What matters is the fact that there is existence — EnPassant

Again, here, the distinction of 'what exists' and 'what is' has to be discerned. 'Existence' pertains strictly to particular existents. The meaning of the term means 'is apart from' or 'is outside of'. The fact of being is more general , and so 'what is', is not necessarily synonymous with 'what exists'. In philosophical theology, this is the rationale behind for erxample Paul Tililch's insistence that God does not exist - that while God is, God is not 'an existent' which reduces God to a being, one being among others. See for elaboration God Does Not Exist, Bishop Pierre Whalon.

Writer Paul Auster on the violence endemic to American culture

“American society was built by religious fanatics who promoted armed struggle, conflict, war, violence, annihilation, and what we today would call genocide,” says Auster. He notes how the Declaration of Independence that the Continental Congress approved on July 4, 1776, announced the separation of 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain. The second paragraph states that all men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Namely: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Auster describes this bedrock credo on which the American republic was founded “as a hypocritical lie”. He has a point. Slavery, after all, was still legal at the time the words were written. “Violence, from the very beginning, was embedded in the whole American project,” says Auster. “The United States is an invented country, based on the premise of capitalism, where there is conflict, competition, and winners and losers.”

He then spends significant time and ink deconstructing the wording of the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. Passed in 1789, along with nine other amendments known as the Bill of Rights, it reads: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Auster says: “The Second Amendment is so confusingly worded that no one can really make sense of it. It seems to suggest that Americans have the right to set up militias. But it has nothing to do with individual ownership rights [of guns].”

Today, many Americans continue to interpret those words in different ways.

“Right now, there are tens of millions of diehard Second Amendment advocates who feel that owning guns is essential to the American way of life,” says Auster. “In fact, it serves no other purpose than to kill people. A gun is an instrument of destruction.”

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/america-built-by-religious-fanatics-who-promoted-armed-struggle-paul-auster-20230306-p5cpqm.html

Given a mindless universe, could universals/abstract objects exist? I would tend to think not, but that's pretty far afield. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do they ever exist? Certainly not in the sense that gas clouds and galaxies exist. But wherever sentient beings evolve they will be able to discern them. So they're real as intelligibles, not as phenomena per se.

This output will include the pages of every novel ever written by a human being, plus many yet to be written. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are you sure about that? I recall reading Simon Conway Morris about the mathematics of the 'protein hyperspace', the number of possible combinations of molecules that could form proteins - and that if these combinations were made by a purely random process, then it would take far longer than the age of the known universe to hit upon the specific combinations that actually comprise working proteins (see his book Life's Solution for details).

Likewise with your imaginary symbol-generation algorithm, whilst one can imagine the possibility of such a computation, it might require vast amounts of time to output all of the actual books, alongside the enormously greater number of 150-page collections of meaningless symbols. Maybe it will produce more 150 page collections than the total mass of the universe. It strikes me as simply a more abstract version of the 'millions monkeys' thought experiment.

Conway Morris' view is that in evolutionary time-scales, some forms are much more likely to emerge than others, because they solve problems (hence, the book's title). Wings and eyes and photosynthesis have evolved numerous times along completely different pathways to solve the same kinds of problems often by drawing on completely different elements and components.

Do you agree that a particular object, an individual, is a composition of matter and form, according to Aristotle? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. But forms, as a matter of principle, are not themselves particulars. There is not a separate form for each individual. That's the 'principle of individuation' which is subject of a long-standing discussion about Aristotle's metaphysics (SEP.)

How is it that Aristotle is mortal but his active intellect is not? Well, we still read Aristotle. His intellect is at work on us. — Fooloso4

See Mark Johnston, Surviving Death (another book I must get around to reading.)

I don’t know if current physics does constitute materialism. There are plenty of idealist aspects within it.

All true but how does it show that the elements of experience have any ultimate material constituent? What is this ‘matter’ that all is hewn out of? Sure ain’t teacups.

