[Re:] Why should things Exist?

[Guest guest]

At 12:54 AM 2/25/2004 +0000, Sunder Hattangadi wrote:

>advaitin, Benjamin <orion777ben> wrote:

>> >

>> You mentioned Kant, who rejected metaphysical arguments for the

>> existence of God. He needs to read my message...

>

>Namaste,

>

> Kant spent the last decade of his life working on this, and

>the manuscripts were not translated into English until 1992! The

>German original was edited by Eckart Forster, and translated by him

>and Michael Rosen, titled Opus Postumum, Cambridge University Press.

>Pages 200 onwards are a chapter - 'I am', and deals with God,

>Existence, and Consciousness.

>

> Kant himself considered this his most important work. (I

>came across this reference while reading some of Prof. Ranade's

>writings on Upanishadic Philosophy.)

>

> Hope Gregji will comment on this aspect some time.

 

 

===Hello Sunder-ji,

 

As much as I have respect for Kant, I'm not familiar with Opus Postumum. Maybe

I'll order it or research it one of these days. Maybe Kant, like Berkeley,

moved towards a more mystical inclusive view in his later years. Berkeley, with

his late work Siris moved towards a pantheistic nondualism. Earlier Berkeley

was a dualist, officially defending minds, ideas, and God. (I say "officially"

because there's some indication that he might have secretly been nondualist

throughout much of his career.)

 

I spent many years looking for every logical and metaphysical argument I could

find for God's existence and refuting it! I read Kant's and others' arguments

on it when I was in my teens.

 

And when I myself came to believe in God, it had nothing at all to do with

logic. Rather it was an emotional and mystical reaction for which I was

unprepared intellectually. Not even a belief, until I sought ways to articulate

what had happened outside the loop of belief. At that time, I was in grad

school in philosophy. Analytic philosophy, very uncompromisingly rational! I

examined my religious experiences in the light of these analytical tools and

found no argument that could rationally compel a philosophical atheist. Lots of

wonderful arguments to *explain* God and the belief in God, but nothing that

would show that the atheist being irrational for not believing!

 

About existence in spiritual contexts.

======================================

I'm not sure how it feels coming from an Indian background. But coming from a

Western background I know what it feels like to want to certify and prove

existence. Those (few!) who think about these things want a rock-solid

guarantee that there's a logical and metaphysically *MUST* to existence. We

don't want that vacant feeling, where there merely *happens to be* something.

We want an explanation. We don't want to be left hanging in the air!

 

Basically, we want "existence" to do therapeutic work for us. But this can only

be done if we use the word in a way that makes no metaphysical sense.

Conversely, if we use it the way that does make sense, then the notion of

"existence" thins out and cannot do the work we expect from it.

 

The only kind of use of the "existence" notion that will give this cozy

guarantee-feeling to us is the predicate-use of existence. This is the one that

functions like other predicates, adding something to the subject that is not

there without its addition.

 

Frege-Russell wrote about "is," because it can do the work of "exists." They

distinguished 4 different uses:

 

1. Socrates is. (the "is" of existence)

2. Jennifer Lopez is JLo. (the "is" of identity)

3. Socrates is wise. (the "is" of predication)

4. A dog is a canine. (the "is" of inclusion or generic implication)

 

For us to get that certified, guaranteed, settled feeling from our spiritual

investigations in to existence, we need it to function as a predicate. We need

it to act like (3). After (3), you know something about Socrates that you

didn't know before. We want to know about the world something more than

observation tells us. We want it also to "exist"!

 

But as in the article cited earlier

(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence), all (3)-like, predicate-like

notions of existence are problematic. You can't add to what's there just by

speaking it. And our spiritual yearnings are not satisfied by (1)-type uses of

"exists." If we were told only things like (1), we'd say, "I already knew that

by knowing Socrates." If we were used to (1)-like uses of existence, we

wouldn't expect it to do that extra work that predicates do, like (3). That is,

we wouldn't ask Leibniz questions of (1) as we do thinking that existence is

(3).

 

Basically, if it's a predicate, it makes no sense. If it's not a predicate,

then it seems vacuous and irrelevant to the spiritual yearnings.

 

So why do we expect the predicate-kind-of-use from "exists" as in (3)? Like

Wittgenstein and others (Berkeley 200 years before him) have said, we are

bewitched by language. "Exists" functions *grammatically* like "eats." So we

are bewitched into thinking that it functions *metaphysically* like "eats." By

habit, we think that we'll learn something extra about the world if we know it

exists. And if it's a predicate, then we can push it even harder and require

that the world *necessarily* exist. This is what the Western philosophical

spiritual seeker asks of this word. And it can't do the work!

 

--Greg