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[CIN]

"Value" is not a property of things; it is a pseudo-property imputed to things by some person, some valuer. It merely denotes that a thing is desired by some person and is worth pursuing.

To repeat: this is true only of extrinsic values, not of intrinsic values.

Subjectivists tend to overlook evolution, and non-human animals. There are things such as food and sex which are pleasant, and are advantageous for natural selection, and things like physical injury which are unpleasant, and have negative selective value. Pleasantness of experience motivates animals to seek out the thing that is pleasant (e.g. sex or food), and unpleasantness (e.g. pain) motivates them to avoid the thing that is unpleasant (e.g. injury). Pleasure thus has a positive value for animals, and unpleasantness or pain has a negative value.

The point about this, for philosophy, is that the value the animal places on the pleasantness or unpleasantness is not a value attributed by the animal to pleasantness or unpleasantness simply because it desires pleasantness and desires to avoid unpleasantness; it's the other way round: the animal desires pleasure because pleasure has an intrinsic positive value, and it desires to avoid pain because pain has an intrinsic negative value.

Consider these two worlds:

a) In world A, sex and food, unlike in our world, are unpleasant, while injury is pleasant. This is presumably a possible world, but I think it is obvious that in such a world, animals would be very unsuccessful at passing on their genes, because they would avoid sex and food and seek out injury. Animals would tend to starve and injure themselves, and would be far less likely to pass on their genes than in our world. Evolution would have a hard time getting going at all in such a world.

b) In world B, as in world A, sex and food are unpleasant and injury is pleasant, but unlike in either our world or world A, animals place a positive value on unpleasantness (they actively seek out unpleasant or painful experiences) and a negative value on pleasantness (they actively avoid pleasant experiences). In such a world, evolution by natural selection would work exactly as it does in our world: animals would seek out sex and food because these are unpleasant and they place a positive value on unpleasantness, and they would avoid injury because injury is pleasant and they place a negative value on pleasantness.

If subjectivists are right, and there are no intrinsic values, then world B ought to be possible, because since all values are extrinsic, it should be the case that animals can evolve either to place a positive value on pleasure and a negative value on pain, or to place a positive value on pain and a negative value on pleasure. But it seems clear to me that such a world is impossible. It is because of what pleasure is like that it motivates an animal to seek it out, and it is because of what pain is like that it motivates an animal to avoid it. The whole reason why pleasure and pain have the roles they do have in natural selection is that pleasure always confers a positive value on an experience, while pain always confers a negative value on the experience. This ability of pleasure and pain to confer positive and negative value on experiences is therefore not an extrinsic property or pseudo-property attributed to the pleasure or pain by any animal or other experiencing subject; these abilities to confer positive and negative values on experiences are intrinsic properties of pleasure and pain themselves.

It would seem reasonable to say that if some thing X always confers a positive value, then, by virtue of that, X itself must also have a positive value, and this positive value must be intrinsic to X; while if some thing Y always confers a negative value, then, by virtue of that, Y itself must also have a negative value, and this negative value must be intrinsic to Y. If pleasure intrinsically has a positive value, and pain intrinsically has a negative value, then across-the-board subjectivism must be wrong. The resulting theory is ethical naturalism: the pleasantness of experiences is intrinsically good, and the unpleasantness of experiences is intrinsically bad. 'Pleasure is intrinsically good' and 'pain is intrinsically bad' are value judgments, because they use value terms; but they are also objective facts, and thus fact and value are not totally separate, as subjectivists would have us believe. Obviously this does not lead by itself to an objective morality, but it is a step in that direction.

[Peter Holmes]

We understand what words mean - so meaning exists. We know things - so knowledge exists. We make apple pies - so apples exist.

???

Here is what you claimed earlier:

"But, as physicalists, we deny the existence of non-physical things. And supposed abstract things are non-physical things. And what we call - by a grammatical misattribution - an abstract noun is (we delude ourselves) the name of an abtract thing: meaning, truth, knowledge, justice, beauty, identity, being - and so on."

???

I was stating your ridiculous deductions - and juxtaposing them to your absurd analogy with apples.

