would include non-material things, spiritual things, etc. if those things existed. But they don't.
Then the potential itself could have various levels of definition. If you are talking about the existence of possibilities, that could be in this exact world, or a world similar, or in any notion of world at all. So it might be just all the worlds with our same laws of nature, but then different in all the possible accidental ways. Or it could be worlds with different laws - different necessities - too.
So the task of defining what "everything" might mean can be systematically decomposed via a number of standard Metaphysical dichotomies like actual~potential, particular~general and chance~necessity.
If you keep unravelling the notion of everythingness, you get eventually to the notion of vagueness or the indeterminate - the everythingness that is also a nothingness.
So we can define what we mean, but the question has quite a few levels to dissolve. And so our use of the word is quite context dependent. We are usually thinking of some already bounded form of "every thing", which is why you do have people like Tegmark trying to classify levels of multiverses for instance.
So for instance, Earth is a member of the set of physical objects in the universe of which we are aware. I don't want to take the idealistic stance and say that Earth's existence is dependent on our awareness of it, but without the reference point of our awareness, in what way can it be said that Earth is 'actual'?
There is doubt, therefore the doubt is actual. Really? How would the same doubt be any different if it was merely potential?
Why do you think one would be a subset of the other, instead of being completely different, mutually exclusive, categories? I would think that if a potential is actualized, then that potential, as a potential, no longer exists, instead, it is something actual. And if a thing potentially exists, this would deny the possibility that it actually exists.
Alexius Meinong thought that abstract, fictitious, imaginary things really exist, and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein thought that facts in logical space are the world and that they determine both what is and what is not the case.
If we are talking about architecture for instance, surely there would always be more design possibilities and potential flaws and defects of execution than actually ever physically expressed.
The mutual definition of the categories themselves is a different issue - which I also highlighted.
(Y)
I think the above makes sense, and is a standard use of the term 'everything'. And yet the two uses within it refer to very different things. One can talk about an absolute, contextless 'everything' as the op does, and ask about it's meaning, but the answers one receives will be more confusing than illuminating, because words without context lose their meaning.
No, I think they are distinct, as per dualism. "All the possible forms of organisation" is a mental construct, conceptual only, whereas "the actual" refers to physically existing forms of organization. You don't seem to recognize this distinction and that's why I often accuse you of category error.
Quoting apokrisis
I don't think that defining the categories is a different issue, because if you have already positioned the set of actual, as a subset of the possible, then you leave yourself without the means for defining physical existence as actual.
Since we normally refer to things with physical existence as actual things, you create the possibility for ambiguity and equivocation. I believe you'd be better off to divide your category of "all possible forms of organisation", into true and false, or fact and fiction, something like that. This would clarify the epistemic status of that category, not creating the illusion that actually existing physical things exist within that category.
I would rather say that both materialism and idealism cannot be entirely consistent; any materialism involves, usually inadvertently, some grains of idealism, and vice versa. This can be demonstrated, since both positions involve (non-material) concepts and (material) defenders.
If we are going to be fixated on isms, put me in the column of good 'ole Realism. Things are as they appear to be.
For a realist like me, these discussions are often assuaged by a careful semantic (and etymology is a big help here) inquiry. What is a thing? Are things the only objects (watch out for this word) which exist (another tricky word)? Is "every-thing" composed solely of things? If it is not, what is the word that we should use to denote "all existents", whether they are things or [something!] else?
Our languages were developed from everyday concerns and perceptions. They were not designed for metaphysical inquiry, and we should keep that in mind when we use them for that purpose. It does not mean that it is impossible to use them for that purpose, but it does mean that we should keep an eye for instances in which our non-reflexive use of some words can deceive us.
Where our language fails us is where the metaphysical inquiry starts. In other words, the metaphysician will seek the areas of language use where the problems of language, such as you mentioned lie. These problems themselves indicate underlying, unresolved metaphysical issues, as the cause of such problems. Large semantic discrepancies indicate divergent metaphysical principles causing wonder and inspiration, in the philosopher.
What distinguishes and actual world from a potential one? Even a potential world is individuated by virtue of what it is not, so individuation seems not to be the distinction.
What is possible includes what is real and unreal, it excludes what is inconceivable. We determine what is possible by reflecting on what we experience, what we have learnt from others and by our own conclusions.
Thoughts exist, we can express them to others using a common language. We communicate what we experience, learn or what we have concluded with others, and I think objectivity starts here. with what is commonly agreed upon.
Scientists tell us what they commonly agree on, what exists outside of our thoughts and I generally believe what they say if it is widely accepted or if I like some aspect of what they are saying. This is not the same situation when it comes to thought. Thought is only constrained by imagination, conceivability, and language. People have many opinions when it comes to what comprises morality, art, justic et al. These thoughts have a history, they are part of our common experience and they are objectively real in that sense.