It's a mistake to say in respect of the opposition of materialism and idealism, that they are somehow equivalent or that they are two horns of a dilemma - where materialists say that 'everything is composed of matter', idealists say that 'it's composed of mind'. It's far less simple than that.

Materialism takes many forms - as does idealism - but it must rely on there being some ultimately real object or thing, which comprises the basic constituent of all other things. (Of course, this simple picture has been considerably muddied by modern physics, but that's a whole other issue.)

Idealism, on the other hand, does not necessarily posit 'the mind' as an ultimate constituent in that sense; mind is not necessarily understood as 'a constituent' or a 'building block' in the way that, say, Lucretius' atoms were. So it's not a matter of one side saying that 'matter' is the ultimate constituent, and the other side insisting that 'mind' must be (although there are some idealists who will, but I'm leaving them aside.)

Rather idealism is saying that, whatever you say is the 'ultimate constituent of reality', that will always occur to you as an appearance, or as a consistent sensory experience - tables are consistently tables, this experiment always produces that result, and so on. It will then point out that whatever you claim is an ultimate constituent or object, can be nothing other than a consistent form of experience, something that appears invariant through time in your experience of the world. And that's not to deny the reality of such experiences - they're repeatable, governed by laws, observable by third parties, and so on. But they're all ultimately experiential in nature, rather than ultimately material in nature. So what that undercuts is the idea, not of material entities, but of their mind-independence. That's what I take idealism to be saying.

I will add that the picture of mind and body being two equal-but-opposing kinds of stuff originates fairly and squarely with Descartes, and is responsible for many of the plights of the modern condition.

All I can refer to is in the passage I quoted:

Thus when Aristotle begins in Book 7 of the Metaphysics to ask what makes a thing a thing, he narrows the question to apply only to living things. All other being is, in one way or another, their effect. — IEP

Reading further into it, 'forms' are obviously central to it. But there is a passage further in the article germane to the differentiation of living and non-living:

A table, a chair, a rock, a painting– each is a this, but a living thing is a this in a special way. It is the author of its own this-ness. It appropriates from its surroundings, by eating and drinking and breathing, what it organizes into and holds together as itself. This work of self-separation from its environment is never finished but must go on without break if the living thing is to be at all. Let us consider as an example of a living this, some one human being. Today his skin is redder than usual, because he has been in the sun; there is a cut healing on his hand because he chopped onions two days ago; he is well educated, because, five years ago, his parents had the money and taste to send him to Harvard. All these details, and innumerably many more, belong to this human being*. But in Aristotle’s way of speaking, the details I have named are incidental to him: he is not sunburned, wounded on the hand, or Harvard-educated because he is a human being. He is each of those things because his nature bumped into that of something else and left him with some mark, more or less intended, more or less temporary, but in any case aside from what he is on his own, self-sufficiently. What he is on his own, as a result of the activity that makes him be at all, is: two-legged, sentient, breathing, and all the other things he is simply as a human being. There is a difference between all the things he happens to be and the things he necessarily is on account of what he is. Aristotle formulates the latter, the kind of being that belongs to a thing not by happenstance but inevitably, as the “what it kept on being in the course of being at all” for a human being, or a duck, or a rosebush. The phrase to en einai is Aristotle’s answer to the Socratic question, ti esti? What is a giraffe? Find some way of articulating all the things that every giraffe always is, and you will have defined the giraffe. What each of them is throughout its life, is the product at any instant for any one of them, of the activity that is causing it to be. That means that the answer to the question “What is a giraffe?”, and the answer to the question “What is this giraffe?” are the same. Stated generally, Aristotle’s claim is that a this, which is in the world on its own, self-sufficiently, has a what-it-always-was-to-be, and is just its what-it-always-was-to-be. This is not a commonplace thought, but it is a comprehensible one; compare it with the translators’ version, “a per-se individual is identical with its essence.”

* Which I think is probably the author. When I first started reading this article I thought it very idiosyncratic, but now I'm starting to warm to it.

