Skip to main content

Is existence a predicate?

We should not mistake the predicate of existence with the human proclamation of being here and now. “To be here” is a positive action of the subject, a hard one in fact, a kind of fight with the universal law narratives which deny anything human from the all too human perspective of a narrative of domination. But when we say that something exists, we are simply reifying a transcendental property which conditions us within an ideological frame.
A predicate is a determination of an object, its inscription within a particular (finite) frame of properties, physical (space-time, weight, etc.) or social (legal, aesthetical, etc.).
( (1)  Suppose that “exists” is a predicate, then to say that “a” exists is to say that “a belongs to a particular frame of properties”, say F1.
( (2)   F1 is a frame of properties, but not a frame which includes all properties, for there is not a single object “a” which can have all properties, so it could not belong to such frame. Thus, there are F1, F2,…Fn.
( (3)   Therefore, to say that “a exists” is to say that “a belongs to a frame which in turn belongs to a set of frames of properties”. From this, we can infer “F1 exists” (by (1)). Thus we can say that “a exits when it belongs to an existing frame”. This is an impredicative definition.
Thus, “exists” cannot be a predicate.

Formally:
‘a exists’ =.def a ∈ F1 , ∀ F1 ∈ (F1, F2,…Fn)
F1 ∈ (F1, F2,…Fn) ⟶ ‘F1 exists’
‘a exists’ =.def a ∈ ‘F1 exists’, impredicative definition
∴ ‘a exists’ cannot be a predicate


In fact, “exists” is what we are already saying in mathematics with the symbol εστί, ∈.  
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Please write here your comments

Popular posts from this blog

Limen et Continuum

  Existence is Encounter. Meeting at the limen. In the limen, the masks disappear, that is, the basic intuitions of identities, such as the identity that I feel and think in relation to the tree that I see in front of me. The identity of the tree is a projection of mine: the unity of my process of perceiving the tree generates a mask in me, the ghost of a limited unity separated from everything else. The simplest form of intuitive understanding of masks and limen is given to us by numbers. Numbers intuitively express the liminal tension that is Existence. A little etymological note. Rythmos in Greek means flow. Arythmos (number) is what does not flow, what remains solidified. Numbers express the liminoid, and flow, rhythm, expresses the liminal. A rhythm becomes liminoid when we can trace patterns in it, that is, when we can construct masks of identities. Mathematics has spoken of flow using the Latin word “continuum”, the continuous. All modern science, since Leibni...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ritual, Scientific Experiment and Truth

 Human rituals have their roots in animal behavior, and the animal pattern has its roots in the need for repetition of living organisms, in the cyclical structure of physiological actions. At the human level, ritual behavior involves a delimitation of space and time, as well as a different meaning of both with respect to the spaces and times of everyday experience. From the ritual ceremonies of cold societies, we observe the care and thoroughness of the shaman to determine with precision the spaces, times and elements that intervene in the rite. Sacred space delimits the world, not only as a place of action, but also the scope of meaning of the things contained in that space. It is a space loaded with meaning: there is an order in things. Time itself acquires its meaning in relation to this order of things, and cyclically closes the space in the “tempo” of the rite, a tempo that is a symbol of the tempo of the World. What is not in the rite or is not referable to the rite has no re...
Post a Comment
Read more

Metalanguages are formal metaphors

  In a logic class, the professor tells his students: "Yesterday, while talking with my Sufi gardener about happiness, we ended up talking about metalanguages, because he said that orchids are 'chambers where light plays between amorous encounters.' I told him: 'You have to be a poet to talk about poetry.' He replied: 'You just have to be human.'" In what way can we say that my gardener is proposing that every metalanguage is a formalized metaphor for its object language and what would be the metaphor for arithmetical addition? Furthermore” -he asks-how does this little narrative show that Kurt Gödel was a Platonist? One student answers: “The gardener uses orchids as a metaphor for biological reproduction, and from this he makes a second-order metaphor at the human level, calling reproduction a loving encounter. The gardener is a Sufi; in Sufi ontology, the word 'encounter' is used as equivalent to 'existence,' a double meaning (Wujud)....
Post a Comment
Read more