Thoughts about morality & justice and the rest form convenient ways to condense and to explain our common experiences with others, as they form part of our knowledge. Their reality is in thought but they are causative of our behavior. I like what Plato said:
I don't think that anything is 'non-existent' in the sense of non-being, this is a misnomer, I think that what is said to be 'non-existent' in this sense is different from what is stated. Plato again:
In my Peircean approach to that, individuation is symmetry breaking. The story, being developmental, is triadic. You need the three categories of a vague potential, an emergent regularity of habit or law, and then the third thing of a resulting world of actualised particulars or real possibilities.
So possibility divides into the unformed or vague and the formed or lawfully shaped. The vague state is a true everythingness that is a nothingness in its pure symmetry or indeterminacy. But as that vagueness is broken by organising principles, then you have crisp alternatives where events have either happened or they have not. Counterfactuality exists.
Thus talking about an actual world - as a container - is talking about a state of habitual emergent order in which local events or entities now can be said to concretely exist in a counterfactual sense. It is now the case they might not have existed - as either the global laws of nature, or simple material accidents, might have determined they do not.
So in our world at least, the possibility of rivers flowing uphill is not an actuality due to natural laws. And then the possibility of this river forking there rather than here is a possibility denied merely by some material accident of history. It is impossible not in the formal sense, but in the sense of a material fact.
Thus actuality itself is an irreducibly complex state - hylomorphic. And possibility is a word we use that in fact reflects the various elements it takes to be actualised. In Peircean jargon, you need the hierarchical organisation, the triad, of firstness, secondness and thirdness. You need pure vague potential, then the emergent habits that organise it into a definite state of being which then becomes a world of actual localised events.
In the beginning, anything is possible and nothing is actual. After the symmetry is broken, only some things are possible (due to laws and history). The rest are now possible in only the apophatic or suppressed sense of the counterfactual might have been. There is now a definite fact of the matter that they don't exist (either due to law or history).
WHAT is being asked here is not a profound metaphysical question needing deep philosophical insight. All that is being asked is how one ought use the word "everything".
I'm almost inclined to say metaphysics shouldn't use the word at all.
As an expression of all things within a context, it makes sense-- "everything in my cupboard is gone."
The way metaphysics usually wants to use it though, as a reduction of all the world to a singular idea, is just incohrent. "Everything" cannot exist. To exist means to be distinct from other things, a seperate state to anything else. We might say that any state is is defined by NOT being everything.
You're are too kind Banno. There are not merely different usages of "everything". The usual "metaphysical" one is outright incohrent.
Essences. Bah.
This is what works in formal logical systems; it's that domain of discourse.
A good interpretation of the question. The answer is that non-material things exist if you include them in the domain of discourse.
Your English is just fine, btw. (Your command of my language is certainly better than my command of whatever your native language is.)
I'm curious to know what you think of the answers you've gotten so far.
What were you thinking about that led you to ask the question?
Yeah. So that is why metaphysics would in fact be so concerned with the obvious demarcation between everything possible and everything actual.
Have any of you guys ever studied any basic metaphysics?
Quoting apokrisis
To order coffee and seduce their beloved. But not to do metaphysics.
Love this.
No, I studied modal logic instead. Much more interesting.
So what about that Lewis guy, eh? Modal logic produces the craziest of all crazy Metaphysical shit.
So the answer to my question is this? Metaphysics shouldn't exist? And you can't see that is already a metaphysical proposition?
But the point is there is no coherent use in either actuality or possiblity.
Either is defined be a distinction, by being NOT everything, by being a particular state or possible outcome. To speak of "everything" in either context is only incohrent and confusing. It takes away us away from what is metaphysically significant about both: that state or possibility is logically its own, rather than everything.
They might not achieve that as a dialectical opposition. The attempt may be found wanting. But at least it is understood what the essential game is here. The meaning of terms of art are defined in this mutually grounding fashion.
Yes. And so it might not be. Hence my request that you get beyond assertions and offer arguments. Of course I have zero expectation of that.
If you can't see that the OP is a question about word use, then that's not my problem.
But it is puzzling that an erstwhile utilitarian baulks when someone points out that use is more useful than meaning.
So your argument here is: Lewis is shite; Lewis is a part of modal logic; therefore all modal logic is shite.
Your own offering is wanting.
Indeed! So the fellow waving his gladius must be Apo!
You can respond with counter arguments to that if you like. But if you simply want to run around the village shouting your usual "metaphysics is bunk" slogans, then dung will naturally be flung in your general direction. It is indeed another game that we can find entertaining.
First off, the question has a slightly peculiar ring to our ears. wax1232 didn't ask "What is there?" although that's how many readers took his question, not entirely without reason. (Even Quine said the answer to "What is there?" is "Everything!" but then spent decades telling us what was not included in "everything.")
So in what circumstances would you ask "What does 'everything' include?" rather than "What is there?"
"Everything" is a quantifier. As Willow pointed out, it's most often most useful to use it in a restricted sense, with some domain specified or at least implied by context. It is always so used in mathematics for instance.
Philosophy, however, is not mathematics, and we seem to retain a use for absolute (unrestricted) quantifiers. For one thing, if "what there is" is precisely what is at issue, it can be tricky to use a restricted quantifier without begging the question.