OK, point taken. I've deleted those comments. I was angry, because I've just been watching the reports on the unbelievable savagery that is entailed by Putin's war. I'll keep out of this thread, I don't have anything to say, other than that.

I think that it's because, for Aristotle, and the ancients generally, the cosmos itself was alive. I don't know if it's really pantheistic, although not far from it - more that there was the sense that man's relationship with the cosmos was 'I-Though' rather than our customary 'I-it' relationship (Martin Buber). But I think it's fair to say that for Aristotle, the Cosmos itself was ensouled, for, as a whole, it displays the attributes of all other living beings. The idea of the cosmos as inert matter governed by physical laws was yet to be arrived at.

But I did draw attention to the quote provided earlier by Jamal:

If we look around at beings in general—from particles to planets, ants to apes—it is human beings alone who are able to encounter the question of what it means to be. — Heidegger

So there's regardless an ontological distinction accorded to humanity (acknowledging that his use of the terminology of ontology is very complex).

I would go back and re-write the post that triggered this argument - it doesn't say what I set out to say, I sidetracked myself - but it seems pointless now.

In any case, @Fooloso4 kindly sent me the IEP link on Aristotle's Metaphysics. I noticed this passage, which seems relevant, in light of the mention of Aristotle earlier in the thread:

If the world is a cosmos, then it is one more instance of the kind of being that belongs to every animal and plant in it. And if that is so, there is nothing left to display any other kind of being. Try it: take inventory. What is there? The color red is, only if it is the color of some thing. Color itself is, only if it is some one color, and the color of a thing. The relation “taller than” is, only if it is of two or more things. What has being but is not a thing must depend on some thing for its being. But on the other hand a mere thing, mere matter as we call it, using the word differently than Aristotle ever does, is an impossibility too. Relatively inert, rock-like being is the being of a part of what comes only in wholes–cosmos, plant, or animal. And all man-made things must borrow their material from natural things and their very holding-together from the natural tendencies of the parts of the cosmos. To be is to be alive; all other being is borrowed being. Any comprehensive account of things must come to terms with the special being of animals and plants: for Lucretius, living things are not marvels but a problem which he solves by dissolving them into the vast sea of inert purposelessness. For Aristotle, as for Plato, wonder is not a state to be dissolved but a beckoning to be followed, and for Aristotle the wonderful animals and plants point the way to being itself, to that being qua being which is the source of all being, for we see it in the world in them and only in them.

Thus when Aristotle begins in Book 7 of the Metaphysics to ask what makes a thing a thing, he narrows the question to apply only to living things. All other being is, in one way or another, their effect. — IEP

Which kind of, sort of, also support's Jung's idea.

According to the membership of thephilosophyforum, distinguishing 'beings' from 'things' is an eccentric and idiosyncratic attitude. Somehow I'll just have to find a way to live with it.

So a material object is a combination of form and matter, and that form is proper and unique to the particular object, complete with accidents — Metaphysician Undercover

Even with my very limited knowledge of Aristotle, I’m sure this isn’t so. I think that a form by it’s nature is a universal, which is then individuated by ‘accidents’. If I’m mistaken, I’ll stand corrected.

I read Aristotle as a challenge to the idea of the person that many of the medieval conceptions of the rational soul are based upon. — Paine

'The soul' - not that I'm saying that I believe there is one - is not necessarily the same as (or simply limited to) 'the person'. Recall the origin of the word 'person' as the mask worn by the dramatis personae in Greek dramas.

That is why, when the vehicle decays, memory and love cease; they were activities not of mind, but of the composite which has perished; mind is, no doubt, something more divine and impassable. — Paine

Thanks, the materials you provide are very informative. I wonder if in the above passage, 'mind' is the translation of 'nous'? And again, even if Aristotle is not discussing the immortality of the soul, it is easy to see how this would appear to be so for the medieval commentators, Islamic and Christian. (I'm very interested in the medieval conception of the rational soul, which seems very much aligned with these types of ideas.)

