GE Morton wrote: ↑September 10th, 2022, 6:59 pmConsul wrote: ↑September 5th, 2022, 12:58 pmI am a physicalist, and physicalists certainly do claim that all existents are physical (or reducible to physical ones); but this metaphysical claim is different from and doesn't entail the semantic claim that "existence" is synonymous with "physical existence". If it were, then physicalism would be a necessary analytic truth per definitionem, which it surely isn't.
Well, that is an interesting distinction, but surely your metaphysics must deal with non-physical existents ("semantically" speaking) somehow. Are you suggesting we coin a different term than "exists" for the latter (e.g., thoughts, ideas, memories, etc.)? What would be the advantage of doing so, compared with simply understanding "exists" as applying to the 3 conceptually distinguishable realms of phenomena I mentioned, with different implications for each realm?
I've said before that I think semantics takes priority over metaphysics, that the entire purpose of the latter is to explain experience and communicate about it. A metaphysics that denies the existence of the very experience it purports to explain would seem to be self-mooting and self-refuting.
Materialists needn't be eliminativists about subjective experience. Materialist reductionism can be eliminative, but it can be conservative as well. I am a
conservatively reductive materialist!
I'm not sure what you mean by "non-physical existents". If you mean "non-physicSal existents", i.e. entities which belong to some scientific ontology other than the one of physics, then physicalists can happily acknowledge such
non-physicSal entities as long as they don't turn out to be
non-physical entities, i.e. ones which are ontologically irreducible to entities belonging to the ontology of physics.
I reject Alexius Meinong's distinction between different kinds of
Dasein (being-there), between
existence and
subsistence. If there are immaterial, abstract, or ideal entities, they are not ontologically different from material or concrete ones in the sense that the former
subsist, while the latter
exist. Their difference is not a difference in
Dasein but in
Sosein (being-thus, essence, nature).
GE Morton wrote: ↑September 10th, 2022, 6:59 pmConsul wrote: ↑September 5th, 2022, 12:58 pm
No, what I wrote doesn't entail that! An object of thought/imagination can but needn't exist.
Again, doesn't it exist as a thought/imagination whether or not it exists as an external, physical entity? Sorry, but your claim there entails that unexpressed thoughts and imaginary entities don't exist.
My claim does entail that imaginary entities do not exist. Note that "imaginary" and "imagined" aren't synonyms! All imaginary objects are imagined, but not all imagined objects are imaginary, since I can imagine non-imaginary, i.e. existent/real, things as well.
I'm not sure what you mean by "unexpressed thoughts" – sentences in a subconscious
"language of thought", Fregean thoughts = abstract propositions? (I don't believe in the existence of abstract propositions.)
Once again, in the case of an
imaginary object of imagination, the act of imagining exists and the object of imagining does not exist.
GE Morton wrote: ↑September 10th, 2022, 6:59 pmConsul wrote: ↑September 5th, 2022, 12:58 pmMere objects of thought/imagination do not exist.
Aha! If those don't exist, of what are we speaking? A unicorn, say, must be something, not a nothing (we can't say anything about nothings!) Doesn't being something entail existing, in some sense?
Yes, but being
thought to be something does not! Being represented to be X doesn't entail being X!
We can meaningfully think and talk about the
Sosein (essence or nature) of unicorns without having to impute any form of
Dasein (existence or subsistence) to them.
GE Morton wrote: ↑September 10th, 2022, 6:59 pmConsul wrote: ↑September 5th, 2022, 12:58 pmThat is, if something is nothing but/more than/over and above an object of thought/imagination, it doesn't exist. And, again, merely being an object of thought/imagination isn't a kind or way of being.
I see no difference between "a way of being" and "a way (or mode, or category) of existing. Saying a thought is not a "way of being" is saying nothing more than that it does not exist. Which would, of course, be absurd.
I use "way of being" and "way of existing" synonymously too; but "way of being" is ambiguous between "way of
Dasein" and "way of
Sosein". A way of being in the second sense is an
attribute, a property or quality of something; and there are different ways of being in this sense. What I deny is that there are different ways of being qua different ways of
Dasein. That is to say, there are different kinds of
existentS, because not all existents have the same properties, the same essence or nature; but there aren't any different kinds of
existenCE, because all existents exist in one and the same sense of "to exist".
GE Morton wrote: ↑September 10th, 2022, 6:59 pmConsul wrote: ↑September 5th, 2022, 12:58 pm
My point is that it is a basic ontological mistake to regard mere entia rationis or objects of thoughts as a sort of entities or existents, and to ascribe a form of being or existence to them, viz. intentional or intramental being or existence. The only thing that has real intramental being in the case of a mere, i.e. fictional or imaginary, object of thought is the thought of it.
It is fair enough to distinguish ens realis from ens rationis. That is equivalent to my distinction between experiential phenomena and physical entities (though I consider the latter to be but a category of conceptual constructs). But making that distinction doesn't purge the latter from existence, as you seem to think. They are still "beings" (per your own terms).
The phrase "ens rationis" is a misnomer, because a so-called
ens rationis isn't really an
ens (entity/existent) at all!
GE Morton wrote: ↑September 10th, 2022, 6:59 pmConsul wrote: ↑September 5th, 2022, 12:58 pmMental ideas (concepts) or images of nonexistent things such as those entertained in dreams are certainly existent things, but an idea (concept) or image of a thing is not the thing but something different from it.
Now you're contradicting yourself! Those things now exist after all? Of course the idea of a thing is not the thing, but surely the idea exists, does it not? Are we now in agreement?
Yes, but the crucial point is that the thing an existent idea/image is an idea/image of need not exist.