Note from MSK: This article is close to my heart for two reasons. The first is that a member of the "silent contingency" in Objectivism saw fit to make an appearance and interact with others. He overcame fears of moral condemnation and this took a lot of courage. This is so very important in light of the hostile obnoxiousness that Objectivism has gained as a reputation. Yes, there are places where people can discuss important ideas without being called harsh or foul names and OL is one of them. The second reason is that I idealized the "Chewing on Ideas" forum for people to do precisely what was done with this article, i.e., present an idea that has been worked on, "chew" on it with others, then present it in a better form. Thank you for that, Andrew. For this reason I have moved your article from the "Articles" forum to here (but keeping a link over there) and I am keeping it pinned on top as a wonderful example of how this can to be done in practice.

Note: Thanks to everyone for your absolutely on-point criticisms and
comments; please keep them coming. Here is a much simplified and
shortened presentation of the idea. The original version, which posts
1-17 are in reply to, is below. ~~ I moved this essay here from
my site, secret design for much needed Objectivist attention.

Existence Isn't Everything
rethinking Objectivism's first axiom
by Andrew Durham

15 Sep 06

"Do you want to assess the rationality of a person, a theory or a philosophical system?
Do not inquire about his or its stand on the validity of reason. Look for the stand on
axiomatic concepts. It will tell the whole story."

--Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

Words have always meant a great deal to me. And so when I, as a student of the writings of Ayn Rand, took existence into the deepest reaches of my mind as the sole content of reality, two things happened. First, it quickly began to restore the natural but damaged connection between myself and the obvious facts around me. Second, in a strange and menacing way, it began to short-circuit my person until I could barely move or breathe. For everything is more important than anything, and I had taken existence to be everything. As I would discover, it simply is not.

There is what exists. And there is what is. Existence and being. Just about everyone, including Ayn Rand, has used the words, existence and being, interchangeably. And yet Ayn Rand herself taught that only in slang do different words mean exactly the same thing. In formal language, different words always mean different things, however slight or confounded by usage be the difference. The words, existence and being, belong to formal language. Therefore they mean different things.

Let us look at these words closely. Being is pretty easy, being an inflection, in this case, a gerund form, of the verb, to be. Being refers to what is. This is airtight, a tautology. But what of this multi-syllabic, Latin-rooted word, existence? Reading these words' definitions, even in the Oxford English Dictionary, one can tell little if any difference between them.

Lexicographers generally do not define axiomatic concepts ostensively with tautologies. I hope that Ayn Rand's approach will reach them faster than Aristotle reached Aquinas. In the meantime, where usage or definitions distort or collapse together the meanings of different words, I find etymologies highly useful for pulling them back apart. This is because etymologies often provide the only distinguishing characteristic in the entire entry of a word. In the etymology of existence, the difference between it and being literally stands out. Existence comes from the Latin, existere, which means, to stand out.

To exist is to stand out. Existence is that which stands out.

In contrast, there's nothing in being that says anything about standing out--or up, or in, or anything else. It just is. So existence is not the same as being after all. Further, it is not as much as being. Existence is merely what stands out.

I wonder how much of the work of intellectuals consists of reclaiming words and reasserting their essential meanings. Anyway, a few implications of the Latin enable further elaboration of the point. First, having discovered that existence is what stands out, the question arises: Stands out... from what?

Well, from whatever stands back, apparently. A thing cannot stand out from nothing. It can only stand out from something else. So even without knowing what is back there, we know that something is back there. It does not exist, yet it is.

Again we find that existence is not the same as being. Existence is not all that is, so it cannot make up all of reality. Existence fails as a word meant to refer to everything and therefore, as an axiomatic concept.

To continue to use the word, existence, to refer to everything--besides violating logic itself as well as a principle of formal language--is to engage, quite contrary to Ayn Rand's claims and intentions, in the non-scientific discussion of cosmology. After all, if we are going to start talking about the precise physical nature of reality beyond the facts that: it is; it is what it is; and one is conscious of it; then we, as philosophers, have crossed over the proper bounds of philosophy and fallen into this ancient mystical trap. Ergo, both the relapsed mysticism and the resorting to physics in philosophical dialogue among Objectivists (and the public at large, for that matter), as if philosophy can't find its way without the latest findings of quantum physicists.

Second, in the belief in reality as consisting only of existence, what happens to whatever it is that stands back?

That's easy: it gets ignored. It is and therefore, is real, but it is off limits. Of course, no philosophy can keep a part of reality off limits forever, because it keeps crashing into people's lives. As the Bard had warned my father, who, in turn, warned me: "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Third, and perhaps more apropos in the context of a discussion of objectivity--which this, as a discussion among Objectivists, implicitly is--we could ask the question: Stands out... to whom? For surely everything that stands out to me is not exactly the same as everything that stands out to you. Reality is what it is, not a matter of consensus based on the lowest common denominator of sensitivity.

Personally, it kills me: the irony of basing Objectivism on just the sort of usually delightful variety which, when used for this serious a purpose, can only result in the arch-doctrinaire subjectivism that riddles this school. But this, unfortunately, has become a big part its "whole story".

For all these reasons and more, I propose a correction to Objectivism at its root, generated by its own methods to meet its own standards. Let us replace the word, existence, with the word, being: as the primary axiomatic concept of Objectivism; wherever the philosophy refers to what is; and wherever the philosophy refers to the content of reality.

Two corollary changes follow from this replacement that must be mentioned here, if not developed fully. One, Objectivism's first axiom becomes being is. Two, this axiom enables a formal definition of reality which establishes in one stroke the objectivity of reality, the primacy of being, and the indissoluable relationship between being and consciousness: reality is being as object. Being is the object of its subject, consciousness.

In addition to being, we have in the Anglo-Saxon two unequivocal words to use in normal discourse about it: everything and, for its absence, nothing. (I see no reason to conceive of "non-being", and no way to do so without "reifying the zero".) Then we have plenty of phrases for being (eg, what is) and ways to describe it--as many as there are poets, probably. What happens to existence and its silent partner, non-existence? I think scientists, both material and spiritual, would appreciate this distinction. It could serve criticism, of course, as it has here. But I think it is not for Philosophy, which precedes these issues.

Some may say, "What's the big deal? It's just how we use language." I would reply, Yes, and look at the culture we live in as a result. Look at what rigorously equating existence and being has done to Objectivism and Objectivists. As John Galt told Dagny, "...you're free to change your course. But as long as you follow it, you're not free to escape its logic." Look, as well, at the harmony a change such as I propose would restore to thought and culture alike. A great relaxation in communication becomes possible when people cease to exclude from their idea of reality some things in favor of others, probably without even knowing it.

We have this sacred word, being, that serves the purpose of denoting that which is with tautological perfection. This idea, existence, is unneeded by the essentially unifying philosophy of Objectivism, and certainly not at its deepest root, fracturing our consciousness of reality and our connection to each other.

It is. I am. At the base of philosophy, at the beginning of metaphysics, I need know nothing else.

revised 6 Oct 06

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Original version

Ayn Rand's Magnificent Error
a quiet demolition of the Objectivist maze
by Andrew Durham

6 May 05
"Do you want to assess the rationality of a person, a theory or a philosophical system? Do not inquire about his or its stand on the validity of reason. Look for the stand on axiomatic concepts. It will tell the whole story."
-Ayn Rand in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

Can one make a mistake well? Could an unparalleled philosophical genius stop short of metaphysical all-inclusivity just to make a point, and be right to do so?

My answer is yes. Basically, Ayn Rand was wrong when she said that reality consists of existence. But she was right to say it. Allow me to explain.

