Garcia Romero Vivere Viventibus PDF

Vivere viventibus est esse?
The Relevance of Life for the Understanding of Existence Marcela GARCA (Mnchen)
Traditionally, analytic ontology is almost exclusively concerned with the question what is there? and accepts only one sense of being, namely the one expressed by the existential quantifier, that is, existence as instantiation of general terms. In this way, analytic ontology excludes the possibility of further questions regarding existence, e. g. what is it for an individual to be?, what does its existence consist in?,in virtue of what does it exist?. The aim of this paper is to show the relevance of life for the conception of existence: when we take living beings into account, some weaknesses of a quantificational approach to existence become clearer. This may lead to a broadening of the ontological inquiry in order to move beyond the merely quantificational sense of being and beyond the merely extensional question of what there is. 1 My aim here is therefore not first and foremost an ontology of living beings but rather to explore the significance of living beings for ontological inquiry. There has long been a certain uneasiness with the quantificational notion of existence. Some of the authors that criticize its exclusive consideration find that the notion of being or existence found in the history of philosophy is not exhausted by the quantificational account. One example that is often given of a different notion of being is that of a well-known Aristotelian passage,for living beings to be is to live, propagated in medieval philosophy as the dictum vivere viventibus est esse. I take an existential reading of the dictum (being in the sense of existing) as a starting point to consider the connection between living and existing. At first glance, this connection between life and existence would seem to run into two problems: (a) what can it mean to say that, for some things, existing has the same reference as living? would we need to admit that being can have different senses?; (b) it would seem to turn being into a real predicate in case life were a real predicate. 2 In order to clarify these difficulties, I discuss the positions of two contemporary philosophers, Peter van Inwagen and Michael Thompson, who, for different reasons, address what it is to live, and its relevance to ontology.
An extensional question in contrast to intensional questions concerning what it means to exist. Under real predicate I mean Kants notation of a predicate that serves to further determine a concept, that is, in Freges vocabulary one of the characteristic marks (Merkmale) of the concept that are at the same time properties (Eigenschaften) of those things that fall under that concept.
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Schwerpunktthema: Beitrge zu einer Philosophie des Lebens
Michael Thompson suggests the possibility of finding forms of predication (and their corresponding forms of being) that represent a zooming-in from more abstract forms recognized by Frege. He thinks that life is to be understood as one of these specific forms or categories and not as a series of first-level properties. In this sense, life is a specific form of being, a peculiar way of an object falling under a concept, rather than a real predicate. I will argue that the consideration of living beings provides strong arguments for a richer notion of existence that cannot reduced to the mere instantiation of general terms, but allows us to find more specific senses of being and to move beyond the question what is there? to the questions what is it for something to be?, 3 and in virtue of what does it exist? Such a rich notion of being, which is at play in Aristotelian tradition, allows for the consideration of different senses of being. I suggest that these different senses not only correspond to different categories but that they reveal a grounding structure which would be ignored if the different senses of being were to be expressed as first-level predicates. For the rich notation of being, the distinction between what is fundamental and what is derivative cannot be separated from what it means to exist. 1. A Thin Notion of Being One of the most important divisions between continental and analytic philosophy has to do with the nature of being 4, writes Peter van Inwagen in the Introduction to his essays on Metaphysics. He goes on to characterize the way each of these philosophical traditions understands being: the analytic tradition would favor a thin conception of being, while a thick conception of being would predominate in continental philosophy. 5 Let us begin with a brief review of the development and characteristics of the thin notion of being. Van Inwagen himself holds a thin notion of being (to say that there are Xs is to say that the number of Xs is 1 or more) 6 and he rejects the thick or dense notion of being on the grounds that it confuses the nature of things with their existence, and turns being into a real predicate in Kants sense. 1.1 Not A Real Predicate Indeed, beginning with Frege, the analytic tradition develops and radicalizes Kants thesis that being is not a real predicate that is, existence does not add
3 This is the Aristotelian formulation. We might paraphrase as what does a things existence consist in? or what does it mean for something to exist? 4 Van Inwagen (2001), 4. 5 Van Inwagen attributes the terms thin and thick conception of being to Prof. W. VerEecke, but the terms are reminiscent of Ryles distinction between thick and thin descriptions (Ryle (1971), 480 ff.) made famous by Geertzs application of the concept to ethnography. I will come back to Ryles distinction below. 6 Van Inwagen (2004), 4.
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any content that further determines the concept of a thing. For some analytic philosophers not only is existence not a real predicate but no predicate at all, that is, it cannot be said of an object as a first-level predicate. Second-Level Existence Frege considers existence as a higher-level concept, that is, as a concept under which no objects fall but in which other concepts fall. 7 Existence is thus a predicate that holds for concepts and not for objects. Frege thinks that existential judgments such as there are humans mean that the concept is not empty, that is, at least one object falls under this concept (x is human, Fx). For Frege, other expressions like humans exist or some existents are human are misleading because they give the impression that exist or existent would have some sort of content. He considers these expressions (exist, existent) redundant when they refer to objects. 8 If Leo Sachse exists is understood as referring to the object Leo Sachse and affirming his existence, then negating the existence of an object would be contradictory, because it would presuppose reference to an object while at the same time denying the existence of the referent. Existence understood as a first-level predicate would be a mere tautology, since it cannot be negated. In contrast, a sentence with the form there are Fs (where F is a concept) is not self-evident and can be negated meaningfully. 9 With the conception of existence as property of concepts, Frege avoids in his view the tautology of singular existential judgments as well as the inconsistency of negative existential judgments. We see Frege following Kants conception that being is not a real predicate when he writes: as soon as the word exists is given a content that is said of an individual, this content can be made into the mark of a concept under which that individual falls of which existence is said 10. In this way, it would be possible to take for instance the concept centaur and understand existence as a mark of this concept: 11 I would not accept anything as a centaur that didnt exist outside of my mind; I will not call mere representations or feelings in me a centaur 12. However, it would only be redundant to consider existence as a mark of concepts that can nevertheless be empty (such as centaur). Instead, existence is not a mark but a property of a
7 Objects (the meaning of proper names) fall under concepts (the meaning of predicates). Concepts may in turn fall in concepts of a higher order. Cf. Frege (1983), 61. Quotes from this work are my translation. 8 If Sachse exists is to mean the word Sachse is not an empty sound, but refers to something, then it is correct that the condition Sachse exists must be fulfilled. This is not a new premise, however, but the selfevident presupposition for all our words. The rules of logic presuppose always that the words in use are not empty, that propositions are expressions of judgments, that we are not playing with mere words. As long as Sachse is a man is an actual judgment, the word Sachse must refer to something [] (Frege (1983), 67). 9 If the sentence Leo Sachse is is self-evident, then there cannot be the same content in is as in the there are from the sentence there are humans, because the latter does not say something self-evident (Frege (1983), 69). 10 Frege (1983), 74. For an analysis of Freges Kantian inspiration, cf. Llano (2005), 60 ff. 11 For Frege, the marks of a concept are the properties of the things that fall under the concept. 12 Frege (1983), 74.
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concept, namely the denial of the number nought (Verneinung der Nullzahl) regarding its instances. 13 Quine and Quantification Quine continues and in a way radicalizes the Fregean proposal to avoid exists as first-level predicate. He suggests that we examine the ontological commitments of a particular theory. Those things that are the values of its variables, the referents of its pronouns, are what this theory considers existent within its framework. Certainly, when we deny the existence of something, non-existence is not a predicate of any thing but rather tells us that none of the existents is of that kind. In the same way, when we affirm the existence of something what we say is that some at least one of the existents is of the kind in question. Quine interprets the particular quantifier as an existential quantifier that expresses what can count as the value of a bound variable. An existential proposition (there are humans) thus means that there is something that falls under the concept human; that being human is instantiated: (9x) Fx. The quantifier used is the particular quantifier, in other words, it expresses a particular judgment: some at least one are human. In this operation one quantifies or particularizes over everything that there is: at least one of the existents. The domain of quantification is everything: I mean exists to cover all there is, and such of course is the force of the quantifier. 14 Existence is presupposed in the domain of quantification. However, in contrast to Frege, Quine admits singular existential judgments. Frege thinks a judgment of the form Socrates exists is a tautology, and paraphrasing it into there is Socrates makes no sense. By use of the quantifier, Quine is able to analyze this singular existential judgment as something is Socrates. In this way, Quine also avoids applying exists to individual objects as a first-level predicate. Through his method, however, Quine radicalizes Russells suggestion of paraphrasing singular terms as general predicates: 15
The equation x=a is reparsed in effect as a predication x=a where =a is the verb, the F of Fx. [] Socrates becomes a general term that is true of just one object, but general in being treated henceforward as grammatically admissible in predicative position and not in positions suitable for variables. It comes to play the role of the F of Fa and ceases to play that of the a. 16
Cf. Frege, (1961), 64 f. Quine (1969), 100. 15 Quine develops Russells approach: a sentence can be meaningful without presupposing the existence of its subject. Notwithstanding Freges developments, the treatment of non-existent objects had remained a problem. Russell suggests a solution in that he analyzes proper names as disguised descriptions. The king of France is bald is analyzed in a way that king of France isnt understood as name of an object but as a predicate. There is one thing (and only one) that is both king of France and bald. This sentence is false: there is no object that makes it true. So it becomes possible to use such apparent names without understanding them as naming expressions that would presuppose the existence of their objects. That is, singular terms must not name in order to be significant. Negative existential judgments must not be inconsistent. Cf. Quine (1953), 9. 16 Quine (1960), 179. Cf. also Quine (2008), 499; and Quine (1992), 28: Once our language is regimented