[Terrapin Station]

Consider these two worlds:

a) In world A, sex and food, unlike in our world, are unpleasant, while injury is pleasant. This is presumably a possible world, but I think it is obvious that in such a world, animals would be very unsuccessful at passing on their genes, because they would avoid sex and food and seek out injury. Animals would tend to starve and injure themselves, and would be far less likely to pass on their genes than in our world. Evolution would have a hard time getting going at all in such a world.

b) In world B, as in world A, sex and food are unpleasant and injury is pleasant, but unlike in either our world or world A, animals place a positive value on unpleasantness (they actively seek out unpleasant or painful experiences) and a negative value on pleasantness (they actively avoid pleasant experiences). In such a world, evolution by natural selection would work exactly as it does in our world: animals would seek out sex and food because these are unpleasant and they place a positive value on unpleasantness, and they would avoid injury because injury is pleasant and they place a negative value on pleasantness.

One simple problem with this is language usage.

"Pleasant" is conventionally parsed as standing for something that one places a positive value on. "Unpleasant" something that one places a negative value on. "Pain" is sometimes parsed similarly.

Of course, we could simply decree that we'll use language different than convention has it, but we should be explicit about this, and it would require that we avoid the conventional connotations of the terms elsewhere in the argument if we do that.

So if we're going to use "pleasant" and "unpleasant" different than the norm, what definitions are we going to be using?

Otherwise, if we're going to use the conventional definitions of those terms, we'd need to change (b), because it would be incoherent per conventional language usage.

[Sy Borg]

Terrapin, b) it could be said that b) is how this world works.

Sex and eating are disgusting if you ignore your instincts and simply consider the physical reality of these much loved pastimes.

Each starts with attractive(ish?) presentation to make what is actually utterly repulsive seem beautiful. Genitals are not nice things, being about as "beautiful" as livers, lungs and other organs. Only a small minority will hang images of penises, testicles and vaginas on their walls (yet, ironically we think nothing of displaying large images plant genitalia).

Now consider sex. Two creatures coming together to slobber and plough at one another. As for eating, the food seems delightful until it goes into your mouth. There it is soon reduced to slimy mush that makes one glad not to have eyes inside one's mouth.

As for injury, it is a curious fact of life that if you do not inflict suffering on yourself with strenuous activities and denial of pleasures, then the world will mete out even more severe suffering on you. Thus, millions head to the gym or sports ovals to deliberately inflict discomfort on themselves. Or they go on strict diets.

This doesn't have much to do with the topic, whose answer was resolved almost immediately, and is now being artificially being kept alive by an extraordinary act of will.

[Terrapin Station]

Terrapin, b) it could be said that b) is how this world works.

Sex and eating are disgusting if you ignore your instincts and simply consider the physical reality of these much loved pastimes.

Each starts with attractive(ish?) presentation to make what is actually utterly repulsive seem beautiful. Genitals are not nice things, being about as "beautiful" as livers, lungs and other organs. Only a small minority will hang images of penises, testicles and vaginas on their walls (yet, ironically we think nothing of displaying large images plant genitalia).

Now consider sex. Two creatures coming together to slobber and plough at one another. As for eating, the food seems delightful until it goes into your mouth. There it is soon reduced to slimy mush that makes one glad not to have eyes inside one's mouth.

As for injury, it is a curious fact of life that if you do not inflict suffering on yourself with strenuous activities and denial of pleasures, then the world will mete out even more severe suffering on you. Thus, millions head to the gym or sports ovals to deliberately inflict discomfort on themselves. Or they go on strict diets.

This doesn't have much to do with the topic, whose answer was resolved almost immediately, and is now being artificially being kept alive by an extraordinary act of will.

What I'm getting at is in relation to this: "animals place a positive value on unpleasantness."

If S says, "I consider x unpleasant; I value x positively," and S isn't equivocating, then we assume that either S doesn't understand either the term "unpleasant" or the term "value positively," or we at least figure that S is using language very oddly.

[Sy Borg]

Aside from the the small minority (as per above) who would hang images of genitalia on their walls and perhaps answer to names like "Mistress" and "Slave", I agree that the example appears to be contradictory. It's a creative thought experiment, though.

Perhaps instead of placing a positive value on unpleasantness, the organisms were unconsciously compelled to seek those sensations, despite finding them distasteful?

[GE Morton]

Of course not. But it doesn't have to. Different categories of existents have different criteria for establishing their existence (different truth condition for propositions asserting their existence).

This merely begs the question: abstracts things exist, but in a different category of existence from real things. Explain what 'exists' mean with regard to abstract things, or this is equivocation.