Reality consists of being, not merely the part that exists. Maybe you assume these words mean the same thing. We find her interchanging them a lot, too. But she also taught that only in slang do different words mean exactly the same thing. The words, being and existence, belong to formal language. In formal language, different words always mean different things, however slight or subtle the difference is. Ayn Rand taught me that upon such differences the fate of lives and worlds hinge.

When usage or definitions distort or collapse together the meanings of different words, I have often found etymologies useful in making distinctions between words. Let's look these up. Being is pretty easy, being an inflection (in this case, a gerund) of the word, to be. Being refers to what is. That is airtight, a tautology. It was this multi-syllabic Latin word, existence, that began to raise questions in my mind. Actually, I had read the etymology elsewhere several years earlier. In a moment of philosophical crisis precipitated by a five-year immersion in Ayn Rand's works, wherein I felt I could no longer breathe or move, my vague memory of the etymology of the word, existence, surfaced. I ran to the Oxford English Dictionary, as Leonard Piekoff had taught me. As usual, from the definitions, one could hardly tell the difference between being and existence. But existence, it turns out, comes from the Latin, existere, which means, to stand out.

To stand out. To exist means to stand out.

To stand out... from what?

Presumably, from whatever it is that stands back. A thing can't stand out from nothing. It can only stand out from something. But even without knowing exactly what that is, we've established that there is something back there. Whatever it is, it is, so it is real. But because it does not stand out, it does not exist. Which is to say that reality is not made up entirely of existence. Like a painting, which consists of a subject and its background; or a sight, which consists of a focus and a periphery; reality consists of both the part of being that stands out and the part of being that stands back. Which is to say that reality consists of both existence and non-existence.

This immediately exposes those who oppose being with existence, or existence with non-existence. You know, all those pale existential cuckoos--the deformed orphans of Kant--who made up the dismal philosophical mileau Ayn Rand blazed in upon.

Which is exactly why she said it was existence, instead of being, that made up reality. All those people had so confused the issue, and left our culture in such epistemological disarray, that to use the word, being, might have gotten her confused with them.(2) And worse, it would have made too slippery a surface for those of us trying to climb our way out of the pit they had made with their words of life in the 20th century.

Existence--"all of this," she would say, sweeping her arm around--was perfectly clear for anyone decent enough (not to say honest--that could wait) to hear her out. Who could mistake it? Further, it was so different from fantasies (the result of thinking about nothing as if it is something). You can't bang your head on a fantasy. But a brick or a shoe, you can. I mean, here we were, her audience, the drooling dolts of this culture, probably only the first or second generation of secular thinkers to exist in our families, though the Age of Reason had passed 300 years before. Probably our parents were still churchgoers.

Speaking for myself, the thickness--the sheer density--of superstition in my head--and the confusion, guilt, obsessive-compulsiveness and malaise that has accompanied it--simply corrupted my thinking, almost to the core. I had a little chunk of logic left with which to work. What cruelty it would have been for her to overtax me with a word like being, most of whose referents can't observed except through a firm grasp of existence. How gracious of her to have me start with the obvious part of reality in my effort to understand what she says about it. And how skillful her means, to leave me alone in a box canyon, yet with a fresh map--a new way of thinking--with which to find my own way out. When I finally saw non-existence to be, and thus to be real, and when I ceased equating it with nothing), the walls of the canyon literally began to dissolve and lush vistas of understanding began to open up.(3)

My parents think. They did it all time I was growing up. They seem to me unusual in this regard. They were only partially educated, yet a passion for truth has motivated their lives. Many of our culture's sacred cows came up for examination in my house. I learned to think and a little bit of how to think from them. I learned to take thinking seriously. And yet, considering what we thought, all of us may as well have been bound and gagged in the very back of Plato's cave. What was going to get through to people like us? Delicate discussions of the subtle differences between existence and non-existence? I doubt it very much. I doubt that it even occurred to Ayn Rand. She made no mention of this. It wasn't in her disposition or training. She was a hidebound defender of secular, industrial civilization. Further, her grasp of the ruinous state of our culture was so painfully clear to her, she would not have wanted our trying to consider anything but the neglected concretes right in front of us. Not only would they suffice, we would have to start with them anyway.

I believe that Ayn Rand had a spiritual mission here, and that she executed it brilliantly. She left us all the tools necessary to uncover the secrets in her system (the non-existents, those things which stand back), things that seem to have been secrets to her, too, or perhaps things she could not permit herself to see. I don't know. I find the handful of hints in her novels a bit maddening.(4) I know only that there is no reason to remain strung out in deprivation on the idea of a reality that consists only of existence. It's just the small part of reality she threw us as a life ring until such time as we could deduce that people live on vast expanses of land just beyond the fogbound
pond we were drowning in.

(1) This has profound implications for her epistemology, ethics, politics and aesthetics--enough to warrant a new philosophy, which I will call Realism--but I will explore them later.

(2) They (academicians) still try to make her out as Nietzschian popularizer or worse, a libertarian. And as they did with Neitzsche and Nazism, they will attempt to blame her for George W Bush and the American Fascism she predicted 40 years before. But I predict they will, by their attempt, only succeed in vindicating her.

(3) Though a watershed event for me intellectually, it has taken several years for this breakthrough to "filter down" and begin to have any significant effect on my life, on how I feel. (see Observation). Psychology is stubborn.

(4) Henry Cameron's saying, "I'm learning," in reference to how Earth is said to look from the next world (The Fountainhead, p. 133); or Dagny's feeling the brakeman's looking at her from behind her it chapter one of Atlas Shrugged; or Dagny's "causeless certainty" of imminent danger to Cheryl Taggart before Cheryl commits suicide.

revised 13 Aug 06

Andrew,

It's going to take some effort to get my brain around what you are discussing. There are a few things in the way. (Please do not take these comments in a bad way. The intent is to get at what you are talking about and I am interested.)

The first thing is loudly proclaiming that you are correcting a mistake you say Rand made and making it the selling point of your article. I don't recommend that. It will turn many Objectivists off without even giving your ideas a look-through. I even had to chew on that a bit in order to spit it out and get to the actual ideas. I would have much preferred a different focus - one on the ideas themselves. The second is trying to deduce an axiom from a dictionary. Fundamental axioms are arrived at by induction from all experience, then later deduction.

I recently managed to finally get a highly skeptical scientific mind to understand the purpose and limitations of axioms. Strangely enough, I find axioms to be the most misunderstood subject in Objectivism. People treat them as if they were essences instead of cognitive interfaces to reality. I also got a gist of that from your article.

If you have the time, I suggest reading a thread started by Paul Mawdsley called Imagination and Causality in Quantum Physics, The Epistemology of Bohr, Einstein and Rand. We soon got off the Bohr/Einstein stuff and into axioms big time in the discussion. The thing is a bit long and somewhat rough going (and there even some light flare-ups), but the entire thread can be read with great profit.

On another level, you seem to be saying that reality is made up more than we perceive with the five senses and handle conceptually. I find this consonant with my thinking, yet I am reluctant to give names to things I do not know yet. I see hints of this in reality (quantum physics merely scratches the surface) and even in Rand' writings, like you mentioned (fascinating examples). This is definitely a subject worth exploring in more depth. I don't see God at the end, but I see more than we have at the present. I read you groping to understand these shadows and I sympathize with that mightily.

On the concept of non-existence from the "standing out" idea, I agree that background is one of the fundamental things we perceive when we gather knowledge. I think you run into some difficulty with this idea, though, by trying to make axioms appear to pertain to metaphysics only, and not epistemology too. Axioms are a kind of link between the two.

I hope I didn't pop your bubble. Instead of a providing a solution, which is what you advertised, I think you have a good start on something universal that needs a lot of working out. If you find this position acceptable, I am sure you will find several highly intelligent people (some smarter than I am) willing to add their observations.