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Quine maintains that even singular existential judgments can be treated as general ones by reparsing proper names as descriptions. Should this be impossible, then one would simply take the property of being the bearer of this name (the property of being Pegasus or being the thing that is Pegasus) as substitute of the proper name. This would however imply that it is possible to eliminate proper names in favor of quantifiers and predicates. In other words, there is a dissolution of singular terms in Quines account. Strawson criticizes the fact that Quine is not able to satisfactorily explain the substitution of definite singular terms through variables of quantification, since such singular terms, for instance proper names, have, in contrast to variables, an identificatory function. 17 Quine accepts the consequence of losing this identificatory function:
[] the identificatory work of singular terms must be seen as separable from their referential or ontological work. []. In Word and Object a conspicuous effect of regimentation is that a predication of the form Fa, with identificatory singular term in the a place, goes over into the symmetrical form (9x)(Fx.Ax). A uniqueness clause regarding A may still be added, but the identificatory work of singular terms has lapsed. 18
Indeed, Quine turns Socrates into a general predicate, so that in the end his individual existential judgments follow the model of existence as instantiation of general properties: Something falls under the concept Socrates. In this way, the existential import of the quantifier points to variables that remain ultimately indefinite and the weight comes to rest on the general terms that tell us which Fs are instantiated. Quine can thus be said to further develop Freges and Russells approach insofar as existential judgments rather tell us of what kind (Beschaffenheit) the presupposed indefinite existents are. With Freges understanding of existence as second-level predicate said of concepts and Quines reparsing of individuals into general terms, the emphasis is on the F of the Fx: What kind of thing is the existent x? What concept is instantiated? Which set has more than zero members? The focus is thus on the extensional aspect of ontology: on what there is. But the question what it means to exist, which also belongs to ontological inquiry, remains in the background. 19
to fit the predicate calculus, moreover, it is easy and instructive to dispense with singular terms altogether, leaving variables as the only link to objects. The underlying principle here is the equivalence of 9x (Fx and x=a) to Fa; for this enables us to maneuver every occurrence of a into the context a=, and then to treat that context as an indissoluble predicate A, absorbing the singular term. Singular terms can still be recovered afterward as a convenient shorthand, by introducing singular description in Russells way and defining a as ix(Ax). 17 Cf. Strawson (1969), 115. Quines suggestion of using the quantifier for individual existential judgments implies turning the proper name into a description, which is itself problematic (cf. Kripke (1980)) and changes the sense of the expression: we are not referring to the existence of Socrates himself, but to any objects which might fall under the description we have chosen for Socrates. Geach has argued as well that Quine falls into a confusion of logical levels at this point, since the x in there is and in x is F plays a different logical role. The gap in there is used this way (in the sense of French il y a and German es gibt) can be filled only by a predicable expression, not by a proper name, Geach (1980), 162. Cf. on this point also Miller (1973), 202 ff. 18 Quine (1969b), 321. 19 Cf. Tugendhat (1967), 485.
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Something called the science of being would obviously be concerned with the intension, as opposed to the extension, of being. The science of being as such is concerned with the question of the meaning of there is and being (and related terms like exists). []. The question of the meaning of being is of fundamental philosophical importance, whatever the science or study that addresses it may be called. 20
Quine strives to establish criteria for evidence of existence, but he does not think it possible to ask what exists might mean beyond the quantifier. 21
Regarding the meaning of existence itself our progress [in respect to Carnap, M. G.] is less clear. Existence is what existential quantification expresses. There are things of kind F if and only if (9x) Fx. []. We found an explication of singular existence a exists, as (9x) (x=a); but explication in turn of the existential quantifier itself, there is, there are, explication of general existence, is a forlorn cause. Further understanding we may still seek even here, but not in the form of explication. We may still ask what counts as evidence for existential quantifications. 22
So, in summary, the thin notion of being can be characterized by the following traits. It represents only an extensional standpoint by answering the question what is there?. When we consider that some things are F, G, H, we presuppose their existence: some [existent] things are F, G, H without asking the intensional question what it means for them to exist. Rather, we are saying something about the kind or quality (Beschaffenheit) of some existents. In this sense, the thin notion of being focuses on the Fs, that is, on predicates or properties that are instantiated, not on what it means to exist for the individual things in themselves, that is, on how they exist, what their existence consists in or in virtue of what they exist. Some questions that belong to ontological inquiry cannot be addressed adequately if being is limited to its thin notion. Furthermore, the thin notion of being considers whether certain general terms (predicates, functions, properties) are instantiated. Thus, there are certain phenomena that the quantificational apparatus does not grasp properly, e. g. singulars, as mentioned above, or mass terms. 23 1.2 The Uneasiness Regarding the Thin Notion of Being In fact, the analytic thin notion of being was developed precisely with the goal, at the beginning of the twentieth century, of avoiding metaphysical notions that lack
Van Inwagen (2001), 3. We look to bound variables in connection with ontology not in order to know what there is, but in order to know what a given remark or doctrine, ours or someone elses, says there is; and this much is quite properly a problem involving language. But what there is is another question (Quine (1953) 15 f.). Or in a further passage: To be is to be the value of a bound variable. More precisely, what one takes there to be are what one admits as values of ones bound variables. []. So, whatever more one may care to say about being or existence, what there are taken to be are assuredly just what are taken to qualify as values of x in quantifications (Quine (1992), 26 f.). 22 Quine (1969a), 97. Cf. also Quine (1992), 26 f.; 36. 23 For the problem of mass nouns or, better, non-count terms, cf. Laycock (2010): If we do not refer to any single individual or any identified individuals when we use water, to what, then, do we refer?
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clear criteria of application (being, existence are paradigmatic ones), and this led to a treatment of existence that allowed for rules of logical operation without an extended metaphysical discussion about what it is to be. Nonetheless, the question what it means to exist has been discussed from time to time and in the last few years has regained the center stage of discussions. A certain malaise with existence understood exclusively as quantification; 24 with the thin, univocal notion of being, has been voiced by several philosophers. 25 Geach, for instance, denies that there is is the only sense of exists. He speaks of actuality (the Fregean Wirklichkeit) as a first-level sense of existence said of individuals that act or undergo change.
It is a great misfortune that Russell has dogmatically reiterated that the there is sense of the substantive verb to be is the only one that logic can recognise as legitimate; for the other meaning present actuality is of enormous importance in philosophy, and only harm can be done by a Procrustean treatment which either squeezes assertions of present actuality into the there is form or lops them off as non-sensical. 26
However, it hasnt been all that clear just what the uneasiness consists in. What exactly is the problem with the thin notion of being, what is missing in this account? Quines approach does make singular existential judgments possible. However, Quines solution has the effect of turning the individual to which a proper name refers into a description, a collection of predicates that are instantiated. Would the problem be solved just by allowing the use of existence as a first-level predicate alongside higher-level existence, in other words, by the acknowledgment that there is more than one meaning, use or sense of existence? 27 Or by acknowledging that the existence of the individual that in turn instantiates or falls under a concept has been presupposed? 28 Still, the question is what it might mean to speak of different senses of being (just different uses of the same word mere equivocity or something more profound?) and how these two senses would be related to each other. 29 Since it seems clear that the quantifier is just the regimented form of there is, the question is whether there is exhausts the meaning of existence.
24 Indeed, the contemporary landscape in meta-metaphysics may be described as featuring a central Quinean majority, amid a scattering of Carnapian dissidents. Few other positions are even on the map (Schaffer (2009), 350). 25 Cf. Geach (1994a), Llano (2005), McGinn (2000), Miller (2002), Tugendhat (1967). 26 Anscombe/Geach (1961), 91 f. 27 Geach (1994b) and Miller (1975) argue in this direction. 28 Cf. Tugendhat (1967). 29 McGinn (2000) makes a simple proposal in this respect: second-level existence implies always a firstlevel one. Of course, even these demands are problematic inasmuch as simply allowing for a first-level use of exists alongside the higher-level one would question the univocity of existence and might bring other problems with it: Meinongianism and the problem of existence as real predicate. For instance,E! indeed seems to function as a real predicate. And in this way, this notion is still susceptible to Freges critique (that even if we include is existent in the concept of a thing, the number of its instances can still be zero). Moreover, we would have a broader universe of things of which those things that E! are a subspecies.
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2. Vivere viventibus est esse Several philosophers who are unsatisfied with the thin notion of being refer to the Aristotelian dictum that for living beings to be is to live (to de zn tois zsi to einai estin; vivere viventibus est esse) 30 as an example of a way of understanding being or existence that has been disregarded by the analytic tradition. 31 Geach, for instance, argues that not all existential propositions have the same logical status. He argues that, although in some of these propositions exists is not used as a genuine predicate (e. g.: Cerberus does not exist; Dragons do not exist), there are still some cases where it certainly is a genuine predicate of individuals: the sense of exist in which one says that an individual came to exist, still exists, no longer exists, etc. 32
It is worth noticing that as regards living beings to be has the same reference as to live, vivere viventibus est esse. This may confirm us against sophistical attempts to show that the verb to be in this sense is not a genuine predicate of individuals. Poor Fred was alive and is dead: how could one argue that this is not a genuine predication about poor Fred? And what difference does it make if we say instead poor Fred was, and is not? 33
For Tugendhat, it is the individualizing weight of the notion of existence that was ontologically interesting in traditional ontology. 34 He speaks of the way the existential quantifier presupposes the existence of objects. The sense of existence that belongs to singular objects is the sense of existence that has always been relevant to metaphysics and is the one involved in the consideration of life as authentic sense of being. 35 In other words, these philosophers defend a sense of exists that is not captured by the existential quantifier, and they see in the Aristotelian dictum an expression of this sense of existence (the thick notion of being) that pertains to individuals. I propose to look at the Aristotelian slogan and the reasons one could have for affirming that life is a sense of being. That might help us to consider a notion of existence that takes the perspective of the individuals that exist into account (and not just the Fs that are instantiated or not) and makes it possible to ask what an individuals existence consists in. We can then explore whether a plausible thick