"Exists" (and "real") means the same thing with regard to abstract things as it does to concrete things. It means that that term or construct has descriptive or explanatory utility. If electromagnetic fields help us explain electricity and optical phenomena, then they exist. If numbers help us quantify things, then they exist. If the concept of "knowledge" helps us communicate information, then knowledge exists. If "tree" helps us classify elements of our sensory experiences having certain similarities, then trees exist. Quine's formula was, "To be is to be the value of a bound variable." Anything we choose to say exist exists, if we can construct informative, true propositions with it.

Do quarks exist? We'll never answer that question by trying to observe them via some sort of magical microscope. But if they help us explain certain subatomic reactions and quantum behaviors, then they will exist. At least until a better explanation comes along.

Virtually all ontological theories, paradigmatically naive realism but not limited to it, presuppose there is some "real world" out there and that the task for philosophers is to tell us what that "real world" is like, what is and what is not "real," where "real" is conceived to denote something primal, sui generis, uncolored by human interests and transcending human perceptual limitations. So conceived, ontology is mysticism. It is also presumptuous and question-begging. Presumptuous, because philosophers have no more information as to what the world is like than anybody else; all they have is what they experience, just like everyone else. Question-begging, because they postulate this transcendental "real world" at the outset, rather than relying on the only real evidence they have, namely, what they can see, hear, and feel --- what they directly experience.

The "real world" is the world we experience, along with any other entities or processes we may invent that helps us explain that experience.

Ordinary speech is shot-through with what we've called 'mental' words - think, feel, idea, know, believe, and so on - which we use perfectly clearly without any metaphysical delusions as to the actual existence of abstract things.

There is no "actual existence" as distinct from existence simpliciter. That very concept embodies the mysticism just described. Yes, thoughts, feelings, knowledge, beliefs, etc., all exist. Their existence is as "actual" as the existence of rocks and trees. That adjective in this context is superfluous.

Please explain the truth-condition for the assertion 'there are mental things'. Is it that we say there are mental things? And is that the criterion for the existence of gods and demons?

Yes --- provided those "mental things" permit us to communicate useful information about behavior, and perhaps our own directly-perceived experience. If postulating gods and demons helped us explain various natural phenomena and human behavior they would be "real" too. (They were, after all, invented precisely to serve that purpose --- and were abandoned only when other entities were invented that did a much better job).

Pure equivocation. What and where is an abstract thing? (Hint: 'it's a concept in a mind' won't do, because concepts and minds are abstract things.)

Oh, I think you know well enough what an abstract thing is. And, of course, the "where" question is inapplicable to abstract things.

[GE Morton]

"Value" is not a property of things; it is a pseudo-property imputed to things by some person, some valuer. It merely denotes that a thing is desired by some person and is worth pursuing.

To repeat: this is true only of extrinsic values, not of intrinsic values.

Subjectivists tend to overlook evolution, and non-human animals. There are things such as food and sex which are pleasant, and are advantageous for natural selection, and things like physical injury which are unpleasant, and have negative selective value. Pleasantness of experience motivates animals to seek out the thing that is pleasant (e.g. sex or food), and unpleasantness (e.g. pain) motivates them to avoid the thing that is unpleasant (e.g. injury). Pleasure thus has a positive value for animals, and unpleasantness or pain has a negative value.

The point about this, for philosophy, is that the value the animal places on the pleasantness or unpleasantness is not a value attributed by the animal to pleasantness or unpleasantness simply because it desires pleasantness and desires to avoid unpleasantness; it's the other way round: the animal desires pleasure because pleasure has an intrinsic positive value, and it desires to avoid pain because pain has an intrinsic negative value.

CIN, you need to familiarize yourself with the "naturalistic fallacy":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

As I said, there is no means of determining the "intrinsic value" of anything. That renders all assertions of "intrinsic value" non-cognitive. The only means we have for determining the value of anything is observing what some person, a valuer, will give up to to obtain it.

The whole reason why pleasure and pain have the roles they do have in natural selection is that pleasure always confers a positive value on an experience, while pain always confers a negative value on the experience.

That is false. Masochists value pain, ascetics disvalue pleasure.

You might also want to peruse the "paradox of hedonism" (Sidgwick) and "The Experience Machine" (Nozick):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_hedonism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine

[Peter Holmes]

This merely begs the question: abstracts things exist, but in a different category of existence from real things. Explain what 'exists' mean with regard to abstract things, or this is equivocation.

"Exists" (and "real") means the same thing with regard to abstract things as it does to concrete things. It means that that term or construct has descriptive or explanatory utility.