Michael

Hi, Michael,

I appreciate very much your close reading of my essay and your candid comments. Whatever bubbles I have, I want burst! I have revised it with as many of your comments and suggestions as I could tonight. You were totally right about the opening--too nervy. And then there were several things which, I could tell from your comments, I had not made clear. So rather than dragging out this reply, I've revised the essay throughout its length. I hope that entices you back. I look forward to everything you and others have to say about it that may help me hone in and clarify the presentation of its thesis. Since it has been extremely valuable to me, I can't help but think it of value to others. I love doing this, so I am eager to give it the work it needs to make it more readable.

I hear your concern about essences and axioms. I don't know if I can address it in the essay, so I'll say something here. I see nothing wrong in treating axiomatic referents as essences, so long as one knows that essences themselves are conceptual abstractions of data or, as you say, cognitive interfaces to reality.

Just to make sure I'm understood on one point right off: please consider me the last person on these forums to argue for extrasensory means of knowledge, nor, likewise, for doctors and teachers to define the limits of our sensory abilities.

All my best

Mr. Durham,

I'm pleased to see you have an interest in metaphysics, and I hope it will continue with you year after year.

(i) Is distinguishable being the only sort of being there is? Rand has it that distinguishable existence is the only sort of existence there is, except perhaps for the case of existence as a whole. Existence as whole is distinguishable, of course, from particular existents composing it.

(ii) Are there different species of being? Rand has it that existence as a whole consists of existents belonging to these species alone: entities, actions of entities, or properties or relations of entities.

(iii) Are potentiality and actuality divisions of being that is existence only? Or are potentiality and actuality divisions of being that are not existence as well? Rand took real potentials to be part of existence in her saying that existence is identity: a leaf cannot be a stone at the same time; a leaf cannot be all green and all yellow at the same time; a leaf cannot freeze and burn at the same time (1957).

I say "real potentials" to stay close to her examples. I don't think she ever addressed in writings she chose to publish whether there are degrees of realness among potentials. I'm thinking of Newton working out not only the central-force relation for orbits having an elliptical shape (a definitely real potential, since that's the actual way of the solar system), but orbits having a circular spiral shape and orbits having an oval shape. [Demonstrating the latter two cases puts on show the depth of his demonstration of the force law for the actual case of elliptical orbits, and it exhibits the greater generality of his laws of mechanics (he called them axioms) in comparison to the law of gravitation.]

Hi. I am glad to meet you, Mr Boydstun. Please call me Andrew. Muchas gracias for your post, which stuck in my head. I look forward to more.

I am practicing succintness today. It is hard for me, but very enjoyable.

No. There is non-existence as well.

Yes. Existence and non-existence.

They are divisions of both existence and non-existence.

Yours,
Andrew

Andrew,

Are there differentiable beings within being that is not existence? Or is it like the empty set in that wherever the empty set is encountered, it is nothing but the utterly simple same old one-and-only empty set?

So far you are thinking of being that is not existence as having within it both actual being and potential being. This would indicate that beings within being that is not existence are differentiable, at least in this way. Some non-existence beings are actual; some non-existence beings are only potential. So you would say that there are differentiable beings within being that is not existence?

Are there other differentiations of beings within being that is not existence besides the difference between actual beings that are not part of existence and potential beings that are not part of existence?

Is being that is not existence entirely parasitic on being that is existence? Is every differentiable being that is not existence tied to particular differentiable existence. Is actual being that is not existence tied to actual existents and/or potential existents? Is potential being that is not existence able to become actual being that is not existence without potential existents becoming actual existents?

Stephen

Stephen,

My newly included formal definition of reality may shed some light on your questions. For most of three days, I have been vigorously revising the essay in light of the attention that you and others have been giving it. I am very grateful, and for the intensity of your interest, in particular, and I hope you will revisit it. But then, it may also be insufficient. I think you will now have to see for yourself whether my basic idea is true. Please consider that if it is, then it may take time to hear, to absorb, to apprehend. In the ways that the mind is slow, I have had no success in rushing it. Please tell me what you find. Best wishes.

Yours,
Andrew

I have to say that it hurts my brain to think the way you guys are talking. Please don't take this as a slight against what you are doing or saying. My mind just works differently. I am motivated by many of the same questions but my approach, my method of willfully generating images to lead to a solution is very different. I can follow what you are saying, with some considerable effort on my part, but when I ask myself what I think, my mind switches gears entirely. I find thinking in language with embedded meanings, the way you are talking, just bogs my thinking down and makes everything fuzzy. When I start to think in images, creatively manipulating them to form pictures of a physical existence to model reality, I find things become clearer.

You are talking about "being," "existence," "non-existence," and "potential being." I think in images of entities in motion who's extension, motion, and duration define existence and who's limits define non-existence. I think of potential being as the possible future existence of some composite entity who's potential is defined by the nature of the entities in motion and the principle of causation. Potential being becomes actual when dynamic entities behave causally in a manner of complexity to form a higher level entity through integration.

Again, I like vortices as a primary metaphor. The dynamic behaviour of particles come to act as an integrated system to form a vortex. The vortex is then maintained by a loop of reciprocal causation between the action of the particles and the degrees of freedom created by the form of the whole vortex, in the context of the containment created by its background field. One level of existence (the vortex) is created from the dynamics of a more fundamental level of existence ( the particles). The existence of the vortex is conditional on the existence and actions of the particles. The vortex can come into and go out of existence; it can have potential existence, then existence, and then go into non-existence. In the context of the vortex, the background field that contains the vortex would be a non-existence that contains existence; it contains the same type of particles that compose the vortex. If there are such things as fundamental particles, their existence would not be conditional. In their case, they would only ever be actual and the physical limit of their existence would define non-existence at any given moment. Being is all of this; existence, non-existence, and potential existence.

Now that I've started to get my head wrapped around what I think, I can start to think about what you guys are thinking. What was the question again?

Paul

Andrew, if I understand you -- and I'm not certain I do -- I see insuperable problems in your article. You write that "Non-Existence is." But this is a straight contradiction in terms, and a corruption of language. Non-existence is an absence; it is the absence of anything existing. but you are attempting to make it an existent in itself. You are attempting to make an absence into a "something."

Rand wrote: "To exist is to be something, as opposed to the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes." But you appear to be saying that nothing, in effect, is something-- which is an impossibility. An absence, by definition, cannot have attributes, it cannot be an entity, it cannot have a specific nature, it cannot be described. I note that you have not attempted to describe it, because to do so would instantly make you subject to the criticism that you are describing a "something."

Perhaps you are after something which you haven't yet made clear,or which I haven't understood, but whatever it is, it cannot in reason be the transformation of non-existence, of nothing, into existence.

Barbara

Hi, Paul,

I'm glad to meet you and I appreciate your funny message. No slight taken; my head began to hurt, too.

Okay, I might go crazy with the smilies because I've never used them before. I mean, I never found a forum I actually liked before. And now to find out it's all about writing things to go along with smilies.

As a dabbler in design and a brown belt in introspection , I often think in images, also. Except at the beginning and end of some thinking processes, when words become necessary, I don't think using words matters much because these images are themselves actually concepts.

A reporter on developmental psychology I read years ago said that concepts are actually abstract geometrical images in the mind, which your comment totally reminded me of. I don't think Ayn Rand ever published anything that meant or implied otherwise. And in exactly the way in which she spoke of concepts, these images represent things. The images in turn are represented by words. So whether one points at and rearranges objects on a table; shuffles and manipulates images in the brain and then draws them; or use words to think and talk; or any combination therof, one is still apprehending and communicating about reality. Thank the universe we have all these options.

Oh, but now with the physics metaphors! I'm immediately lost. Actually, one of my many Ph.D's is in physics No, I can't even program a VCR.