de An. II 4, 415b13. Cf. Berti (2005); Geach (1994a); Llano (2005), 247; Tugendhat (1967), 487; Spaemann (2010), 11. 32 Geach (1994a), 58. 33 Geach (1994a), 59. 34 Cf. Tugendhat (1967), 487. 35 Existenz in dem zweiten Sinn betrifft hingegen die solcher Anwendung zugrunde liegenden unbestimmten Gegenstnde, auf die man pronominal hinweisen kann, z. B. dies ist, ich bin. []. Und faktisch scheint von Quine dieser zweite Existenzbegriff implizit durchaus anerkannt zu werden, wenn er sagt: zu sein heit so viel wie der Wert einer gebundenen Variable bzw. mglicher Bezugspunkt eines Pronomen zu sein. Dieses Sein gilt von den einzelnen Gegenstnden. []. In diesem to be scheint nun aber derjenige Sinn von Existenz zu liegen, der in der Metaphysik seit jeher der eigentlich relevante war. Der Satz z. B., eigentliches Sein lasse sich nur als Leben denken, ist nur in diesem Sinn von Existenz zu verstehen. (Tugendhat (1967), 487).
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account of being can be developed that avoids the pitfalls of treating being as a real predicate. I then mean to ask how this thick notion of being is related to the thin one, that is, whether there is room for the Aristotelian notion of being alongside the thin notion. Finally, I consider some advantages of such a rich notion of being. 2.1 The Aristotelian Dictum In De Anima, Aristotle makes the claim that for living beings to be is to live. There is in the literature a fair amount of discussion of possible interpretations of this sentence which rotate around a predicative and an existential use of being. The predicative reading follows the thesis that, for Aristotle, to be is always to be something or other: 36 1) for living beings to be [a living being], is to live (i. e. a living being is only a living being when it is alive) The existential interpretation takes being here not first and foremost as being something or other but as simply being, that is, existing: 2) for living beings, being [that is, existing] is living 37 The second reading considers life parallel to existence: what existing consists in for living beings is living. The existential reading raises interesting questions about the connection between existence and life and whether each of these terms can have different senses. There has been some discussion on whether Aristotle himself distinguishes between these two uses of to be: the existential and the predicative one. 38 Some scholars maintain that he conflates both uses. If that were the case, then Aristotles different senses of being would indeed, as van Inwagen suggests, derive from a conflation between the existential and the predicative use of is. 39
36 Owen (1965), 77, presents the argument that, for Aristotle, the existential use of is (the 1place or complete expression) can always be expanded into different types of categorial predication (a 2place expression): to be is always to be either a substance of a certain sort, or a quality of a certain sort, or a quantity of a certain sort. For a discussion of Owens famous position, cf. Brown (1994) and Menn (2008*). According to Kahn (2009), 142, this is a characteristic feature of Greek ontology. He considers the ancient understanding of existence, securely anchored within predication, to have the advantage of a fixed semantic frame of reference rather than being in danger of floating free without definite meaning like modern quantificational existence. Cf. Stekeler-Weithofer (1986), 122; 131 ff. for an interpretation of Aristotle that also underlines the requirement of clarifying the domain before questions of existence. 37 A living being exists exactly then, when it is alive. Cf. Hbner (2007), 110; Schark (2005); Hennig (2007). 38 For a classic study of existential judgments in Aristotle, cf. Mansion (1946). 39 Berti (2002) argues that, while there is no confusion, the different senses apply to both the predicative and the existential uses of being. He sees the reason for this in the fact that being cannot be a genus, according to Metaph. B 3.
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However, as David Charles and Stephen Menn have argued recently, there is sufficient textual evidence that Aristotle does indeed distinguish an existential from a predicative use of being. 40 I will assume the existential interpretation of the dictum as a starting point to consider the relevance of life to discussions about existence. As Geach and others underline, being would have here the thick sense that belongs to individuals and not the thin there is sense. According to this picture, we would have two ways of understanding being: the thin one (expressed by the existential quantifier) and the thick one, which in turn allows for different senses of being, insofar as it allows for different questions beyond the merely extensional what is there. In the particular case of living beings, life and being are different ways of referring to the same existence in a thick sense. Nonetheless, the idea of life as sense of being runs into serious difficulties. There are two obvious problems: a) Being is broader than life At first glance, it seems difficult to accept the claim that life is a sense of being: being certainly has a broader extension than life. If to live were to substitute to be in the case of living beings, we would have a notion of being that seems to needlessly oversaturate the determination of what it means to be. And if we accepted life as a sense of being, then we would at least end up with several senses of being. Of course, the thin notion of being is clearly univocal. As Frege puts it: the difference in the judgments there are humans and there are square roots of 4 does not lie in the there is but in the difference of the concepts human and square root of 4 41. This is correct: if existence only means that the extension of a concept is not empty (denial of the number nought regarding its instances) 42, it can only be univocal. For this reason, the proponents of the thin notion of being have rejected the possibility of other notions of existence or being alongside the quantificational one, including existence as said of the individual. The question, then, is whether an existential use of being that is not merely univocal is possible. Can exists have different senses? While existence implies the instantiation of general terms, it must not be reduced to this phenomenon. The reason for this is that individuals cannot be reduced to bundles of properties; therefore the existence of individuals cannot solely consist in the instantiation of general terms. In other words, the quantificational account of existence does not necessarily exhaust what we can say meaningfully about existence. 43 For instance, the intensional question (what does it mean for something to
Cf. for instance Aristotle, APo. II 1, 89b3335: we seek some things in another fashion e. g. if a centaur or a god is or is not (I mean if one is or not simpliciter and not if one is white or not). And knowing that it is, we seek what it is (e. g. so what is a god? or what is a man?); cf. also APo. II 2, 90b12 ff. where he distinguishes between celestial bodies being without qualification (hapls) and being something. Cf. Charles (2002), 112 and Menn (2008*). 41 Frege (1983), 64. 42 Cf. Frege (1961), 64 f. 43 In this sense, I agree with Geach when he writes that the sense of existence expressed in there is does not exhaust what we can say about existence or being (cf. footnote 26).There is does not exhaust exists. I
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exist) requires us to consider the things existence beyond the mere ascertaining that some F is instantiated. Those who maintain the strict univocity of existence consider the assumption that there are different senses a confusion of the existential with the predicative use of is. Thus, Peter van Inwagen argues that any difference between, say, what it is for a table to exist and what it is for an animal to exist is not due to a different sense of existence, but to their different natures. 44 They exist in the same sense because existence is nothing but the denial of the number nought and, therefore, univocal.
[] the thick conception of being is founded on the mistake of transferring what belongs properly to the nature of a chair or of a human being or of a universal or of God to the being of a chair. To endorse the thick conception of being is, in fact, to make (perhaps for other reasons; perhaps in a more sophisticated way) the very mistake of which Kant accused Descartes: the mistake of treating being as a real predicate. 45
Otherwise, we would have to maintain a different sense of exists for each kind, which would be absurd and would indeed amount to a conflation between existence and predication. Is it possible to understand thick existence in a way that does not imply this confusion? b) Being is not a real predicate If being existence is not a real predicate, that is, if it does not add any predicative content to the concept of a thing, then the question whether something exists is independent of the question what it is. At first glance, it would seem that life refers to what something is, but not to its existence as such. The question is whether the Aristotelian position commits us to treat existence as a real predicate in case life is a real predicate, a characteristic mark of a concept under which living beings fall. I agree that existence cannot be considered a real predicate. I shall argue that life must not be understood as a real predicate either, that it answers the question how something exists or in virtue of what it exists, rather than just what it is. What kind of intensional aspects would turn existence into a real predicate? In what follows, I will consider whether life can be understood as a sense of being in a way that does not imply mere equivocity and does not confuse existence with predication. In other words, what is it about living that might count as a sense of existing and not just as part of the nature, the what something is, independent of whether it exists or how?
accept for the purposes of this essay that being is the same as existence, that is, I do not agree with the broadly Meinongian stance of understanding existence as a subspecies of being. But I dont think that being or existence only mean there is. Besides, the notion of thin, univocal existence is mainly derived from the negation of existence and related paradoxes. As Miller (1975) argues, there is no reason to assume that existence and the denial of existence should be understood in a perfectly parallel way. 44 The vast difference between me and a table does not consist in our having vastly different sorts of being (Dasein, dass sein,that it is); it consists rather in our having vastly different sorts of natures (Wesen, was sein, what it is). van Inwagen (1998), 235. 45 Van Inwagen (2001), 4 f.
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Many things can be the value of a bound variable in a colloquial sense, but not strictly, not independently of any observer. We might ask whether there is a more radical sense of individuality that does not rely on some subjects parceling of reality. Possible candidates for this kind of individual existence are living beings. Indeed, living beings seem to possess unity and individuation in their own right, in a way that is different from any inert artifact or natural object. Living beings actively maintain their unity, which requires that they distinguish themselves from the environment and interact with it. Let us now turn to an influential metaphysical conception that relies on the thin notion of being and underlines the relevance of life, as peculiar form of unity and self-identity, to questions regarding existence. In his book Material beings, van Inwagen famously discusses the special composition question: in what circumstances is a thing a proper part of something 46, or more exactly when is it true that 9y the xs compose y? 47 The views he develops in this work have certain consequences that suggest an intimate connection between life and existence. The most prominent consequence is that there are no tables or chairs or any other visible objects except living organisms 48. Van Inwagen reaches this conclusion because, as he says, he takes the unity and persistence of material objects seriously. 49 I will briefly consider the connection between existence and unity at play in this work. In this book, van Inwagen applies Quines criterion strictly and consistently: if to be is to be something (a something), then among material beings only indivisible particles [simples] and living beings exist, because only these are a something. Indivisible simples and true composites (living beings) have intrinsic unity and identity. 50 For van Inwagen, there is something (such that F) is to be understood in a strong sense as there is one thing or there is a single thing (such that F). In this sense, existence implies unity. What is there? means what is one?. Indeed, van Inwagens proposed answer to the special composition question, when is something composite?, is that only living beings are. All other examples of visible objects are not one according to him, but many. The full form of the proposed answer is: (9y the xs compose y) iff the activity of the xs constitutes a life (or there is only one of the xs) 51 An organism has an intrinsic nature that determines how it is to change its parts with the passage of time 52, in contrast to mere external forces in the case of