Yes I've run across that previously. Does look intriguing.

One might also raise the problem of whether time would exist not if no soul existed; for, if no one can exist to do the numbering, no thing can be numbered. So if nothing can do the numbering except a soul or the intellect of a soul, no time can exist without the existence of soul.. — Aristotle, Physics, 223a15, translated by HG Apostle

The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. (Cosmologist Andrei) Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma

Serious question. The 'they' in 'they cannot share' are living things. But the 'active intellect' which is 'immortal and eternal' is a separate faculty of the intellect, is it not?

Do you think this element of Aristotle's metaphysics later became absorbed in the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul?

Let’s say the meaning of being, the quest for a unitive insight.

:clap:

I wonder if Platonists would say that the Forms exist. — Jamal

In my lexicon, they don't exist, but they're real - real in the same way that, say, scientific principles and constraints and logical laws are real. In casual speech to say such things as the law of the excluded middle exist is OK, but when you ask 'in what sense does it exist?' you realise it is not a sensable phenomena, but a law of thought. It does not exist qua phenomenon but is real nonetheless, as are countless other such principles, laws, and so on - they are the constituents of rational discourse (something like Popper's world three.) This is why I've become interested in universals and Platonic realism - that there really are universal structures of reason which the mind alone can access, but doesn't create from itself (per Augustine and Intelligible Objects. )

So it all comes back to: there is no appreciable difference between the verbs 'to be' and 'to exist'. Everyone here generally accepts that, but I dissent. I'm quite happy to leave it at that. I will not push the point in future.

Backing up a little, I'm confused by this:

To use "beings" to refer to anything which can be said to be, whether animate or not, is consistent with a fundamental difference between...subjects of experience and things that are not subjects of experience. — Jamal

So, how can using the same word for both 'subjects' and 'non-subjects' be 'consistent with a fundamental difference'. If it's the same word, and refers to both classes, then how can it convey 'a fundamental difference'? Or did you mean to write, 'is consistent with there being no fundamental difference between...'

So, what do you think is the philosophical signficance of the fact that 'man alone' is capable of 'encountering the question of being', and that no other beings are able to do that. Do you think this is a significant distinction?

If we look around at beings in general—from particles to planets, ants to apes—it is human beings alone who are able to encounter the question of what it means to be - Heidegger. — Jamal

Note that Heidegger singles out 'human beings', because they alone are able to encounter the question of 'what it means to be'. No other beings - particles and planets, ants and apes - are able to do this. To all intents, that is the same distinction I was seeking to make.

What's going on here is the battle between 'being' as entity and 'being' as person is being fought as a proxy for the battle for primacy between phenomenological existence and material matter as the proper subject of ontology. — Isaac

Close. Originally the starting point of the debate was my claim that the term 'ontology' refers to 'the meaning of being', and not to 'the analysis of what exists'. (I'm quite aware, for example, that ontology is used in computer networks for the classification of the various kinds of devices that comprise it. I'm sure, though I don't know for certain, there are many other scientific ontologies as well.)

I claimed that 'ontology' was originally derived from the first-person participle of being - which is 'I am'. This is the claim which a former mod took strong exception to as an 'eccentric' or 'idiosyncratic' definition. Fair enough with respect to the 'first person case', but it is a fact that 'ontology' is derived from the Greek verb 'to be', and, as Charles Kahn's analysis shows, it has a different (and much broader) set of meanings to 'to exist'.

The philosophical point of that, is that the natural sciences, which are concerned with 'what exists', are not concerned with 'the meaning of being' in the philosophical sense. (Which is not a slight to the natural sciences, only a matter of demarcation.)

If we restrict world to linguistic, perceptual or abstract entities, then sure. But he says consciousness is a precondition of “being.” If by ‘being’ he means the world of aforementioned entities, then sure. But I’m not convinced of this.