Hey, seriously, you were just the person for Stephen's question. I really like your vivid vortex metaphor, with particles passing between existence and non-existence, morphing through overlapping permutations of actuality and potentiality. That's it, man. The universe is a zany place. Who knows what's brewing for us in the background?

Catch you on the flipside, Paul.
Andrew

Hi, Barbara,

George Dorn here. I do not think you understand my essay yet, but your fiery reply and my quaking tension in reading and responding to it make me think we are getting somewhere.

In my essay I challenge precisely the corruption of language that is the equating of existence with being, which Ayn Rand did not originate. I do so on the premise of what Ayn Rand said about formal language's possessing no words that mean exactly the same thing. Is this premise true, or not?

Though it may seem otherwise, I am not trying to reify the zero. If I were, you would be correct to object in the strongest terms. Yes, nothing is the absence of something (as I explain, actually, in the paragraph right after I say that "Non-existence is"). However, it does not follow that non-existence is the absence of existence. Non-existence is merely the opposite of existence, again, for reasons I found in the OED.

Thank you for your comment about the lack of a description of non-existence. I have added a full paragraph about it.

I stand by my belief that I have detected a subtle yet earthshaking difference between existence and being, and I ask you to look again at my argument.

Yours,
Andrew

Andrew,

The more I reflect on the concept behind your words, the more I think you might consider using other terms with great profit to clarity.

All concepts in Objectivism derive from the evidence of the senses. That includes axiomatic concepts such as existence. From what I understand of your concept, you posit that there are parts of reality that are not perceived by our senses—that cannot be boiled down in the end to sensory evidence—thus they "do not exist," or more accurately, they "are" but they are not perceived due to the limitations of our perception mechanism. (This happens to be a position I also hold.) What I find fascinating about all this is that there are indications happening all the time--things popping up and going away—and this gives rise to what you seem to call a "background" of "nonexistence."

You give this background as a simple fact that does exist (you say is), but since our concept of existence is limited to our senses, and existence is defined in terms of what they can perceive, then strictly speaking, this background does not "exist." However it "is," meaning that its existence is not limited to what we can perceive.

Moving along, you attribute the word "nothing" to what Barbara means by "nonexistence" above, and assign a new meaning to the term "nonexistence."

This leads to a lot of confusion and I don't give the concept much of a chance of being taken seriously using this terminology. The traditional meanings are too widely used. However, this is complicated, because if you adopt a term like "extrasensory," which I think would be a far more accurate one, you get images of fortune tellers, bending spoons, Stephen King stories and so forth.

You might be interested in the following quote from Nathaniel Branden, The Art of Living Consciously:


He is usually blasted by orthodox-leaning Objectivists for this suggestion because they cannot conceive of a part of reality being more than what they can perceive through the traditional five senses (and they hate him anyway because of the schism, so they try to force-fit the meaning of this statement into an opportunity to label him as a mystic or New Age). But I think he was discussing a possible part of reality for which there is no human sense organ (and which you would call "nonexistent" for that very reason).

My own hypothesis on this is that man developed enough sense organs to successfully survive and his brain evolved with the capacity to form concepts from that data. But just as light waves mean nothing to a bat, yet it feels the heat of sunlight, I think it is entirely possible that a similar principle is operating with human beings.

I haven't even started talking about space and time if you are going to talk about "potential" and so forth.

There is another aspect to your article that speaks strongly from in-between the lines to me. You seem to have a bombastic urge to make sweeping conclusions about others (especially about Rand) that is very typical of orthodox Objectivists. Where this differs with you is that they do not admit criticism of Rand and you are finding flaws. Your manner of presenting your views, however, uses on her what they use on other people. (And I find a certain poetic justice in this which warms my heart, but precision is far more important, so it is not worth insisting on this.)

I see a heroic struggle in you to shake off dogmatism and this is what caught my fancy. You are using your own mind come hell or high water. I applaud that. My suggestion is forget about teaching others for the time being, forget about showing the world that you believe Rand was wrong but she was great, and simply concentrate on getting this concept hammered out correctly. It is important to get it right and be able to communicate it. I believe it is an important concept (as I understand it as given above). You arrived at it through etymology, a sort of lucky accident, but the fundamentals go deeper. Like I said, I believe your terminology is handicapping communication. Please think about this.

And let others teach what they do not know. Let them be as arrogant and obnoxious as they wish. They will be forgotten over time anyway and, in mankind's history, they will become, er... nonexistent.



Michael

Michael,

I'm in touch with what you are sensing here. I think I am in touch with it because I have witnessed it in myself. It is the negative reaction that makes the process of breaking free possible. From here there is new growth. Thesis--Antithesis--Synthesis. No, that would be the action-to-action framework. Thesis--Antithesis--Self-Actualization.



Andrew,

As Ellen Stuttle once suggested to me, consider stepping outside the framework of Objectivism. The language you are using strikes me as more Existentialist. Go where the flow takes you. Identify what you see regardless of whether or not it fits within the framework of Objectivism. Your perspective can be larger than, and include, Objectivism. Integrating the information contained in our experience is more important than making it fit into the conceptual framework of any particular system. Sometimes we have to create our own system, using our own language. If Objectivism is an open system, it will expand to accommodate new information and new integrations. If it is not an open system and there is new information and new integrations, Objectivism will die. There are two choices: growth or death.

When you come to see things clearly in your own language, you will then have to translate it into the common language of Objectivism to communicate it on these forums.

Paul

Michael and Paul,

As I read your responses, I feel more and more like a refugee in this place: really welcomed and quickly becoming aware of the state of shock I arrived in. It's like you are wrapping blankets around me and asking if I'm alright and trying to calm me. As you put it, Paul:It really came to the surface when Barbara wrote me. I was shaking and very tense. Not at all mad, but just a massive welling up of something.

Just to read other people's stuff for awhile and get to know them probably would have been a better approach here. But as soon as I found this place, I felt like I was going to burst from having had no place to offer this essay--to tell what had happened with me. I am even willing to let this thread go for awhile. But now that we're here, I guess the point is to be real. And here you are coaxing me out of my shell. I really like it.

About the essay, I'm beginning to get it. Scrape away the historical, delusional trappings and just tell the idea. Three paragraphs would do it. Maybe three sentences. We'll see.

Andrew

Hi, Stephen,

I have been thinking a lot about your third original question:
Somehow I have not been satisfied with my response to it nor to your questions that followed. From your reference to what Ayn Rand said about real potentials (from the Seminar on Epistemology in the back of the newer ITOE?) I now see that I was confusing what you were talking about--the philosophical distinction between what a thing is and what it can be--with the particle and wave discussion of quantum physics, which I have heard of and entertain thoughts about, but don't claim to understand. Oh, the pitfalls of the dabbler.

Fortunately, I don't think my response was essentially false, just inexact and confusing (Remember that one for the judge.) I said,
This meant divisions within a division, and we ended up four uselessly distinct groups of things, or attributes. And as soon as you made the messy consequences of my idea clear to me, my head began to hurt. Paul reported the same thing. I hope you are okay, too. This is not accurate. These concepts, actual and potential, do not divide things or attributes. They qualify attributes from two different aspects. Further, they qualify things as such. So there is no need to talk about these qualities as possessed by different kinds of things, by existence and non-existence. Both errors led to confusion for all concerned, I think.*

Thus, to be precise, I would say now that potentiality and actuality are qualities of being. Everything that is, is what it is. And depending on what it is, it may become something else. But this does extend not to the point of absurdity. Being cannot ever become nothing. Existence, however, can become non-existence, and vice versa. This is because they are both merely different kinds of being. This may provide a philosophically valid basis for quantum physics. I don't know.