46 47 48 49 50 51 52
Van Inwagen (1990), 20. Van Inwagen (1990), 30. Van Inwagen (1990), 1. Cf. van Inwagen (1990), 18. Cf. van Inwagen (1990), 98. Van Inwagen (1990), 82. Van Inwagen (1990), 98.
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tables or rocks. In this sense, even simples can be assimilated to organisms, since their intrinsic nature is that they have no parts. Thus, van Inwagen can be said to take Quines stance one significant step further by requiring observer-independent unity as criterion of what can count as value of a bound variable, or as a something. 53
If there were no human beings or Martians or whatever then there would be stars and electrons and mountains if and only if there are stars and electrons and mountains in actuality. Our conceptual activity may involve a lot of boundary drawing, but drawing a boundary around a filled region of space does not make it the case that there is some one thing that exactly fills that region. If the mutual causal operations of the things in that region can do that, they need no help from the mental activities of external observers, and if they cant do that, no external activities can help them to do it. 54
Thus, to be sure, van Inwagen doesnt mean that tables and rocks are second class citizens of the world or not substances, but that there are none. They are just not there at all. Nothing is a table. There is no one thing that just exactly fills this region of space. 55 In ordinary language one may speak of such virtual objects, but in order to speak as a metaphysician, van Inwagen will give a paraphrase into language about simples and their arrangement. According to van Inwagen, this is not an exigence that goes beyond quantificational existence: there is an x such that x is F requires this strict unity and identity independent of an observer. As it turns out, being an organism implies having unity independent from an observer, due to an intrinsic nature. However, we dont have to understand life as a first-level property said of an already existent object. Rather, nothing can be said to be an object or the value of a bound variable, unless it has this kind of unity. Life as this kind of unity is inseparable from what the existence of living beings consists in. Taken this way, life as a sense of being does not necessarily imply existence as a real predicate. Not So Thin After All In short, for van Inwagen, unity that is observer-independent belongs to whatever exists. Actually, this is not such a thin notion of being after all. A thinner notion would be for instance that of Jonathan Schaffer. He claims that being independent of an observer (mind-independence) is not a trait that belongs to what it means to exist but already to what something is, and whether something is fundamental or not. Thus, existence for Schaffer is so thin that it can be extremely permissive: an atheist can say that God exists, she just wont consider God to be
53 It is all decided at the point where the domain is defined (what is included in everything). Perhaps one could make the Carnapian objection that the restriction of observer-independent unity was already a departure from a truly universal domain, that is, a definition of a particular category. 54 Van Inwagen (1990), 139. 55 Van Inwagen (1990), 104.
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mind-independent but rather a fictional character. 56 The disagreement is only about what God is. 57 In contrast, although van Inwagen argues for a thin notion of being, and considers differences to belong to the nature of things, he still thinks that a property like observer-independent unity does not belong to such a nature (was) but to the fact that (dass) something exists. For him, the requirement of observer-independent unity still stems from the question what counts as value of a bound variable? (what is there?): I agree entirely with Quine about the nature of being and the method one should use in trying to determine what there is. I disagree with him almost entirely about what there is. 58 However, it seems that such a strong connection between unity and existence does tell us something about what it means to exist, and van Inwagen does not reject this intensional question. 59 As mentioned above, a possible objection against different senses of being would be to say that whatever is added to a thinnest conception of being does not belong to existence but is a contentful, predicative addition that belongs to what something is, to its nature. This is indeed van Inwagens argument. However, as it turns out, van Inwagens own conception of existence is not so thin after all. He enriches or thickens his notion of being at the onset: observer-independent unity does not have to appear as a real predicate among others because it is already implied in the x, in what it is to be something at all, independent of any further features. Schaffers proposal, on the other hand, involves a very permissive, because maximally thin, notion of existence, and a hierarchical structure of grounding, of what is fundamental. It is here, and not within existence, that Schaffer aims for ontological economy: the least number of fundamental entities or substances should ground as many derivative entities as possible. In van Inwagens picture the result is somewhat similar. Although he only admits things with intrinsic unity and identity, and rejects the existence of heaps, like, for instance, chairs, he still keeps them as forms of arrangement of simples, and refers to them as virtual objects which dont exist as such but can be paraphrased into language about simples at any moment. In that sense,chairs and the like are also grounded in simples or in living beings that he considers existent. Notwithstanding their differences, both authors share a thin notion of being. In contrast, from the Aristotelian perspective, as I will argue below, the structures of grounding or ontological dependency are not completely alien to what it means to exist.
Cf. Schaffer (2009), 359. Of course, Schaffer is taking here God as a proper name, and not as a concept. 58 Van Inwagen (2001), 3. 59 Cf. footnote 20. In a way, one gets the impression that van Inwagen is trying to pursue non-Quinean interests with a Quinean instrumentarium that is not quite adequate for these endeavors. As Schaffer writes, the post-positivist Quinean view is (by design) unsuited for the traditional questions (Schaffer (2009), 354).
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2.3 Activity However, van Inwagen does not seem to sufficiently explain why or how the myriad activities of simple particles compose a single life, a well-individuated event. What is it to constitute a life? 60 In his use, life denotes the individual life of a concrete organism, it is a count-noun. 61 He seems to presuppose the unity peculiar to life as a well-individuated, homogeneous event that nevertheless stems from the activities of myriads of simples. Where does unity stem from? 62 Van Inwagen does stress the difference between mere change or movement and a life as a self-directing, self-maintaining, well-individuated event. He just does not dwell on these characteristics and how they come about (for instance, what does self-directing mean here, who is directing what: is it the particles subatomic ones, is it the organs, is it the whole?) What exactly is the subject of vital activity? 63 He does not explain whether the activity is the activity of the simples or parts, or the activity of the organism as a whole. While van Inwagen with activity means just change undergone by particles, 64 Michael Thompson, on his part, greatly stresses the difference between mere movement, that is, change in terms of physicochemical processes, and living operations. Indeed, he means to understand life in such a way that action can be seen as a more specific form of life process: action and agency [as]: a certain turn that determinate life-forms can take 65. But Thompson points to the difficulty of characterizing this distinction. He thinks it cannot be done by considering the reflexivity of self-movement (a move that many philosophers have taken in the attempt to define life). Self-movement is a vague notion insofar as the reflexive does not sufficiently specify what exactly the relation between thing and event is: a bird might move itself as it might move a piece of straw, it can move its own parts, and it can be moved by something other, for instance, by a prey.
And in general, if A moves B, then the mereological sum of A and B in some sense moves itself, or some of itself. Some self-movement, then, is other-movement, some self-movement is movement-by-another; and some non-self-movement is self-movement after all. 66
Thompson understands vital operation not as self-movement, then, but as phase in a life-process, in relation to a particular unity between events within a
60 What is the ground of my unity? That is, what binds the simples that compose me into a single being? It seems to me to be plausible to say that what binds them together is that their activities constitute a life, a homeodynamic storm of simples, a self-maintaining, well-individuated, jealous event (van Inwagen (1990), 121). 61 (f. van Inwagen (1990), 83. 62 Van Inwagen (1990), 87. 63 Van Inwagen writes, for instance, that a life imposes on the particles of matter whose activities constitute it, a kind of activity. So there are the activities of the particles and the kind of activity imposed on them by the life, cf. van Inwagen (1990), 89; 92. Young, whom van Inwagen quotes at this point, speaks of the activity that a man imposes upon his elements. It is not clear, then, what the subject of the activity is. 64 Van Inwagen (1990), 82. 65 Thompson (2008), 28. 66 Thompson (2008), 45.
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life-process, a unity that cannot be explained merely in terms of physics. Rather, he thinks that only in starting out from the wider context of the life-form or species can we understand a certain movement as a vital operation and thus as an activity of the whole living being and not just of its components. Thompsons example is that of mitosis, which in the case of amoebas means reproduction and in the case of human beings mere self-maintenance. The functional description depends on the corresponding life-form. 67 If we start out from the physicochemical components and processes, it is not possible to show how and in what sense a certain set of these processes constitute a single living individual. 68 So, according to Thompson, there is a crucial difference between the mere movement or change that something undergoes, and vital operations that can only be identified as such once we grasp an individual as bearer of a certain life-form. The detour through form allows us to distinguish between mere change, that is, mere physical process, and vital operation that in his eyes is an activity that in some cases can be further specified as action. In a way, the problem of the individuals unity is not solved through recourse to a bundle of properties (F, G, H) but rather through a higher-level unifying element, the life-form. It is the detour through form that allows us to understand some of these processes as vital operations or activities which in turn require the unity of the organism as a whole. In the end we come back to the point underlined by van Inwagen: existence of living beings is only understandable as the existence of truly unified composites or wholes whose existence does not consist in just being a sum of parts. While both Thompson and van Inwagen agree that the existence of living beings is peculiar, Thompson goes one step further: the fact that living beings must be approached through this detour tells us that life is not simply a first-level predicate like any other. In fact, Thompson criticizes attempts to arrive at a definition of life based on a series of characteristic conceptual marks. What this attempt ultimately amounts to, according to him, is that different abstract categories are put into higher gear to become vital concepts such as organism, organ, organization, life process, vital operation. The attempt to define them leads to circularity because we are not able to determine this higher gear, that is, the specific form of these notions that pertain to living beings, without presupposing life. What Thompson suggests is to adopt a wider perspective, a wider context, and concentrate on the particular kind of genus that is a life-form without defining it circularly as vital genus. In order to isolate this kind of genus he recurs to the representation of life which requires a particular kind of judgments, natural historical judgments, which in turn include a particular kind of genus, the life-form or species. Judgments about living beings have a logical form of their own. Natural-historical judgments express