This is patent nonsense. Things that exist are different from terms or constructs with descriptive or explanatory utility. A thing that exists has no decriptive or explanatory utility. You're conflating the way things are with what we say about them. So, back to the issue: demonstrate that abstract things exist. Just saying they do is useless. The burden of proof is yours.

If electromagnetic fields help us explain electricity and optical phenomena, then they exist. If numbers help us quantify things, then they exist. If the concept of "knowledge" helps us communicate information, then knowledge exists. If "tree" helps us classify elements of our sensory experiences having certain similarities, then trees exist. Quine's formula was, "To be is to be the value of a bound variable." Anything we choose to say exist exists, if we can construct informative, true propositions with it.

Codswallop. And Quine's mistake is as obvious as the early Wittgenstein's at the opening of the Tractatus. Only Quine didn't understand it and set about correcting it, as Wittgenstein did.

Do quarks exist? We'll never answer that question by trying to observe them via some sort of magical microscope. But if they help us explain certain subatomic reactions and quantum behaviors, then they will exist. At least until a better explanation comes along.

Oh, please. So did the ether and miasma 'exist' until a better explanation came along? This is rubbish.

Virtually all ontological theories, paradigmatically naive realism but not limited to it, presuppose there is some "real world" out there and that the task for philosophers is to tell us what that "real world" is like, what is and what is not "real," where "real" is conceived to denote something primal, sui generis, uncolored by human interests and transcending human perceptual limitations. So conceived, ontology is mysticism. It is also presumptuous and question-begging. Presumptuous, because philosophers have no more information as to what the world is like than anybody else; all they have is what they experience, just like everyone else. Question-begging, because they postulate this transcendental "real world" at the outset, rather than relying on the only real evidence they have, namely, what they can see, hear, and feel --- what they directly experience.

The "real world" is the world we experience, along with any other entities or processes we may invent that helps us explain that experience.

So philosophers have no special knowledge, but everyone else's view is 'naive realism'. And nearly all ontologies are mystical, but yours, according to which invented things are real, is limpidly rational. Oh-kay.

Ordinary speech is shot-through with what we've called 'mental' words - think, feel, idea, know, believe, and so on - which we use perfectly clearly without any metaphysical delusions as to the actual existence of abstract things.

There is no "actual existence" as distinct from existence simpliciter. That very concept embodies the mysticism just described. Yes, thoughts, feelings, knowledge, beliefs, etc., all exist. Their existence is as "actual" as the existence of rocks and trees. That adjective in this context is superfluous.

Please demonstrate the existence of an abstract thing such as truth, knowledge, beauty or justice. If they're just like trees and rocks, it should be a doddle. But, of course, they aren't just like trees and rocks, and you can't demonstrate their existence. So you'll just have to keep on blathering and hoping no one notices that you can't produce the goods. How naively realistic we are even to ask for evidence!

Please explain the truth-condition for the assertion 'there are mental things'. Is it that we say there are mental things? And is that the criterion for the existence of gods and demons?

Yes --- provided those "mental things" permit us to communicate useful information about behavior, and perhaps our own directly-perceived experience. If postulating gods and demons helped us explain various natural phenomena and human behavior they would be "real" too. (They were, after all, invented precisely to serve that purpose --- and were abandoned only when other entities were invented that did a much better job).

And there's the rub. A large majority of people on the earth do indeed think gods and other invented supernatural things explain the universe and what happens. So, in your ridiculous world, gods and demons, etc, are real. (Are you for real? I have my suspicions.)

Pure equivocation. What and where is an abstract thing? (Hint: 'it's a concept in a mind' won't do, because concepts and minds are abstract things.)

Oh, I think you know well enough what an abstract thing is. And, of course, the "where" question is inapplicable to abstract things.

To repeat: what and where is an abstract thing? You can bluster as much as you like. Produce the goods, or stop kidding yourself, or trying to convince us, that your snake oil works.

[Belindi]

Peter Holmes wrote:



Christianity happens to be a religion for which beliefs (such as the resurrection event) are indispensably important. Some other religious faiths are defined less by beliefs and more by ritualistic behaviours. Even within the circle of Christian sects some of those are defined less by beliefs than by rituals such as attending a certain place of worship and engaging in the right actions and speech there.

Meaning depends upon people who mean. Again, Peter, you are enchanted by a noun. There is no such thing as meaning except insofar as there are people who mean(intend, purpose, order in the sense of making orderly patterns).Meanings don't float around like disembodied ghosts.

Even in the case of something as concrete as an apple , this entity, an apple, would be relatively invisible to a person who had never encountered what you and I call an apple.

