True. In the sentence "Mary exists in a possible world", "exists" means "could exist", so the sentence is incorrect. It should be "Mary could exist in...
In the expression "an individual exists in a possible world", the word "exist" is being used metaphorically, not literally, in the same way that it is...
The key topic of the paper is 'How are contingent identity statements possible?", or as Kant may have put it, "How are synthetic a priori judgements p...
Where does Kripke's Identity and Necessity say that numbers exist As regards Kripke's chapter on Identity and Necessity in his book Philosophical Trou...
Where do lecterns exist ? Kripke gives the example of "here is a lectern" as a description of something made of wood, something that can only be known...
I agree that "two" is part of a family of activities that we engage in together, but where did "two" originate, allowing us to use it in our activitie...
Russell and Wittgenstein fundamentally differ in that Russell's logical atomism requires both knowledge by acquaintance and description, whereas for W...
I know that I can think of an apple and I know the concept of an apple, therefore thoughts and concepts must exist. Kant Critique of Pure Reason A108 ...
I can have the concept of a single thing such as the colour yellow, or I can have the concept of an apple, which is a set of things, round, sweet and ...
I agree that Russell's work on denoting is not without criticism, and Wittgenstein's meaning as use, the language game and family resemblances are imp...
I'm sorry about the length of reply. Buying two apples needs both private concepts and public names Does meaning is use have implications for the stat...
I agree that within a mind-independent world variations exist, and it is these variations that a sentient being observes as patterns. However, "patter...
The phrase "laws of nature" is a metaphor. The problem of trying to describe literal truths in the world using language is that language is inherently...
It could well be, as in theory no one other than me knows what's in my mind. However, in practice, as we share more than 99.9% of our DNA, and we both...
I would say that the rings of a tree give us facts and from there it takes an intelligence to make the facts meaningful information. As Wittgenstein w...
Patterns we see in nature are inevitable if things move and the laws of nature are constant. If a particular event ends as it began, for example, the ...
My mind creates my private concept of something in the world publicly named as "two". Imagine at a particular place and time in the world there is som...
I may be misunderstanding what you mean by "outside spacetime". I think of "spacetime" as what we exist in, the three dimensions of space and one dime...
Yes, an outside observer of the water and rock can see that molecule A behaves differently to molecule D, because molecule A is part of water and mole...
It exists in the mind as a concept, and it exists when I think about it, in the same way that government, love, apple, despair, mountain, etc exist in...
I will never look at my calculator in the same way again In order for my calculator to have access to numbers, if numbers exist outside space-time, th...
You wrote "I believe that what exists is matter, and patterns of matter." The Cambridge Dictionary defines arranges as "to put a group of objects in a...
Keeping with your terminology, accepting that trying to explain a mind-independent world using metaphorical language is inherently problematic, and us...
As the SEP article on Existence notes that the question of existence raises deep and important problems in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and ph...
You say that "All patterns exist independently of anything", inferring that before sentient beings there were some things that existed as a pattern an...
Electrons are not abstract entities, in that they have a mass and exist in a cloud surrounding an atomic nucleus. It is not that the position of an el...
We look at the Giant's Causeway and see patterns in the rocks and adjacent water. The question is, do these patterns, and the relationships between th...
A pattern cannot be right or wrong. What we infer from a pattern may be right or wrong. If I notice the pattern that the sun has risen for the last on...
Yes, what we see as patterns have emerged through natural processes in nature millions of years before there was any sentient being to observe them. I...
When we observe the Giant's Causeway, which existed before sentient observers, we discover a pattern in the relationship of the parts. It is in the na...
Patterns and relations exist in the mind of an observer of a mind-independent world The Moon circled the Earth before humans existed, and in our terms...
You wrote: "And colloquially, to say that something exists only as a concept in your mind is simply a different way of saying that something doesn't e...
It wouldn't be if "patterns of matter" existed only in the mind, but you also say that "All patterns exist independently of anything", and " The patte...
A pattern is a repeated relationship between its parts. If there was no relation between the parts, then the pattern wouldn't exist. For patterns to e...
Perhaps the problem is that one moment you use "exist" in a formal sense and then the next moment in a colloquial sense without making it clear, becau...
Isn't your position contradictory, when you say: "something exists only as a "concept in a mind" is "another way of saying that something doesn't exis...
I agree that non-existent things don't exist, and that there shouldn't be a special category of existence for non-existent things. If we accept Bertra...
The real Saint Nicholas has many miracles attributed to his intercession, is said to have calmed a storm at sea, saved three innocent soldiers from wr...
"Apple" and "dragon" are concepts that exist in the mind. Concepts are fictional in the sense that they don't exist in the world - in the belief that ...
As you say "people can and do use the same words or expressions for different purposes in different contexts". Fictional characters exist as fictional...
I could play devil's advocate and say that the mainstream media's analysis of real people often approaches that of an analysis of fictional characters...
Yes, I believe that there are no £19 notes and can justify my belief through the Bank of England web site, but I don't know that there are no £19 note...
A challenge. The Bank of England web site says"There are four denominations (values) of Bank of England notes in circulation: £5, £10, £20 and £50" an...
The problem is that the evidence that The North Pole exists is descriptive, We may see a travel company advertising "Join us on the family adventure o...
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