In my dissatisfaction with my response to your question, I came very close to saying that potentiality and actuality are, in this context, exactly what I mean by non-existence and existence, and while that is, in a manner of speaking, true, still, it is not all that is true. For every existent has the potential of fading, as it were, into the actuality of the background that is non-existence, as well as becoming another kind of existent. And any region of non-existence has the potential of becoming an actual existent, as well as morph into or over next to other region of non-existence.

Anyway, that's what I think about it. This all may be just because sometimes I wish I didn't exist. And now to discover that it's actualy true!

By the way, I found an online Latin-English dictionary where my etymological analysis of the word, existence, can be checked. Type "exist" into the "Search argument" field and enter. It may prove an interesting place to start, though the OED is the only thing that ever made me breathe a sigh of relief.

Yours,
Andrew

*Hmm. The common and Objectivist misequation of thing with entity just occurred to me. What else will come up, I wonder?

Andrew,

Are some abstract entities non-existence beings?

When I refer at various times to "the traffic on Lake Shore Drive," I'm using that phrase as a logically singular term. The object I am indicating is the very same single thing each time I refer to it. The particular vehicles composing the traffic will change from one time to another, and the flow-rate of the traffic will change from one time to another; but "the traffic on Lake Shore Drive" refers to the same concrete particular existent on each occasion. To refer successfully to this concrete particular requires facility with abstractions, but the referent is a single concrete particular, not an abstract entity.

When I use the terms traffic or automobile or highway, I'm using logically general terms. These terms mark classes of concrete particular existents, actual or potential. These classes as classes are not some new concrete particular over and above the member-particulars they contain. Yet classes termed by traffic, automobile, or highway are real. They are as real as an ideal gas. Are these abstract entities within the realm of existence---along with the concrete particulars in existence, actual or potential---or are these abstract entities within the realm of non-existence being?

[I have borrowed the term 'abstract entity', as well as other distinctions in the preceding, from Quine's 1949 essay "Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis" (reprinted in From a Logical Point of View).]

Stephen,

Hello, again. Now you are testing me on things I have not studied. Okay.


Definitely not.

This idea of an "abstract entity" is moderate realism, which is a form of the West's historical treatment of universals as concretes. See the Foreword of ITOE for Ayn Rand's very clear critique of this. Let me guess: Quine is an Aristotelian.

Rand's epistemological revolution consists precisely in her view of universals as abstractions. That is, as conceptual products, as mental entities, formed by the mind in relation to concretes. I happen to think she was right. I find it an excruciatingly demanding idea, but whaddyagonnado?

The only thing "abstract entity" could mean to me is universal. Again, the answer would be no. That would be extreme realism, Plato's position.

Historical Realism, though I would love to reclaim that word, too, is what we get for denying the reality--the being, the knowability, the reasonability, the sensibility, the consistency with existence--of non-existence. The opposite and equal mistake of reifying the zero is annihilating the one. Non-existence is not silent. It is just very, very quiet. To hear it requires an uncommon but not unreasonable degree of quietude.

By the way, you may as well just say "non-existent". Besides being inelegant and ungrammatical, "non-existence being" is redundant, and therefore, implicitly contradictory: there's no such thing as a non-existent nothing. I understand the usage is unfamiliar and awkward, but I will know what you are talking about.

Lastly, something about non-existence, since that is what you seem to be trying to understand, in your own way: It cannot be hunted; it can only be received. Therefore, knowing it does not primarily require acuity, but receptivity.

Sometimes, people become receptive after many failed hunts.

Andrew

Ps, Found your other posts and checked out your mag. Awesome, dude. I think nine axioms is way too many (anti-Crow Epistemology and anti-conceptual), but obviously, we both think Objectivist metaphysics could use some work. Kudos.

A big revision of the essay is now up!

Everything had gotten so complicated. The essay got longer and longer. I was partaking in discussions of cosmology all over the forum, for heaven's sakes! How was this happening? It came from my attempt to keep existence in the Objectivist metaphysics at all. Being totally replaces it.

Thanks to everyone for your ongoing input in various ways and places. I'm getting the help here that I, in coming, quickly saw I needed.

Andrew

Being and Equivocation

Andrew’s essay raises the question of whether Rand was correct to use the terms being and existence to refer to the same actualities. Andrew points out that being is a more simple term etymologically than is existence, which derives from the Latin, to stand out. I would have certain comments:

First, Rand is stipulating her definitions, rather than necessarily accepting the traditional meanings of the words. Her stipulations are valid, in so far as she remains explicit and consistent, criteria which she herself acknowledges. In my readings of her works, I have not come across any faults in the ways that she uses the terms being, existent or existence.

Second, while her stipulations are hers, she does obviously make the distinction between Existence – everything that has existed, does exist, or will exist as a unity (basically the universe, whatever that may be, throughout all time, whatever that may be) and the existence (or the being) of a certain object at a certain time. She clearly understands the difference between Existence as the being of everything and the existence of specific entities such as the Twin Towers, which can be said no longer to be in existence, themselves, as of this moment. Furthermore, she uses the term existent to refer to any thing of which we can conceive, such as even a property or a relation, which, while not having its own being separate from those entities exhibiting the said property or relation, can still be apprehended by the mind as having being in some sense.

Third, this multiplicity of meanings and connotations is a real phenomenon, one which will most certainly lead to misunderstanding unless we are very careful. These distinctions have been evident to any careful thinker since the Greeks, and can benefit from further exposition within an Objectivist framework. Aristotle addresses the equivocal ways in which we use the term to be, and puts forth his framework of the categories, which Rand accepts. Thus we distinguish between entities (also, called substances) which are the primary existents, and such secondary and tertiary existents as qualities (which exist of entities) relationships, (which exist between entities) and so on. The copula can be used (1) substantively, (2) qualitatively, and (3) relatively. We can say:

(1) John is a man.
(2) John is tall.
(3) John is bigger than Joe.

While we can expect to see “a man” walking down the street (a substance, here an entity) we do not expect to see “tall” walking down the street (an attribute) or “bigger than Joe” walking down the street (a relation.) There are more things, more existents that exist than can walk down the street. Some philosophers would distinguish between the existence of entities and the subsistence of the qualities which inhere in them, a distinction which Rand did not explicitly address, but a distinction with which we can assume she would have had no problem, so long as we again define our terms and use them consistently.

Fourth, there is (or was) a disagreement between the Aristotelians and the Stoics as to whether being was the highest genus. While Aristotle referred to being as the widest genus, the Stoics countered that “ho ti” literally “the something” was the most general term applicable. The Stoics claimed that being was too narrow, since it excluded the non-existent, and Aristotelians viewed “the something” as invalid, since the term implicitly depends upon the use of “to be” at some point. In other words, “the something” will always be “the something that is" (or is not) something else.

Fifth, We should keep in mind that many languages such as Russian and Arabic in most cases simply omit the copula. Where in English we would say “John is good;” they simply say “John good.” Likewise, other languages such as Spanish, use different terms for what would be translated in English simply as “to be.” The Spanish ser means “to be” in an inherent or eternal sense, while estár means “to be” in a relative or temporary sense. “Juan está enfermo” [estár] means that John is sick [happens to be sick] for now. “Juan es enfermo” [ser] means that John is sickly, or infirm, and isn’t expected to get better. Even English derives is and be from different Proto-Indo-European roots. Some philosophers thus reject metaphysics itself as mere linguistic manipulation. Such a radical dismissal is unwarranted. If we make the metaphysical assertion that metaphysics is meaningless then we have refuted ourselves. Nevertheless, the questions raised are best addressed by those who have studied comparative linguistics and who have read the arguments of other philosophical schools, in order to fully apprehend the nature of the issues involved.