I suspect the OP was presented, or thought up on his own, one of those maddening arguments that makes use of absolute quantifiers, and wants to figure out if it really makes sense. (I'm thinking of arguments that include premises like "Everything has a cause," "Everything must come from something," that sort of thing.)
This is not foolish. The question of how to interpret absolute quantifiers is quite serious.
Is there actually any use for unrestricted quantifiers? I think I can give you at least one, probably one of the first philosophers learn: "We can talk about anything." (Or if you prefer, "Everything can be talked about.") We learn this early, because we learn to tell people that just because you can talk about something, that doesn't mean it's real. (This has considerable appeal to undergraduates and positivists.) I would say that here we have an absolute, unrestricted quantifier, that we need it to make such a statement at all, and that it works just fine. (Hence my earlier answer to the OP of "yes.")
Interesting. So language and the world are co-extensive?
"No triangle has four sides."
Yeah, except he started by asking about "potential entities that could and could not happen, exist in our world or not exist, and are abstract, fictitious, or imaginary," so "everything."
Cool. Now, what is it we could learn?
Possible world semantics provides a structure in which what you might be calling "potential entities" can be discussed in a coherent fashion. You might like to check it out.
Two approaches might help.
In the first fiction and metaphor are translated into true statements; so, roughly, Bilbo destroyed the One Ring is true if and only if there is a story in which Bilbo destroyed the one ring. That is, there is a domain in which the statement is true.
In the second, a statement might be strictly meaningless, and should rather be seen as showing something. That is, the statement encourages the hearer to view something in a certain way. Viewed in this way language is able to reach beyond the literal.
Either approach might have a use.
The OP is a question about the use of the word "everything". Surely a utilitarian would agree?
My point was even the metaphysical use of "everything" is only the restricted "all of this context" usage. Just here, for example, you are not talking about "everything." You are talking about every triangle in realationship to having four sides.
When we use "everything" in talking about possible and metaphysics, it's actually playing the same sort of role as when we say: "everything in the bag is gone."
In the unrestricted "everything" is an illusion all the way down (or up). Yes, we may say: "everything may be talked about" but in that statement we have talked about anything-- our language has described no state of the world. "Everything" is nothing. We aren't? speaking about any moment of the world.
Now one might point out the unrestricted "everything" is talking about possibilities, saying that our language may talk of anything. This is true, but what does it mean? Well, it isolates the specific possibility of what our language can say. In the sense that it talks about anything, it's restricted to a specific possibility. It not about an unrestricted "everything" at all.
Are you a utilitarian? I'm a pragmatist - and Peircean not Jamesian. So different in essential ways.
Ramsey was getting it - and whispering it in Witti's ear in a way that inspired PI. So AP could have gone down a very different road after its failed project of logical atomism. You might have had a very different philosophical indoctrination as a result. Life is so full of paths not taken.
Yep. So we can talk about the intersection of sets - {triangles} and {four sided polygons} - that then result in empty sets. It fits one view of set logic. But then more realistic is the thought that triangles are a subset of the polygons. And the particular constraint is that they have just three sides. Or even more importantly - in being maximally generic - they are the least sides a polygon can have in a two dimensional plane.
So an apparently simple logical operation is in fact a flattening of the hierarchical complexity of an actual world (even the actuality represented by the idea of spaces enclosed by edges on a plane).
A subsumptive hierarchy notation would make the point plainer - {n-gon {3-gon}}. Or putting it the other way around, given the world of a plane - constraint in two dimensions - the minimum constraint that has to be added to close those two degrees of freedom is 1 further. Or a rotation of 180 degrees. The n-gon, effectively a circle or 360 degree rotation, is then the maximum number of sides that can be used to enclose a space.
So four sided triangles sound a logical nonsense because they are understood as a particular of set theoretic operation. But set theory is itself a metaphysically impoverished language for doing real metaphysics. Logical atomism's spectacular crash and burn was surely enough to demonstrate that. And perhaps you can forgive the survivors for walking away muttering, metaphysics, never again! :)
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Again yep. This is why a metaphysical strength logic wants to employ the further notion of vagueness, or the distinction between the radically indeterminate and the crisply individuated.
Vagueness can never be exhausted by inquiry. And the good thing about that is it means inquiry doesn't have to exhaust itself trying.
Theories of truth break themselves on the rocks because they believe the world is something definite and therefore every possible proposition has some true or false value. It's that AP disease. But as soon as you take the pragmatic view, everything changes. Truth only needs determining to the degree that a difference could make a difference.
So that is a real economising move. Truth is only in question to the degree it might actually matter in terms of a purpose or finality. We can lighten up. That was Witti's Peircean point.
On the other hand, we then need an objective model of finality - the purpose that determines what counts as meaningful. So that is the extra work that philosophy of language types never really got going on because they retreated into a commonsense realism about speech acts, thus completely avoiding the metaphysical issues which semiotics had already addressed.
I still don't know what the OP's purpose was in asking the question he asked, because he hasn't told us. It might be, on closer inspection, incoherent. But I think it was prima facie meaningful.
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