It's the philosophical standard. — Jamal
being (n.)
c. 1300, "existence," in its most comprehensive sense, "condition, state, circumstances; presence, fact of existing," early 14c., existence," from be + -ing. The sense of "that which physically exists, a person or thing" (as in human being) is from late 14c.
I could probably do a long list of philosophical citations where "a being" means a person. I guess it comes down to context. — frank
I'm left quite baffled by this discussion. I'm pretty sure even the occasional modern use of 'being' as 'living entity/person' is derived post hoc from the adjunct of 'being' to 'human being', by contraction to just 'human' or just 'being'. — Isaac
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
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
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. — Wayfarer
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...' — Wayfarer
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. — Wayfarer
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. — Wayfarer
I also noticed, while doing my SEP trawl, that many of the articles on Eastern philosophy use it like this. — Jamal
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. — Wayfarer
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
Yet Heidegger uses Dasein, not Sein, to distinguish 'humans' from 'mere beings' (i.e. Seiendes) as pointed out here on p. 2 of this thread. So unless you're disputing the very authority you have appealed to, Wayf, concede the point that the contemporary philosophical "distinction" is between Dasein and beings, n o t "beings and things". :roll: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. — Wayfarer
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