To summarize, Rand was stipulating her definitions for the context of the issues she was addressing. She did use the same terms with other meanings in other circumstances. And she did not fully expound a handbook of ontology. Although she did not put forth every possible meaning or connotation of the terms she used, it is clear that her grounding in Aristotle made her aware of the broader issues to be considered. One may ask whether cosmologically, "Existence" or some other term might be the best with which to refer to the universe, and one may be aware of the many equivocal ways (ways with different meanings, substantive, quailtative, relative) in which we use the term “to be.” Likewise, any attempt to tackle this meaning of “to be” in all its multiple senses should take into account not only modern physics and modern philosophy as expressed in the modern English tongue, one should also have a grounding in comparative linguistics and the history of philosophy in order not to exclude any part of "being" from one’s ontological considerations.

Ted Keer, 25 September, 2006, NYC

BTW, Howdy folks, this is my first post on this list.
Editing for style & clarity Weds 27, 1am EDT

Ted,

That was one hell of a first post. I like your attention to etymology and word meanings.

Welcome aboard!

Michael

Before I specifically addressed Andrew's proposed revision, I wanted to put forth my thought on the topic without direct reference to his essay. That being done, (pun intended,) let me add:

Andrew is quite correct that "Being is" is a preferable formulation, as it inherently covers the equivocal meanings of the copula. Otherwise one can fall into the mistake of confusing "Existence" for some smaller existent, such as "the universe at this moment." The Anglo-Saxon formulation is broader than the Latinate connotation. Nevertheless, Rand and her students should be able to work out this possible confusion, in the same way that Andrew himself has done. His formulation is more economic, hers is not, per se, incorrect.

I would also restate the necessity to look at this issue, and all philosophical issues, from the widest possible context, and this may mean linguistic and historical as well as academic and contemporary. Look, for instance, at what one may derive from a knowledge of "gay" sexuality, as opposed to an examination of homosexuality in different species and throughout history and world culture. What might appear as likely a sign of deviance, when one considers the contemporary and public "gay" spectacle of leather-clad fetishists cavorting in a politicized event in certain urban centers of the West over the last five decades, will have a different appearance if we consider the actions of the Bonobo, the cultural-historical significance of Patroclus, Antinoös, Aeolus, and Hephaestion, the phenomenon of the Shaman and the Berdache, and so on. Philosophy used to be done in Latin and Greek as well as in the native language of the speaker, his vernacular. Given the current devaluation of those languages, our outlooks can be limited. Today we have to contend not only with a contracted horizon that omits the classical past, but also with a degraded vernacular, and an academia that is more interested in neologisms such as "Womyn's Studies" and "Ebonics," and the pseudo-sophisticate cant of the post-modernists, than in coherent and rigorous thought. Limiting ourselves to what English speakers have said or thought (or translated) in the last five or ten decades on any topic can be extremely misleading, if not dangerous to the integrity of our thought.

Ted Keer, 27 September, 2006, NYC

Ted,

It's great to meet you. Your posts really got me. It's so awesome for me to have my essay get such serious treatment. Thank you. I just spent all night doing everything I could to integrate into the essay the points you raised and/or my responses to them. I'll come back soon to more thoroughly respond to your specific points in a separate post.

Yours,
Andrew

Ted,

Okay, sir, I am finally here to respond to your thoroughgoing post. I'm quite tired, so I will probably have to return and correct some typos when I can better see them.

Reading and responding to your post really brings home to me the needlessness, in philosophy, of the word, existence. When I wrote the article last year, and even after I arrived here with it a couple weeks ago, I thought I needed to make a place in philosophy for it and especially, for non-existence. But actually, I feel more and more what a waste of time these concepts are within the context of philosophy, where we don't need to know about this kind of thing. They're big "a priori" whirlpools, invitations to blow hot air. Though elsewhere (such as physics), I think they could be profoundly useful, because there, they could be tested. Cutting them out of philosophy makes so many heretofore complicated things very simple. In studying philosophy, one's soul could spread out to embrace all things, regardless of which of them stand out to her in the beginning.

Now, onto your post. If I have misunderstood you at any point, big or little, please tell me.

When I first read this sentence, I thought, "Oh, wonderful! Someone finally gets what I'm saying! I'm finally beginning to say it clearly enough to be gotten." So I really wish I could agree with you. But after rereading it a few times, I would have to change the last word, "actualities", to thing.

First, because of the plural. I don't think the grammar works. Second, the word, actuality, is not big enough at this level of abstraction. Only thing or being are. (My conversation with Stephen about actuals and potentials happened when I still thought existence and non-existence had a place in philosophy.)

I'm having to learn this word, stipulate. From what I can tell from its definitions, if she is promising that existence and being are identical; if the terms of her conversation are that I accept her equation of existence with being, then I guess she and I don't have a deal.

But I don't think she stipulated it. I don't find her explicit at all. I find her presuming that I will just accept her equation of existence and being. She makes no argument for their identity. She just assumes it. She never made any such statement as, "...and should we ever find existence and being to be not exactly the same thing, then, of course, we'll have put one over the other and change how we speak." As it is, with her philosophy, everything exists, exists, exists (stands out). When in fact, all you can say about something as a philosopher is that it is, and that, whatever it is, that's what it is.

Even if it were true that she stipulated her definitions, such stipulation, if I understand you correctly, could only occur within the bounds of a word's meaning. Otherwise, one is engaging in a kind of neologism, something she vigorously opposed. As someone who learned English as as second language as well as she did; as someone obsessed with clarity and the science of knowing and the absolutely crucial role of words, meanings, definitions, etc in human life; I would venture to say that she was as married to her dictionary as she was to her husband, if not more so. I personally consider her the one who taught me my own language. I think she was very concerned with traditional meanings of words, but not necessarily their associations. For example, she reclaimed the word, selfishness, for virtue like this.

You relate that you did not come across any faults in the way she used the terms being, existent, and existence. For all the reasons I have given, I think that I did. Which addresses something you said in your second post:
Again, I think she was flat out wrong. At this level of abstraction, there is no wiggle room, no room for error or inexactitude of any degree.

I have no quarrel with or confusion about this point.

Again, I don't feel confused about this. I would only take issue with the word, connotation. That is a Kantian corruption of the process of word-definition.

It sounds like the Greeks used "being" the way I use "existence". Only they did not have another word for how we use being. If that is true, that would explain to me why their culture faded. At least, it would explain to me Aristotle's getting caught in the muck of cosmology: his very language necessitated it. The Greek language made him talk, as a philosopher, about the precise physical nature of reality rather than just the fact that it is. That's a bad spot to be in.

Or, did "being" mean to them what it means to us: "that which is"? In that case, the Stoics were out of their gourds. Those loopy mystics!

Yes, but as they still have the concept. They just don't have a separate word for it. It is built into the other words (the nouns in Russian).

It's too bad. But at least she sketched one, and she gave several good reasons why such a book should be very short.

Whether Aristotle didn't get it and the Stoics were right, or Aristotle got it but she didn't get Aristotle in this regard, all I know is that she did not get the broader issue. By restricting her idea of reality to existence, she explicitly denied that there was anything else. My questions: 1) What did she know? 2) Why did it matter to her as a philosopher? It's like when she witnessed a clinical demonstration of hypnosis, was impressed to the point of shock, and then denied its validity shortly after. As they say, it ain't just a river...

Now here, both she and I disagree with you. Philosophy is prior to science, linguistics, and history. This was a liberating point she made many times. This was her argument against including cosmology in philosophy. As a philosopher, one does NOT have to know any of this stuff. One need know only that whatever is, is, and that whatever is, is something. That's where metaphysics ends, and no part of philosophy properly goes on to say anything about the particular nature of being as such. As long as one does not specify or exclude certain kinds of being from reality or the universe, one has done one's job, philosophically. As I said, philosophy leaves the identification of the concretes to whomever needs to do it.

