3 ms·
What does it mean for something to exist then? Does an apple exist in the same sense that a number exists? There is something in common between two chairs; the
by kdtsh 5y ago
What does it mean for something to exist then? Does an apple exist in the same sense that a number exists?
There is something in common between two chairs; there is something in common between a red ball and a red book; there is something in common between 21 sheep and 21 dry peas. It is _emphatically_ unclear that each of these three statements of 'existence' have anything at all to do with each other except in the most intuitive sense - that they refer to things which are as opposed to are not. At some point the bar for existence becomes so low that Harry Potter exists - really exists - because we can conceive of the idea of him. The question of whether numbers 'exist' is more than that.
- Koshkin 5y agoLanguage, having evolved over tens of thousands of years of the human practical use, is often smarter than us, and where we are forced to say that something exists, it usually does. It means that more often than not something that we describe in words is not merely an idea but has an objective meaning, i.e. has to do with reality and therefore exists, independently from from our minds. Thus not only “objects” exist, but also their properties as well as relations between them. A tip of the needle enjoys the same objective existence as does the needle itself, and this fact is easy to verify by sticking it in you finger. What other existence do you want?