(I meant the metaphysical faith - in the absence of evidence - that abstract things exist, somehow, somewhere, in a way we can't actually explain. But I assume you agree that rehearsing an article of faith - such as in the resurrection - does nothing to establish the truth of the claim. If it's true, something else is required to demonstrate that.)

I'm calling out the enchantment. Meaning isn't a thing of any kind whatsoever, so it isn't a thing that depends on people who 'mean' (?), or anything else. Look at the absurdity of what you say, and how natural it seems to say it.

Talk of the 'existence' of abstract things is the actual evidence of metaphysical enchantment/delusion that I'm talking about. Talk of fictional abstract things, such as concepts and propositions, floating about in, say, minds - more fictional abstract things - has been around for so long that waking up and recognising it for the nonsense it is and has always been is extraordinarly hard. GEM's blithe assumption - we know things, so of course there's such a thing as knowledge - is evidence of how deep the delusion runs. And so is TS's talk of the mental and the extramental.

Do you think an apple exists in the way that the concept of an apple exists - as a thing in a location? And would no one's having encountered an apple mean apples didn't exist?

If we describe the concept of a dog, we describe a dog. If we visualise the concept of a dog, we visualise a dog. If we draw the concept of a dog, we draw a dog. These 'dogs' may be of a specific breed, or some composite, identikit, children's version of a dog. But there's no Platonic thing, and no mental thing, which is 'dog' or 'dogness' or 'dogdicity' of which the word dog is the name. That's the nonsense foisted on us by metaphysicians since at least Aristotle and Plato. It's time to wake up.

And yet we talk about the meaning of meaning.
I agree with your last paragraph, except for your disdain for metaphysians. You are a metaphysician when you make claims about the non-existence of meaning. I know 'metaphysics' is sometimes used in the way you have done,as applicable only to essences, but it's incorrect and confusing.

Do you think an apple exists in the way that the concept of an apple exists - as a thing in a location? And would no one's having encountered an apple mean apples didn't exist?

I agree apples in themselves exist in some fashion. Maybe apples in themselves are one with the apple tree, the soil, the rain, and the air. We can't know as we don't live in eternity but inhabit a relative world where, for reasons of our subsistence, apples are relatively separate from the trees they grow on.Foodstuffs of all sorts are important to us and their availability is a social effort so we mean what we say when we say "Apples are sweet" or "Apples are round and juicy" or "I have to peel apples before I can eat them".

The latter utterances are part of apple concepts which are held in memory. As the small child socialises he learns more and more about the social concept of apple.Some fortunate people never stop acquiring information to add to their concepts of apple. I am now talking about mental stuff, when I talk about concepts. Mental stuff is an aspect of existence , similarly physical stuff is an aspect of existence. Just because physical stuff is true and real does not imply mental aspect of being is not true and real.

Unlike apples, morality indirectly occupies space and time. Morality occupies space and time by means of the thoughts, words, and bodily behaviours of people. Like apples morality is social and its existence in itself must remain unknown.

[Terrapin Station]

]
"Exists" (and "real") means the same thing with regard to abstract things as it does to concrete things. It means that that term or construct has descriptive or explanatory utility.

Once again here goes Mr. Dictionary using a sense of a term that doesn't at all resemble what's found in dictionaries. I thought you said it was a problem to do that?

Aside from that, some people care about ontology aside from conceptual practicality, and many would say that conceptual practicality isn't ontology at all.

[Terrapin Station]

It is also presumptuous and question-begging. Presumptuous, because philosophers have no more information as to what the world is like than anybody else; all they have is what they experience, just like everyone else. Question-begging, because they postulate this transcendental "real world" at the outset, rather than relying on the only real evidence they have, namely, what they can see, hear, and feel --- what they directly experience.

In the same vein, how would philosophers have more information than anyone period, regardless of how we parse experience ontologically?

"All they have is what they experience, just like everyone else." Yes. Everyone experiences the real world. We have tons of experiential evidence of a real world. It's just that some philosophers, particularly, are very confused by thinking about this, so that they wind up saying nonsense such as claiming that we don't experience the real world after all, and such as saying that what it amounts to to exist is to have value as part of an explanation.

[Sy Borg]

Everyone experiences the real world.

Yes, but our perceptions of the real world range from rough sketches to efficacious fiction.

[Terrapin Station]

Everyone experiences the real world.

Yes, but our perceptions of the real world range from rough sketches to efficacious fiction.