I think he’s taking an idealist view, basically. — Mikie

Finally. This is all I was getting at.

Sure. All I’ve said all along is that in common speech, beings are differentiated from things. But then I’ve used that to argue for there being a real distinction which is what seemed to trigger the whole debate. The meta-question, if you like, is what is the source of that controversy. Why does it matter that beings are or are not different from things?

I was not referring to 'being' as a verb, as already stated a number of times, but of the distinction between beings (as a general noun) and things (as a general noun). I'm not denyinig that 'existent things are' or 'all things exist' or anything of the kind nor that anything that is, is existent, or 'has being', or that philosophers often discuss 'being in general', meaning 'everything that exists'.

But as for the simple distinction between beings and things, I was returned this result:

Q: What is the difference between things and beings?

A: Things refer to inanimate objects, physical entities, or concepts that lack life or consciousness. They can include tangible objects such as rocks, buildings, and machines, as well as intangible concepts such as ideas, theories, and laws.

On the other hand, beings refer to living entities, whether they are animals, humans, or other organisms, that possess consciousness and the ability to think, feel, and act. Beings can experience emotions, make choices, and interact with the world around them.

In summary, the main difference between things and beings is that things are inanimate and lack life and consciousness, while beings are living entities that possess consciousness and the ability to think, feel, and act. — ChatGPT

Which I take to be the regular meanings of the terms - 'language being use', and all that. And the further claim that this distinction in common language reflects an intuition which maybe no longer so obvious in current culture (and is being completely ignored in the foregoing discussion).

Without consciousness to disclose it, being would be "blind", hidden; nothing would appear. That's why he states the caveat "practically speaking". — Janus

:up: Agree. So - can you see how I am trying to relate this to the designation of humans as 'beings'? i.e. that the human psyche is indispensable to the disclosure of being. So would such a state of 'blindness', to press the metaphor, even be 'a state of being'? Would one refer to 'the state of being' of the early universe? I think not.

As also evidenced in this passage:

What is more, most of the natural sciences try to represent the results of their investigations as though these had come into existence without man’s intervention, in such a way that the collaboration of the psyche – an indispensable factor – remains invisible. (An exception to this is modern physics, which recognizes that the observed is not independent of the observer.) So in this respect, too, science conveys a picture of the world from which a real human psyche appears to be excluded – the very antithesis of the “humanities.” — Carl Jung, The Hidden Self

Two questions about this: in what sense is the psyche (what Aristotle would call 'the soul') an 'indispensable factor', and why does he cite 'modern physics' as an exception?

As I asked already, does Jung mean by this that consciousness is a pre-condition for the existence of rocks?
— Wayfarer

Yes.

Rocks are part of the world, right? So no world, no rocks. — Mikie

So you agree then that the world is created by consciousness.

You asked for citations and I provided them. Are you saying that the quotations do not show that it's normal, standard, conventional, and traditional that "beings" in philosophy are whatever can be said to be? — Jamal

None of them directly refer to inanimate things as beings. They're discussions of 'the nature of being' in which context everything is subsumed under the heading 'beings', in the sense of 'things that exist'. But none of them equivocate 'beings' and 'inanimate things'. In fact you even acknowledge it:

I don't know the reason for the general avoidance of "beings" in translations of Aristotle. — Jamal

I'm saying that this is the reason!. And even supporting it with another of your citations about 'the great chain of being' which provides the basis for the ancient and medieval distinction between non-living and living of various degrees (vegetative, animal, human). You won't find anything in there to support the contention of rocks being conscious. (It is of course a truism that the whole idea of the great chain of being is now considered thoroughly obsolete in modern philosophy, but there's where the distinction originates.)