Thompson (2008), 55. It is interesting that if the only categories we have to apply are those of chemistry and physics, there is an obvious sense in which no such succession of goings-on will add up to a single process [] Physics and chemistry, adequately developed, can tell you what happens [] in any circumstance but it seems that they cannot attach any sense to a question What happens next? sans phrase (Thompson (2008), 41).
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a peculiar form of unity and temporality that cannot be reduced to a more general, abstract falling under concept F or instantiating F. The canonical form of these judgments would be: The S is (or has or does) F [e. g. The yellow finch breeds in spring] A judgment about an individual organism can only be understood through the attribution of a life-form to the organism as in This S and natural-historical judgments of the form The S is/does/has F, where the common noun S is a life-formword and F a vital operation: This S (x is an S) The S does/has F* *F is not here attached to an individual variable. While we say The S is F (under normal circumstances, that is), we might say but this S is not F (and is nevertheless an S). A living being is not defined as an x that instantiates some definite list of predicates (since it is not clear exactly which predicates would belong to the definition of life). Instead, a living individual can only be characterized as such by taking a detour that identifies it as member of a life-form or species. 69 Life is at least not simply the F to an x 70 without further specification. As Boris Hennig notes, that something is a living being is not added as a property to an already existent thing, but rather says something about how it exists 71. In this way, Michael Thompson argues that life is not a real predicate but rather to be approached through its representation in a peculiar kind of judgment. This solution parallels Freges suggestion of understanding existence as what is expressed in particular judgments and not as a first order predicate belonging to the concept of a thing: The existence expressed through the words there is is not contained in the word exists but in the form of the particular judgment. 72 However, Thompson develops this Fregean strategy further and discovers forms of falling under or instantiating that cannot be adequately reduced to Fregean terms. Although this
69 An organism or individual living thing, finally, is whatever falls under a species or bears a life-form (Thompson (2008), 76 f.). Every thought of an individual organism as alive is mediated by thought of the life-form it bears Thompson (2008), 81. 70 As contrast, cf. Shields (2002), who expresses not just life but being as F of Fx. 71 Hennig (2007), 82. My translation. 72 Frege (1983), 74. Frege writes: every particular judgment is an existential judgment. His example is: some bodies are light is the same as there are light bodies. The contrary transformation (to obtain particular judgments from existential ones) is sometimes difficult, he writes, because one must divide the concept (for instance human) into two marks (animal and rational), so that there are humans means the same as some animals are rational (cf. Frege (1983), 70). Or one would look for a most general concept (some beings are human) which could not have any content.
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form of predication and the category it expresses were not included among Fregean forms, it is a pure form of thought that grasps a corresponding form of being. In other words, Thompson is not just inserting an intermediate level S between that of the x and the F. He underlines rather the judgment, the kind of thought that is required to understand something as a living being, and herewith a form of being that is proper of living things. Of course, we can regard the living being more abstractly, as instantiating certain properties. However, it is possible to go deeper and be more specific in a way that does not apply to all cases of 9x Fx. What is different when we think about living beings is that there is a peculiar relation between the individual and the general term expressed by a peculiar kind of judgment about living beings. This kind of relation, this kind of instantiation, is not found elsewhere and it could not apply to non-living things. In other words, the question to ask regarding living beings is not whether the Fs are instantiated but instead exactly how they are instantiated. 3. Life as a Sense of Being? After considering van Inwagens and Thompsons reflections, we are in a position to go back to the question what it could mean to say that life is a sense of being and how this notion could contribute to an understanding of existence that is richer than the thin notion of being, standard in the analytic tradition. Both van Inwagen and Thompson further develop the thin notion of being through consideration of life. In the case of van Inwagen, the question what is the value of a bound variable, what is a something, is understood as the question what is exactly one and why. With van Inwagen we can see how the strict application of the quantifier sense of being still leads to a further question: not only is a concept instantiated, but is the thing that instantiates one single thing, in itself, independent of our boundary drawing? If living beings are the only visible things with strict self-identity (due to an intrinsic nature that determines how they exchange their parts in the course of time), and simples can be assimilated to organisms in this sense, then life must not be regarded as a first-level predicate but can be regarded as a sense of existence. In Michael Thompsons work, the Fregean intuition that existence is expressed in a kind of judgment is developed further toward the insight that life, too, is expressed in a peculiar kind of judgment, and that vital activity is not explainable as mere physico-chemical change, but requires the consideration of the wider perspective of a life-form or species. In this way, what it means for living beings to exist cannot be grasped through a merely quantificational approach, but requires a more specific question: how exactly are the predicates (the Fs) that hold of the individual instantiated. Life is not one of the characteristics of an already constituted individual but a peculiar way of instantiation grasped through a particular kind of judgment or thought. 73
73
Cf. also Hennig (2007), 83.
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Both approaches (the questions what is exactly one?, how exactly does an individual fall under a general term?) enable us to consider existence beyond instantiation. To ask what is there? and come up with a series of instantiated properties is only the thinnest possible perspective on existence. When we take living beings into account and ask what their existence consists in, we realize that there is more to this peculiar existence than the general terms they instantiate. In Thompsons words, there is more than one possible sense of being something. 74 As mentioned above, there would seem to be two obvious problems with the notion of life as sense of being. Let us now consider if these problems can be avoided. a) If life is a sense of being, then existence cannot be univocal. But what could senses of being mean? Mere equivocal uses of the word? 75 Certainly existence would not be understood univocally in this case. However, equivocity is not the only alternative. There is a possible way of conceiving these different senses of being without confusing them with different natures or real predicates. We might undertake a further specification of senses that nevertheless do not fall outside of what it means to exist even if they go beyond the quantifiers answer to the question whether a general term is instantiated. More belongs to existence than the mere what is there?, i. e. of what quality are the existents? These other aspects reflect questions such as what does existence consist in for something or in virtue of what does something exist. With different senses of being, we wont have a least common denominator (LCD) conception of being. An LCD conception applies to all that exists, leaving nothing out, and excludes any aspect that doesnt apply to all existents. The intensional question for the LCD approach is what to include as criteria of existence, without going so far in the requirements that the extension becomes too reduced, and without leaving out aspects that are crucial to existence. For instance, the case could be made that Quines to be is to be the value of a bound variable or quantificational existence are something like the LCD notion of being: to be means at the very least to be the value of a bound variable. Perhaps it might prove useful on this point to consider that life is not an LCD notion according to Aristotle. He does not come up with a LCD concept of living, where life would mean something like, for instance, metabolism, which characterizes all living beings across the board. 76 According also to Michael Thompsons
Cf. Thompson (2008), 18. This is the direction of Putnams arguments against univocity of existence from the standpoint of conceptual relativity: How can the question whether something exists be a matter of convention? The answer, I suggest, is this: what logicians call the existential quantifier, the symbol (9x), and its ordinary language counterparts, the expressions there are, there exist and there exists a, some, etc., do not have a single absolutely precise use but a whole family of uses (Putnam (2004), 37). 76 Aristotle, de An. II 2, 413a266: We resume our inquiry from a fresh starting-point by calling attention to the fact that what has soul in it differs from what has not in that the former displays life. Now this word has more than one sense, and provided any one alone of these is found in a thing we say that thing is living viz. thinking or perception or local movement and rest, or movement in the sense of nutrition, decay and growth. Hence we think of plants also as living, [].
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views, life cannot be defined as a fixed series of characteristics, since the key does not reside in the particular set of predicates but in the peculiar way the living being instantiates them through the context of the life-form. Rather, Aristotles concept of life makes it possible to consider that for a human being to live means thought as well as deliberate action, while for a worm to live means movement and sense of touch, and so on. What is gained by this view is the possibility of integrating within life activities that are specifically human, e. g.thought, instead of excluding them from a humans being alive. Thought must not be excluded from what it means to live, even if not all living beings are able to think. In a parallel way, Aristotelian tradition regards life as paradigmatic sense of being, but does not exclude other senses of what it is to be. There is no attempt to obtain an LCD notion of being just as there is no LCD definition of life. 77 In a similar manner, the property of observer-independent unity due to activity must not be excluded from what it means to be for those objects that have it, even if there are other things which dont have such unity. b) Does life as a sense of being imply existence as a real predicate? When we consider the objections against the thick notion of being, one of the main points is that we should avoid turning being into a real predicate. In fact, the two authors I have discussed offer good reasons to avoid understanding even life as a real predicate. If we are able to avoid this problem regarding the notion of life, there is no reason why life as a sense of being should require conceiving existence as a real predicate. In van Inwagens account, a life is a unity even more basic than the organism: the simples are caught up in a life, the whole organism as part of itself is caught up in its own life. Life is not a real predicate of an individual. Furthermore, Michael Thompson explicitly sees life as a form of being. There is no definition of life as a series of predicates under which living beings fall simply as objects fall under a concept. Indeed, not every single living thing fulfills the series of characteristics that are usually included in the attempt to define life. Life does not consist in a series of characteristics but rather in a peculiar way of instantiating these predicates as expressed in a very particular kind of judgment. 3.1 Senses of Being: a Grounding Structure Beyond Categorial Sorting To what kind of differences do different senses of being refer, then, if not differences in the nature of things? One possibility is to have different senses of existential being that correspond to different categories. 78 Life as different form of being (Thompson) is a categorial difference: a peculiar way of existing and a way of