The thing I love about all this personally is that I am not saying anything she did not teach me to say. I am merely saying what she, for whatever reason, could not say. To me, this is a mark of a great teacher: one who teaches others to finish important jobs that she could not finish herself. As an Objectivist familiar told me once, quoting da Vinci, "He is but a poor pupil who excels not his master." Anyway, I've tried.

Thanks again for your response.

Andrew

Andrew,

Our disagreement is a little deeper than I first thought. I have a lot on my plate, so just wanted to let you know I am working on a response, but this may take some time.

Ted

Cool, Ted. I look forward to it.

Andrew

Andrew,

I've condensed your last response and am working on my reply. I just wanted to let you know I haven't passed through a time warp, my current avatar notwithstanding. I am going to post my responses in parts, and I may place emphasis on things which you didn't consider central. So please be forgiving if I seem to be putting up straw men. I intend to cover stipulation and connotation in later posts. My first one will address why the entire issue itself is important, and I don't mean to imply by using you as a foil that you yourself don't.

Ted

While ontology should not become a never-never-land of celestial speculation about "angels dancing on the heads of pins," it is not disposable. Most of the nonsense of our modern culture results from what you might call epistemological-ontological co-dependence. Think about the Christian notion of “grace” which is treated as a substance (primary existent) that can be transferred from God to a priest to holy-water and then to congregant as if it were some sort of contagion or artificial sweetener. The absurdity of this is obvious if one realizes that virtue is not an entity nor a quality is but properly a relation – a proper orientation between a man’s chosen actions and reality.

Likewise, think of the reaction of drug warriors toward marijuana joints, or of puritans to porn-magazines, or of gun-control advocates toward weapons. They act as if dry crumbled leaves wrapped in paper or glossy photographs are not only misguided – but literally untouchable. Think of Dana Carvey’s "Church Lady" putting on gloves to pick up a playboy and you’ll get my point. Gun-control advocates often speak about "addressing the root causes of aggression" when the criminals are the root causes of the aggression. They act as if "we only had a law" to proscribe the proper list of arms – like a list of toxins that pregnant women shouldn’t consume – that somehow these evil weapons would stop being a scourge on society. They act as if evil were a physical substance that could be kept locked away, could be embargoed, or could be destroyed forever with the right type of disinfectant. If you have ever watched the children’s fantasy movie Time Bandits you may recall how, at the end, the child-hero Kevin blew up the Devil into smoky bits of charcoal. His parents, whose house had burnt down, found a chunk in the microwave. Kevin vainly warned, "Don’t touch it! It’s Pure Evil!" They did so nonetheless, and vanished in a puff of smoke. And if this last example seems to be grasping for straws, then think about how the throat-slitters held in Gitmo think about their "holy" texts. They see them not as mere pieces of parchment teaching some supposed virtue, with the paper being just a physical medium to carry a conceptual message. They see the paper and the ink itself as holy and not to come into physical contact with the bodies of infidels. Ontology may not be the most concrete of sciences, but it is undeniably the most vital.

I won't go into detail now, but consider what the ontological misconceptions or outright deceptions arethat lie behind the following phrases, and the reasons why they are used:

"Comes with available four wheel drive."
"My truth is that I am a Gay-American."
"Bush lied, people died."
"It depends what the meaning of is is."

Ted Keer, 16 October, 2006, NYC

(end part 1)

Good heavens, I did not mean that ontology or metaphysics are disposable. I meant that the concepts, existence and non-existence, are. If anything, my whole essay is a testament to the ultimate power of this science, far greater (and potentially destructive) than, for example, nuclear physics. Thus, the need for precision with concepts when discussing it.

Andrew,

I'm not sure if you read the edited version of my next-to-last post, but I did say that I realized I might be caricaturizing your view. Hope to have next response up Weds night.

Ted

Hi, everyone. I have been gone a long time--since October. It's nice to be back.

Thanks to Michael for letting me make a couple small changes to the essay after it had been locked--just the removal of a weak paragraph and the strengthening of a point, both at the beginning.

Besides clearing up an important issue for me, something great happened because of this essay. An estranged friend, with whom I studied Ayn Rand in the early 90's, read the essay and got back in touch with me. We cleared the air, and I got to see him again over Christmas. Thanks to everyone who participated here.

He also made a striking observation. He said that the word, being, has exactly the same problem with it that I observed in the word, existence. That is, the word, being, specifies too much to be the "biggest" possible word in the language. In fact, I mention the grounds for this accusation in the essay. The problem is that to be, partly means "to live, to grow." Etymologically, it implies that what is is alive.

Now I know that etymology is not everything. But it is something. And my same analysis, which looks to etymology for further clues as to the difference between existence and being--because their definitions are otherwise so similar--applies to being.

He said that the Hindus use the Sanskrit equivalent of the word, being, at the base of their metaphysics, because they wanted to project, to invoke a universe as a living thing. I've studied some Hinduism, and I had to concur. But just as I have written that what is is more than what stands out--what exists--so, he said, that "what is" is more than what lives (I'm speaking here what lives in a subtle sort of way, like moments when the whole universe does seem alive). So once again, we may have been bitten in the butt by semi-hidden meanings lying buried in our blithely used vocabulary.

I asked, well, what else is there? What word would be bigger? Did you look? Did you find one?

Being the thoroughgoing type, skilled with dictionaries and so forth (we were both dictionary fiends from the beginning), he said, Of course. Further, he said he tracked down every possible word and only one really fit the bill:

All.

All says nothing whatsover about the particular (physical or metaphorical) nature of the universe, about reality. It just radically and implicitly includes in the concept everything one might find--all of it.

I said, okay, but we still lack a verb. We still only have the verb, to be. Which was one reason my formulation was so neat.

This is where it got personal. He said, YOU are the verb. In your organic response to it, you marry it and express it through your being.

For a moment I got it, and then it was gone. Many of my own ideas I had to be in very clear states to have, and even to re-apprehend later. This is one of those kinds of ideas. It will take me a long time to sink into it enough to understand, to feel, to sense it. This is what my friend and I do with each other's findings. It is a long slow conversation that proceeds largely in silence.. In the meantime, all I have is a pro hominem argument for it in my friend's profound happiness, his deeply changed and unaffected calm.

I understand if this sounds like mystical nonsense to some of you. But does anyone here relate?

Ayn Rand was lucid and to the point. She never left her readers swimming in a sea of words.

--Brant

Hi, Brant,

Thanks for your bracing reminder. Yes, Ayn Rand was magnificent--and magnificently clear. She saved my life, no doubt about it, and I will eternally love and revere her for that and for the greatness of her being and achievement.

Andrew

Brant,

On the other hand, I gather you are saying that, with my essay, I have left you swimming in a sea of words.

Honestly, at first, I was inclined to take offense. But then I went and read the humor section where tndbay's limericks lightened me up.

Now I'm back to say, YES YES YES. Apparently, you're feeling lost at sea, maybe woozy. That's really good. That means that, on some level, what I said connected with you. Many times my foundations have been rocked by my seeing, often with another's help, a major error of mine or by my suddenly noticing big chunks of something I didn't even know was there. I have felt nauseous. Or floating, lost in space. Maybe the person turned out to be wrong, but in the meantime I was wandering far from shore

Sometimes I dismissed it, as you seem to have; sometimes I checked in on it occasionally; sometimes I stayed up nights with it till getting it.

Whatever. The point is the torpedo found its mark. Now what will you do? Because I don't buy your implication that your state of being is caused by my writing,. With regard to your criticism, I think my piece is faultless, and nothing you have said has changed my mind.