Please consider the quote in the original post again:

Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists as such only in so far as it is consciously reflected and consciously expressed by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being. — Carl Jung

My question was an attempt to spell out why Jung would say this. I was attempting to interpret the OP. As I asked already, does Jung mean by this that consciousness is a pre-condition for the existence of rocks? I think that it is clearly an absurd suggestion. So what does he mean 'consciousness is a pre-condition of being'? I was trying to elucidate the philosophical implication of the term human being in response to the use of 'being' in this quotation. And so far, I don't think any light has been cast on that whatever.

(Now, I really do have to log out for at least the working day, I have major work commitments. And I'm really not being stubborn, but I refuse to admit to an error that I haven't made.)

I see where you're coming from, but my point still stands (and stands well-supported now I think). — Jamal

Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree on that, but it's been good discussion.
I think the materials you cited locate the source of the debate, which is in the rejection of 'levels of being', don't you think?

(I'm going to be scarce for a few days due to work stuff.)

There are pages and pages of this, but I have other sources aside from the SEP if you need — Jamal

These are all relevant citations, but I'm afraid that they don't prove the contention that no distinction is made in philosophy between 'beings' and 'things'.

The plural neuter form of the participle, ta onta, occurs frequently to indicate things, things that are, beings (but we have tended to avoid the translation 'beings') — Early Greek Philosophy, Volume I: Introductory and Reference Materials

I don't know the reason for the general avoidance of "beings" in translations of Aristotle. — Jamal

Probably for the reasons that I have given.

The natural scientist studies them as things that are subject to the laws of nature, as things that move and undergo change. That is, the natural scientist studies things qua movable (i.e., in so far as they are subject to change). The mathematician studies things qua countable and measurable. The metaphysician, on the other hand, studies them in a more general and abstract way — SEP: Aristotle’s Metaphysics

Note the distinction here between 'things' subject to the laws of nature and 'beings' in a more general sense. What has been translated as 'substantia' in Latin, and thence 'substance' in English, was 'ouisia' in Aristotle. So the metaphysican studies 'the being' of things, how they 'come to be'. (This is the substance of The Greek Verb to Be and the Meaning of Being by Kahn, although he mainly concentrates on Aristotle's predecessors.)

The correlatives form, therefore, a complex structure that is reproduced throughout the ladder and in each one of the beings, from God to a stone, to ontologically explain the continuity among all beings. In each one of them, the chain of the whole of creation is reproduced. — SEP: Ramon Llull

This is a reference to 'the Great Chain of Being'. In that chain, each step represents an ontological level or plane of being. Minerals and inorganic matter at the bottom is, in this scheme, the least real, then ascending through vegetable, animal, human, angels, and God.



This is generally considered archaic in modern philosophy. According to materialism only the bottom rung (matter-energy) is considered real, with everything else derived from it by some unexplained power (usually generally designated under the heading of 'evolution'). My general view is that the whole notion the vertical dimension of Being was abandoned in the advent of modernity, which is why the distinctions of different levels of being, and the distinction between things and beings, is no longer intelligible.

Only because it’s been muddied.

which is kind of ironic because Buddhists are intent on extinguishing sentience. — praxis

You should tell that to all those Buddhist activists who go around liberating caged animals.

Do you have the quote? — Noble Dust

The passage from which the thread title is extracted, is as follows:

Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists as such only in so far as it is consciously reflected and consciously expressed by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being. — Carl Jung

Straw poll: who else participating in this thread accepts that rocks are beings?

(It seems we might be being infiltrated by panpsychists ;-) )

Rocks are beings. — Mikie

So how does this stack up against Jung’s idea that the thread is opened with? Doesn’t this imply that Jung is saying that consciousness is a precondition for the existence of rocks? Is that what you think he means?

But I do rather resent being asked for citations. — Jamal

Don't worry about it, then. A sentence would do, anything you can think of where a classical philosophy text refers to inanimate objects as 'beings'.

Have a look at these blog posts

https://thepietythatliesbetween.blogspot.com/2010/06/what-is-naturalism-part-ii-kants.html

https://thepietythatliesbetween.blogspot.com/2010/06/what-is-naturalism-part-iii-quest-for.html