77 Aristotle is not attempting to give a reductive semantic analysis of the verb to be . [] Rather, he is seeking to defend the claim that exists has different but related senses [] (Charles (2002), 114). 78 This is the position advanced by Owen (1965) and Charles (2002).
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singling something out as observer-independent (an sich, per se). Living beings are singled out as having their criteria of intelligibility in their own nature. 79 In this sense, the question what existence consists in or what it means to exist for different categories could point in the direction of different senses of being that are not different natures or real predicates of things: to exist as a substance is not the same as to exist as a property. To exist as a property means to inhere in a substance, whereas to exist as a substance requires independent, separate existence. The question then, for the Aristotelian, is not just what there is, but how it exists. 80 When we refer to something as living being, we single it out in a particular way. Concepts through which we single things out are sometimes called sortal predicates, but the point here is precisely that they are not really predicates. 81 A problem with this approach arises if these senses of existence only play the role of sorting objects into categories. In that case, they would amount to restricted quantifiers 82 that can always be translated into expressions formed with an unrestricted existential quantifier and necessary predicates that correspond to the differences between categories. 83 In other words, the differences between categories can be expressed as belonging to somethings nature, not to its existence. Do we lose anything when we express different senses of being through different predicates? What we lose is the expression of a grounding structure in the judgment. We lose the possibility of zooming-in, as Thompson says, when he suggests that there are particular forms of judgment that can be considered specific subforms of Freges more abstract ones. The step of zooming-in is a deepening, intensification, condensation, of what it is to be. So it is not false to say that living beings fall under a concept or that they exemplify this and that property, but we can become increasingly specific regarding their peculiar form of being. In this sense, from the Aristotelian point of view, it is not enough to say F exists and F is a quality. Rather, strictly speaking, for F to exist is for S to be F. 84 For a quality F to exist is for a substance or for the appropriate subject to be F. 85 For Aristotle, as Stephen Menn has underlined, different senses of existence (1place being) correspond to different modes of 2place being: grammatik is in the way peculiar to qualities because S is grammatik@ according to the kind of 2 place being signified by quality-predications 86. Since F or F* [the abstract F or the concrete F*, M. G.] is only because some substance S is F*, and since this in turn
79 The concept of a living being is the concept of a being whose proper functioning can be measured on criteria that only result from consideration of its own nature (Hennig (2007), 90). My translation. 80 Cf. Corkum (2008), 76. 81 Hennig (2007), 83. My translation. 82 McDaniel applies this strategy to Heideggerian ways of being, cf. McDaniel (2009), 302 ff. 83 This is in fact van Inwagens objection to McDaniels proposal regarding Heideggerian ways of being. Cf. van Inwagen (2012*). 84 Cf. Menn (2008), 12fn. 85 Menn (2008), esp. 115, refers to this step as an inference from the 1place to the 2place use of is but not as Owen understands it, i. e. not as the categorial sorting of F as in F is a quality. 86 Menn (2008), 12.
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presupposes that S is, 1place being will be said pros hen, primarily of substances and derivatively of the various kinds of non-substances. 87 That is, different categories and their different senses of being are expressed in judgments that make a grounding structure visible. 88 For this reason, it is important to underline Michael Thompsons point that having a life-form cannot be expressed as a predicate through the most abstract form of judgment 9x Fx, but requires a peculiar form of judgment. While Thompson follows Aristotle with his notion of species as form, he considers the form as a general term, and the natural historical judgment as one that marks a categorial difference. In Aristotle, however, we find also the individual aspect of the form as actuality of the potentially living body. This individual form of a living being is not an abstract definitory concept but rather its soul, which is responsible for the operations that keep the organism alive and in existence. Indeed, when Aristotle writes that for living beings, to be is to live, this comes in the context of clarifying that the cause of their being is the cause of their being alive, i. e. their soul. 89 The ontological dependence relation between a substance and its properties is different from that between a substance and its form: the properties are ontologically dependent on the substance; they are, because the substance is. 90 The substantial form, on the other hand, is not in the same sense dependent on the particular substance; on the contrary, the particular is dependent on the form: it is (i. e. exists), because the form determines the matter to move in a certain way. 91 In the case of living beings, the soul as form is the cause of unity of the material constituents, it unifies and organizes matter through its principle of activity. 92 The soul is the first actuality of a body capable of life. 93 For Aristotle, the soul is thus the primary substance as the actuality of a living being. 94 It is the essence (ti n einai) of a living being because it is the answer to the
Menn (2008), 12. [] it will not be enough to establish univocality by pointing to similar patterns of inference involving exists (such as the claim that from Fa we can infer that both a and the property F exists). For they [philosophers interested in the metaphysical grounding of existence claims] will seek some understanding of why these inferences are valid, and for this they will turn to a metaphysical account of what it is for substances or properties to exist (Charles (2002), 125 f.). 89 The soul is the cause or source of the living body. The terms cause and source have many senses. But the soul is the cause of its body alike in all three senses which we explicitly recognize. It is the source of movement, it is the end, it is the essence of the whole living body. That it is the last, is clear; for in everything the essence is identical with the cause of its being, and here, in the case of living things, their being is to live, and of their being and their living the soul in them is the cause or source. Further, the actuality of whatever is potential is identical with its account (De An. II 4, 415b13). 90 Metaph. Z 1, 1028a 2331. 91 Cf. Buchheim (2002), 228 f. 92 But the soul is the cause of being to living things by being the cause, to some S, of the fact that it is living, and Aristotle is here applying his rule that the ousia of F is the cause of the fact that F exists, i. e. the cause, to some appropriate S, of the fact that it is F (or F*) (Menn (2008), 14). 93 De An. II 1, 412a27 f. 94 Indeed, that which exists primarily (in the different senses of primary) is actuality, cf. De An. II 1, 412b9; Metaph. Q 8, 1049b1112.
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question in virtue of what it exists. I can only briefly refer here to this aspect of Aristotelian metaphysics, but it is relevant to the difference between thin and thick notions of being. The investigation of substance asks why is this matter thus, 95 that is, the question what is it for something to be refers to the cause of its existence: 96 not just a set of properties but the conditions that make it capable of instantiating properties at all. According to Aristotle, the investiagtion of essence thus presupposes existence 97: before we ask what it is to be for something, it must be clear that it exists. We might say that essence qualifies being not so much as the what but as the how or why something is; perhaps as an adverb modifies a verb. In this sense, the Aristotelian question what it is to be for something is not reduced to the question what it is that could be answered with a series of first-level predicates, but includes also an understanding of why or in virtue of what an individual exists. 3.2 Thick And Thin Descriptions Finally, are thin and thick existence incompatible? Can they complement each other? Or is the thick notion of being an alternative to the thin notion of being? It seems that, if they are answers to different questions (what is there? and what is it to be?), they shouldnt be incompatible but complementary, as long as they are not understood exclusively. 98 For some purposes it might be useful to recur to the thin notion of being and ignore the perspective of what it is to be for an individual, but ultimately it seems the thick notion of being is able to account for the thin notion of being and not the other way around. Take the example of Ryles thin and thick descriptions of winks. The thinnest possible layer is a twitch of the eye, and a thicker description of the same external fact is a wink, followed by an even thicker reading that is a parody of a wink and so on) 99. The winker is not doing two things: twitching and winking, he is only doing one thing that allows for the different layers of description. 100 Although Ryle is talking about possible descriptions, the reality in question allows or doesnt allow a thicker description. The perspective that can only see a twitch of the eye cannot explain the different possible layers (wink, parody of wink, rehearsal of parody, etc), but the thick perspective can understand what a mere twitch is.
Cf. Metaph. Z 17, 1041b99. Cf. Metaph. Z 17, 1041b28. 97 Cf. APo. II 7, 92b88. 98 There is no problem making room for existence questions on the Aristotelian view rather, the problem is finding any room for grounding questions on the Quinean view (Schaffer (2009), 363). 99 Two boys fairly swiftly contract the eyelids of their right eyes. In the first boy this is only an involuntary twitch; but the other is winking conspiratorially to an accomplice. At the lowest or the thinnest level of description the two contractions of the eyelids may be exactly alike. From a cinematograph-film of the two faces there might be no telling which contraction, if either, was a wink, or which, if either, was a mere twitch. Yet there remains the immense but unphotographable difference between a twitch and a wink (Ryle (1971), 480). 100 Cf. Ryle (1971), 481.
95 96
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The thinnest description of what the rehearsing parodist is doing is, roughly, the same as for the involuntary eyelid twitch; but its thick description is a many-layered sandwich, of which only the bottom slice is catered for by that thinnest description. 101
In a similar way, the thick notion of being allows for different senses, some which have more depth than others, without excluding the thin notion. So in a way, when we talk about nested spheres (with Thompson) or pros hen meaning (Aristotle), we can understand the flat notion better once we take the deeper notions into account. Why should we limit existence to the thinnest description available? Schaffer writes: Permissivism only concerns the shallow question of what exists. One can and should still be restrictive about the deep question of what is fundamental, and one still owes an account of how these very many things exist in virtue of what little is fundamental 102. I agree with Schaffer that the mere question what is there is a shallow one, and it is the question what is fundamental that allows for greater depth. However, it seems Schaffer still keeps some of the Quinean ontological flatness insofar as he separates these two questions. On the one hand, existence is thin and permissive, on the other hand comes the question of grounding. The hierarchical differences for Schaffer belong to the natures of the things in question. However, if being or existence have different senses, being or existence itself is not univocal. Whenever I assume the deeper perspective that allows for a primary sense of being, I will be able to distinguish what is fundamental from what is derivative or in a secondary sense. Whenever I take the thin perspective that does not distinguish what it is to be for something or in virtue of what something exists, then I will not be able to see the distinctions, and I will not even be able to envision how a structured scala could emerge from the flat domain. It is only from the thick standpoint that I am able to see the differences in depth of being and the way that some of the spheres emerge by zooming-in or by intensification out of the more abstract mode of consideration. If we understand being in the Aristotelian dictum in its existential use, and can conceive of life as a sense of being, then the point is precisely that we dont have to separate existence from life. We dont need to have a flat, thin notion of being and then pack life into differences of nature or real predicates. Existence itself has different senses. 103 4. Advantages of a Richer Notion of Being It seems, then, that the notion of life as a sense of being brings up some aspects of existence that the existential quantifier does not exhaust. What do we gain, ultimately, with a richer notion of being? To sum up, I shall briefly mention four points:
Ryle (1971), 482. Schaffer (2009), 361. 103 The fact that a living being lives cannot be split into two facts that are independent of each other: on the one hand, that it exists, on the other that it is a living being (Hennig (2007), 82). My translation.
101 102
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a) Different questions beyond the extensional what is there As I have noted, the thin notion of being is characterized by concentrating exclusively on what there is. By broadening our perspective on existence, we might take on other questions that belong to the study of being, such as: what it is for something to be, what existence consists in, in virtue of what something exists. Not only our notion of being but the whole ontological inquiry becomes richer and more varied. b) Grasping of relevant differences in the way things exist As mentioned above, the different senses of being would not refer to different properties or different natures of things, but to differences regarding what their existence consists in. These are differences of categories and can be said to belong to existence. In this sense, we might say that living beings exist in fact in a primary sense, that is, to use Aristotelian vocabulary, they are substances 104. From the point of view of the thick notion of being, other things that do not have unity independent of an observer still exist, but they do so in a lesser or even derivative way. In this way, van Inwagens strategy of admitting talk of chairs only as improper language that should be paraphraseable when speaking ontologically, fits the notion that things like chairs exist but only in a non-primary sense. David Charles sums up this advantage when he comments on a possible objection regarding the interpretation that Aristotle maintains different senses of exists:
Similarly, it will be said, there are many different ways in which different types of entity may enter into the realms of existence (some by the substance route, some by the quality route, etc.), but all will in the end arrive in the same place. They will all be existents. In each case the number of the relevant existents will be greater than zero. Why should exists differ in sense while traveling does not? [] the analogy rests on the assumption that, just as Rome is the endpoint of all the journeys mentioned, so there is one thing, existence, which is achieved by all existents. But this is precisely what Cautious Aristotle is concerned to deny. In his view, what it is for a substance to exist will be different in kind from what it is for a quality to exist. While the existence of a quality depends on its belonging to some substance, the existence of a substance does not depend on its belonging to anything. This difference in metaphysical understanding of what it is for qualities and substances to exist is reflected (according to Cautious Aristotle) in the differing senses of the verb to exist in these cases. 105
In fact, Aristotle considers different senses of being that are not only limited to differences among categories, but reflect a more varied, plural ontology than a single hierarchy of nested spheres. 106
Charles (2002), 113. Charles (2002), 125. 106 Aristotle gives different divisions of senses of being: Metaph. G 2, 1003b110; D 7, 1017a8b9; Z 1, 1028a1113; H 2, 1042b2228; Q 10, 1051a34b3. Cf. Llano (2005), esp. 111182, for a useful comparison of analytic and Aristotelian senses of being.
104 105
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c) Grounding in relation to existence These categorial senses of being play a role in the structure of grounding that is important to philosophers like Schaffer, but which he does not relate to existence at all. However, as Charles argues, different senses of being that are not merely equivocal but structured according to a focal meaning, will appeal to philosophers who think that a full account of what we understand in grasping terms such as exist should reflect our understanding of the metaphysical grounding of existence claims. 107 The rich notion of being does not exclude distinctions of fundamentality. For this reason, it allows for differences in depth and thus different senses of being. d) Individual, per se existence A further advantage of the thick notion of being is to be able to address the existence of the individual, what it means for something to be, instead of just considering its existence from our point of view as drawers of boundaries and thinkers of sets. In contrast to the thin notion of being, it is existence per se or an sich that can have different senses. The denial of the number nought cannot have different senses because it also cannot grasp what it is to be for the thing itself. With the thick notion of being we take the step from the merely extensional to the intensional consideration of existence, and also from our position as observers and speakers to the perspective of an existence of the thing itself. In fact, van Inwagen intends to take this step when he speaks of metaontology as intensional approach 108 and when he develops a strict notion of being that includes observer-independent unity. But the thin notion of being that he defends does not seem to be the best suited one for this purpose. While Quine made ontology respectable in the analytic tradition, he still focuses on the problem inherited from logical positivism: which terms have a reference? The question for him is what is there?, understood as of what kind or quality are the existents? Instead of asking whether a certain word is being used to name, he asks whether something or other is F, where F can be any predicate, including singular proper names or category words. This approach makes it possible to level any different types of variables and any predicates assigned to them, and this has advantages from the standpoint of logical operations. However, it seems that ontology should also be able to ask what it is to be beyond the mere being the reference of a term in a language that has been adopted. At least it should be possible to ask the question what existence consists in for something, and if we do, there is no ontological reason to reduce the individual we are considering to an indistinct x and flatten all possible predicates (categorial differences, grounding hierarchies) to the same level. We are able to ask what it means for something to exist, and not just what it is for something to be the reference of our term. In that case, the aspect of the individuals per se existence comes into play. Indeed, an ontological consideration of living beings leads to a de-flattening of what began as a mainly logical
107 108
Charles (2002), 125 f. Cf. footnote 59.
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understanding of existence, and requires taking different questions than what is there, and different senses of being into account. 109 BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Abbreviations
Aristotle de An. De Anima Metaph. Metaphysics APo. Posterior Analytics English translation: Aristotle, The Complete Works Of Aristotle. The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. J. Barnes, v. I, Princeton/Oxford, 1984.
2. Further Bibliography
Anscombe, G. E. M./Geach, P. T. (1961), Three Philosophers, Oxford. Berti, E. (2002), Being and Essence in Contemporary Interpretations of Aristotle, in: A. Bottani/M. Carrara/P. Giaretta (eds.), Individuals, Essence and Identity. Themes of analytic metaphysics, Dordrecht/ Boston, 79107. Brown, L. (1994), The verb to be in Greek philosophy, in: S. Everson (ed.), Language (= Companions to ancient thought 3), Cambridge, 212236. Buchheim, Th. (2002), Was heit Immanenz der Formen bei Aristoteles?, in: Archiv fr Geschichte der Philosophie 84, 222231. Carnap, R. (1950), Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology, in: Revue Internationale De Philosophie 4, 24 40. Charles, D. (2002) Some Comments on Prof. Enrico Bertis Being and Essence in Contemporary Interpretations of Aristotle, in: A. Bottani/M. Carrara/P. Giaretta (eds.), Individuals, Essence and Identity. Themes of analytic metaphysics, Dordrecht/Boston, 109126. Corkum, Ph. (2008), Aristotle on Ontological Dependence, in: Phronesis 53, 6992. Frege, G. (1983), Dialog mit Pnjer ber Existenz, in: G. Frege, Nachgelassene Schriften, Hamburg, 67 75. (1961) Grundlagen der Arithmetik, Darmstadt. Geach, P. T. (1994a), Form and Existence, in: P. Geach, God and the Soul, Bristol. (1994b), What Actually Exists, in: P. Geach, God and the Soul, Bristol. (1980), Reference and Generality, Ithaca/London. Hennig, B. (2007), Der Fortbestand von Lebewesen. Aus Anlass von Marianne Scharks Lebewesen versus Dinge, in: Allgemeine Zeitschrift fr Philosophie 32, 8991. Hbner, J. (2007), Komplexe Substanzen, Berlin/New York. Kahn, Ch. (2009), Essays on Being, Oxford. Kripke, S. (1980), Naming and necessity, Cambridge, MA. Laycock, H, (2010), Object, in: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition), E. N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/object/. Llano, A. (2005), Metaphysics and Language, Olms. Mansion, S. (1946), Le jugement dexistence chez Aristote, Paris. McDaniel, K. (2009), Ways of Being, in: D. Chalmers/D. Manley/R. Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics, Oxford, 290319. McGinn, C. (2000), Logical Properties: Identity, Existence, Predication, Necessity, Truth, Oxford.
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I would like to thank Paul Schilling, Wilhelm Vossenkuhl, Erasmus Mayr, Thomas Buchheim, Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer and Alex Plato for their helpful comments.
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Menn, S. (2008*), Aristotle on the Many Senses of Being, Princeton Classical Philosophy Colloquium, December 2008, unpublished manuscript. Miller, B. (2002), The Fullness of Being, Notre Dame. (1975), In Defence of the Predicate Exists, in: Mind 84. (1973), Proper Names and Their Distinctive Sense, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 51/3. Owen, G. E. L. (1965) Aristotle and the Snares of Ontology, in: R. Bambrough (ed.), New Essays on Plato and Aristotle, London, 6995. Putnam, H. (2004), Ethics Without Ontology, Cambridge, MA. Quine, W. V. O. (2008), Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist, in: W. V. O. Quine, Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist and Other Essays, Cambridge, MA. (1992), Pursuit of Truth, Cambridge, MA. (1969a), Existence and Quantification in: W. V. O. Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York/London. (1969b), Reply to Strawson, in: D. Davidson/J. Hintikka (eds.), Words and Objections. Essays on the Work of W. V. Quine, Dordrecht. (1960), Word and Object, Cambridge, MA, 1960. (1953), On What There Is, in: From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA. (1951), On Carnaps Views on Ontology, in: Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 5/2, 6772. Ryle, G. (1971), The Thinking of Thoughts. What is le Penseur doing?, in: G. Ryle, Collected Papers, v. 2, London, 484496. Schaffer, J. (2009), On What Grounds What, in: D. Chalmers/D. Manley/R. Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics. New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, Oxford, 343383. Schark, M. (2005), Lebewesen versus Dinge, Berlin/New York. Shields, Ch. (2002), Order in Multiplicity, Oxford. Spaemann, R. (2010), ber die Bedeutung der Worte ist, existiert und es gibt, in: Philosophisches Jahrbuch 117/I, 119. Stekeler-Weithofer, P. (1986), Grundprobleme der Logik, Berlin. Strawson, P. (1969), Singular Terms and Predication, in: D. Davidson/J. Hintikka (eds.), Words and Objections. Essays on the Work of W. V. Quine, Dordrecht. Thompson, M. (2008), Life and Action, Cambridge, MA. Tugendhat, E. (1967) Die sprachanalytische Kritik der Ontologie, in: H.-G. Gadamer (ed.), Das Problem der Sprache. Achter Deutscher Kongress fr Philosophie, Heidelberg/Mnchen, 483493. Van Inwagen, P. (2012*), A Problem for McDaniels Heidegger: the Problem of Mixed Inferences, unpublished manuscript. (2008), McGinn on Existence, in: The Philosophical Quarterly 58, 3558. (2001), Ontology, Identity, and Modality. Essays in Metaphysics, Cambridge. (1998), Meta-ontology in: Erkenntnis 48, 232250. (1990), Material Beings, Ithaca/London. mgarcia@lmu.de