Well, first we need to be careful that we're talking about perceptions there rather than things we do aside from perception, such as concept-application, opinion or value-application, etc.

And secondly, we need to realize that people can't literally share their perceptions with us. They can only talk about them, or do things like draw them, create other artworks about them, etc. And there, it might be an issue of using language differently, it might be an issue of drawing ability (assuming we're all trying to be photorealistic), etc. At any rate, we can't literally experience anyone else's perception.

Aside from that, perceptions will differ from person to person if only because their spatio-temporal situatedness necessarily differs.

There are other reasons that perceptions can differ, too--there can be various problems with perceptual faculties, but it's important to keep in mind that many other things might be going on, too.

[Peter Holmes]

(I meant the metaphysical faith - in the absence of evidence - that abstract things exist, somehow, somewhere, in a way we can't actually explain. But I assume you agree that rehearsing an article of faith - such as in the resurrection - does nothing to establish the truth of the claim. If it's true, something else is required to demonstrate that.)

I'm calling out the enchantment. Meaning isn't a thing of any kind whatsoever, so it isn't a thing that depends on people who 'mean' (?), or anything else. Look at the absurdity of what you say, and how natural it seems to say it.

Talk of the 'existence' of abstract things is the actual evidence of metaphysical enchantment/delusion that I'm talking about. Talk of fictional abstract things, such as concepts and propositions, floating about in, say, minds - more fictional abstract things - has been around for so long that waking up and recognising it for the nonsense it is and has always been is extraordinarly hard. GEM's blithe assumption - we know things, so of course there's such a thing as knowledge - is evidence of how deep the delusion runs. And so is TS's talk of the mental and the extramental.

Do you think an apple exists in the way that the concept of an apple exists - as a thing in a location? And would no one's having encountered an apple mean apples didn't exist?

If we describe the concept of a dog, we describe a dog. If we visualise the concept of a dog, we visualise a dog. If we draw the concept of a dog, we draw a dog. These 'dogs' may be of a specific breed, or some composite, identikit, children's version of a dog. But there's no Platonic thing, and no mental thing, which is 'dog' or 'dogness' or 'dogdicity' of which the word dog is the name. That's the nonsense foisted on us by metaphysicians since at least Aristotle and Plato. It's time to wake up.

And yet we talk about the meaning of meaning.

We do indeed. We have to use words (and other signs) to talk about anything, including the ways we use words (and other signs). We can't use language to get beyond, behind or beneath language - but we keep trying. The belief that we can is a very deep delusion. It's the dream of a foundation in which a description and the described are one and the same. But there's no foundation, for what we say, beneath our linguistic practices.

I agree with your last paragraph, except for your disdain for metaphysians. You are a metaphysician when you make claims about the non-existence of meaning. I know 'metaphysics' is sometimes used in the way you have done,as applicable only to essences, but it's incorrect and confusing.

Metaphysicians are the most deeply deluded, claiming to say and know big truths about reality that physics can't encompass.

My point is that to assert or deny that abstract things exist is to mistake abstract nouns, such as 'meaning', for things of some kind that, because they are things, may or may not exist. Platonists and nominalists are both dazzled by that delusion: universals are things that do or don't exist. It's an argument already down the rabbit hole.

Do you think an apple exists in the way that the concept of an apple exists - as a thing in a location? And would no one's having encountered an apple mean apples didn't exist?

I agree apples in themselves exist in some fashion. Maybe apples in themselves are one with the apple tree, the soil, the rain, and the air. We can't know as we don't live in eternity but inhabit a relative world where, for reasons of our subsistence, apples are relatively separate from the trees they grow on.Foodstuffs of all sorts are important to us and their availability is a social effort so we mean what we say when we say "Apples are sweet" or "Apples are round and juicy" or "I have to peel apples before I can eat them".

The latter utterances are part of apple concepts which are held in memory. As the small child socialises he learns more and more about the social concept of apple.Some fortunate people never stop acquiring information to add to their concepts of apple. I am now talking about mental stuff, when I talk about concepts. Mental stuff is an aspect of existence , similarly physical stuff is an aspect of existence. Just because physical stuff is true and real does not imply mental aspect of being is not true and real.

Unlike apples, morality indirectly occupies space and time. Morality occupies space and time by means of the thoughts, words, and bodily behaviours of people. Like apples morality is social and its existence in itself must remain unknown.

What can it possibly mean to say 'morality indirectly occupies space and time'? I'm sorry, but that's hippy-woo mysticism.