Andrew

Very little of the original Greek Stoic corpus survives (library burnings and all that) and the little we know comes from their critics. However in the field of logic the Stoics produced a logic that is very similar to modern propositional logic. See -The Development of Logic- by William and Martha Kneale, particularly Chap III. You also might want to look at:

http://tinyurl.com/2vndct

You should not confuse the "classical" Stoics with the later Roman Stoics.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Hi, Ba'al,

Point well taken. Since you seem to know something about the Stoics, I'm wondering what you think about Ted's presentation of the Stoic's ontology? Do you think, as Ted does, that they were wrestling with the same basic issue as is in my essay: which word really qualifies as the first axiomatic concept of philosophy?

Andrew:

~ I do see your point about a distinction re the terms 'being' and 'existence'...all depending upon what limitations of meaning one accepts as properly applicable to one term, b-u-t, not to the other. However, I have a prob with your decision to limit the 'meaning' of existence to what you see as meant in its original etymology: 'stand out.' As Rand (re 'selfishness'), should you accept this specific meaning for 'existence' in all *your* discussions re what you mean (contradistincted from 'being'), such is understandable; however, unlike Rand, you haven't presented a good argument as to why all others should see the term as limited to only that in all other communication contexts they discuss (reading or talking); ie, why they should take your 'definitions' to heart, and personally think that way.

2Bcont
LLAP
J:D

Andrew:

~ I really don't see any dif 'twixt 'being' and 'existence', all said and done. The term 'existence' may have the etymology of a source-meaning being [!] nothing more than 'stand out,' but, in Rand's parlance, consider that she included the meaning of things YET-TO-BE-DISCOVERED. Such things do not, yet, 'stand out', correct? For that matter, it seems that the distinction you point out (given your view herein) of such applies equally well to the concept of 'being', no? You make it...'stand out'! A paradox appears here, methinks. 'Being' apparently also 'exists', ergo, the dif is then...? --- Shades of Fritz Pearls' 'background' and 'foreground'! Maybe we're talking more Psychology here than Ontology? Given that Rand stresses the term 'focus', (aka: to make 'stand out'!), such just might be the case.

2Bcont
LLAP
J:D

Andrew:

~ Re etymology of a term's source, consider: for everything in the universe, physically and biologically, 'evolution' applies to all changes...including word meanings. Whatever the term 'existence' may have originally 'meant', it means much more to most people now. As fascinating as etymology may be to some, it doesn't pay to get too myopic. Let's keep the word 'existence' as meaning to refer to 'all' existents (past, present, yet-to-be-found)...and not just 'some part' of...being-ness. 'Being' is to 'exist' as cars are to automobiles.

~ Why, oh why, a need to hair-split types of angels on the head of a pin, hmmm?


LLAP
J:D

ADDENDUM:

~ 'Existence' IS 'every' thing.

~ There ain't nothin' else...nowhere. (Have fun parsing that )

~ To 'exist', is to 'be'; to be, is to do; to do, is do-be-do-be-doo.

LLAP
J:D

Hi, John,

Thanks very much for your comments. I haven't visited here for a long time, but I hope you'll consider my response better late than never. This will be quite long as I'm replying here to all four of your posts from last year.

Re: John's First Post:

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at.

It is really a matter of just taking what I could get in the way of a distinguishing characteristic. Since I could find nothing else in the entry, I used the etymology. I thought, "Oh, it's not everything but a part of everything that's meant here."

Also, "to stand out" was the original meaning of the word, existence. And when I began looking at things like this consciously, I began to see that I had always looked at things this way. Further, it became apparent just about everyone else was, too, including Ayn Rand and a lot of the philosophers she both agreed with and disagreed with. Ayn Rand, herself, constantly asserted, through her characters and her non-fiction alike, that people use words exactly the way she was using them, without necessarily knowing, understanding, or being willing to admit it. It was an objectivity of language, deriving from the structure of the conceptual faculty, that even Ellsworth Toohey used, in scene after scene in The Fountainhead, against heroes, and with fellow villains, half-way characters (such as Peter Keating and Alvah Scarret), as well as the readers of the Banner.

I would only ask that you see for yourself. If you adopt this as a hypothesis for awhile, I believe you will come to see what I am seeing, too. I think it only affected me so drastically because of my own problem of relying too heavily on the verbal part of my intelligence. Other, more balanced personalities can shrug off some of the more noticeable negative affects of equating existence with being. I could not. So if I'm neurotic, I may also be a canary in a coal mine.

Further, I have observed that things stay with people and with a culture essentially in their original form for a long time. The reason we still have these two words is not primarily because we are bored and need synonyms with which to fill our terms papers (though two words are better than one for this). But because they still fulfill a deep need of the psyche to distinguish certain facts from each other. And here, we have the single most important fact of anyone's life. If we split hairs about anything, if we spend time clarifying any single idea, I think this should be this one. This is not a time for casual usage or conflation, but the most rigorous, exacting logic.


I think I see what you mean. Reading it again now, I came across a small break in my argument which could undermine it. Right after the paragraph in which I present the etymology of the word, existence, I wrote:.
It may not be perfectly clear that, in my usage, the distinguishing characteristic of "standing out" is merely an addition to the meanings in the dictionary's entry, not a replacement. Let me try to make this clear.

I wrote, "To exist is to stand out". We could stretch this out a bit to, "For something to exist is for it to stand out". We're talking about something--a being--which stands out. This something is what the two dictionary entries share. But to use your example below, it is not merely an automobile that is a car, but an automobile that is a sedan. That is, it is not merely a synonym, but a further distinction, a narrowing of the idea which calls for--and gets--a different word.

Likewise, in the next sentence, "Existence is that which stands out," do not overlook the word, that, and all it refers to. We could change the sentence to, "Existence is everything which stands out," or "Existence is being which stands out." I mean that, in this sentence, "that" refers to everything shared in common by the entries, and "which stands out" refers to the distinguishing characteristic of the word, existence.

Thanks again for the comment. I'll think about how I might make this clearer in the essay. In the meantime, does what I've just written make any difference to you? Or is it still equivocal?

Re: John's Second Post

Not necessarily. What is undiscovered and what stands back are two different things. They may or may not overlap.

As you say, I make the concept of being stand out. But I don't make being itself stand out. Further, I'm not talking about an existent that stands out from other existents, eg, one which is the object of someone's focus. This is a more common usage of the phrase, stand out. I'm talking about existence's standing out from whatever stands back.

At that, can you feel how the whole thing becomes quite mysterious? I think it is because we've approached the edge of a cosmological discussion we, as philosophers, don't need to have.

Re: John's Third Post

Thank you, thank you, thank you. This is exactly the kind of cosmology--the use of scientific arguments in philosophical discussions--which, in my essay, I attribute to the placement of the divisive word, existence, at the root of one's philosophy. In defending existence as an axiomatic concept, you were eventually compelled to use a scientific argument. This, I submit, is the beginning of all schisms in Objectivism.

Hmm. So since I'm fascinated with etymology, I'm silly? And if I look closely at something, I'm myopic and it won't do me any good, even though I said as simply and sincerely as I could that it did me a lot of good? That's my impression of this comment. I think this represents further proof of my previous point about Objectivist schisms.

Etymology is not merely a dalliance of the historically curious. Even in the pocket dictionaries designed and written for compactness will you find it. Why? Apparently for the same reason everything else in a dictionary is included: to enhance one's understanding of the word.

I'm afraid your argument completely breaks down at this point, John. I suppose I'll think for awhile about what that might mean to me. I learned a great deal from meditating on the initially baffling comments of people here two years ago. So I will do the same with yours. Probably it is related to the still proclaiming, strident, stiff, and/or combative tone of the essay. I hope one day to get off it. In the meantime, thanks again.

Andrew

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