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Vivere viventibus est esse?

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Schwerpunktthema: Beitrge zu einer Philosophie des Lebens

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Vivere viventibus est esse?

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Schwerpunktthema: Beitrge zu einer Philosophie des Lebens

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Vivere viventibus est esse?

Schwerpunktthema: Beitrge zu einer Philosophie des Lebens

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Vivere viventibus est esse?

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Schwerpunktthema: Beitrge zu einer Philosophie des Lebens

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Vivere viventibus est esse?

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Schwerpunktthema: Beitrge zu einer Philosophie des Lebens

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Vivere viventibus est esse?

358 2.2 Unity

Schwerpunktthema: Beitrge zu einer Philosophie des Lebens

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Vivere viventibus est esse?

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Schwerpunktthema: Beitrge zu einer Philosophie des Lebens

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Vivere viventibus est esse?

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Schwerpunktthema: Beitrge zu einer Philosophie des Lebens

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Vivere viventibus est esse?

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Schwerpunktthema: Beitrge zu einer Philosophie des Lebens

Cf. also Hennig (2007), 83.

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Vivere viventibus est esse?

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Schwerpunktthema: Beitrge zu einer Philosophie des Lebens

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Vivere viventibus est esse?

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Schwerpunktthema: Beitrge zu einer Philosophie des Lebens

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Vivere viventibus est esse?

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Schwerpunktthema: Beitrge zu einer Philosophie des Lebens

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Vivere viventibus est esse?

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Schwerpunktthema: Beitrge zu einer Philosophie des Lebens

Charles (2002), 125 f. Cf. footnote 59.

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

Vivere viventibus est esse?

Schwerpunktthema: Beitrge zu einer Philosophie des Lebens

Phil. Jahrbuch 119. Jahrgang / II (2012)

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