OK, off we go then, and we're in the third corner, and this is the first subject, we're going to
talk about a very kind of heavy subject area, its subjects and more generically, we're going to talk
about existence.
So objects exists and therefore we need to touch upon the very important concept that the concept about
existence.
I'm going to go into a number of different issues related to existence and also try to make the the
term existence a little bit more clear and maybe also a little bit more problematic.
So let's but let's start simple.
What objects are there out there in the world if we think about them?
And if you think about that objects exist, we think that this word existence is quite familiar for
us.
We have quite easy.
The word existence is something that we feel very familiar with.
But also when we start trying to think about where it is, it becomes very elusive.
If we think about just concrete objects like material stuff, you can you can have your hands on them,
then it's very easy, of course, to think about like small rocks or stones here or a tree or actually
a car.
But really, if you think about what things that we tend to think exists or treat us, they exist.
There's a lot more out there.
So we also think that, for example, events and numbers and products and agreements and so on and so
on also exists.
You have a degree, for example, and you think that this degree exists even if it's not on paper and
still exist.
Right.
And you have made an agreement here.
But what is about those two hands are shaking that makes that to count as an agreement.
And this is very it's a little bit harder because there's nothing you can take on, you can take on
the hounds, but you don't take on the agreement if you just touch the hands.
Right.
So maybe it's anything.
So anything that we think is an object might be an object.
So anything that may be presented to the mind could be an object of thought.
But that's also very, very generic, so I would like to go into some different aspects of it is being
an object and also what existence is about here.
And then we'll see in the end of this whole corner actually what we can do with it.
So it started with the simple one, start with concrete objects.
So concrete objects have only spatiotemporal properties.
And what do we mean by that?
So spacially is about space and temporal is about time.
So what we mean is that they are are out they are in the space and in some sense, so they occupy space
in some sense.
And they also exist for a little while longer period than just a nanosecond.
Usually that's what we tend to think, at least if they're objects.
So if I had a rock in my hand a second ago, I probably will also think that I will have this rock in
my hand a couple of seconds after this.
So the most natural thing here are to think about like natural objects, like mountains and trees and
rocks, etc., of course, as concrete objects.
But of course, there are more things that are also very concrete and also have spatiotemporal properties.
Think about the human material objects out there in the world.
But do they actually exist in the same way as the natural objects, think about this woman here.
So is this woman, even if she's always travelling upside down, if she's still a woman.
I will tend to say yes and that she is a woman, but she is always upside down, which is a little strange
maybe, but she is in this situation.
Right.
But then take this second example.
So is this still a table, even if it's always placed upside down and stuck to the floor?
Hmm.
Maybe not.
I would say because I cannot use it as a table, but as soon it is placed in the right on his legs,
so to speak, then it is a table.
If I just put it upside down for one second, then I probably think it's a table as well.
But if it's always upside down and it's actually stuck to the floor, then maybe not on the table anymore.
So even spatiotemporal objects on concrete objects is also tied to something else than just the spatiotemporal
aspect of it.
So no one will talk about the word is a little bit, because this is what we use to denote existence,
but we also use the word to denote different other things that is not directly related to existence.
So therefore, it could be good to delve into a little bit of the details of the different usages of
the word is.
So the first use of it is actually existence.
The second use of it is identity.
The third use of the word is is predication and the fourth uses for general implication.
I would go through four different examples here.
So you understand what I'm what I mean with that.
So we take the is out of existence first.
Socrates is.
So that's a very common sentence in philosophy as well.
So the only thing we're saying here is that there is a man called Socrates or there's something called
Socrates.
And you do know that if you're using predicate logic here, you will say that it exists in X so that
X equals Socrates.
OK, so that's the gist of existence, then we have the issue of identity, and that's a little bit
different.
And here's also a very, very common philosophy, philosophical example.
So we're saying that Hesperus is phosphorous.
I don't know if you Hesperus and Prospero's is, but Hesperus and Phosphorus Theming Star in the Morning
Star.
I never remember which, though, but, uh, so in the back in the old days, they call them Hesperus
Phosphorus and they actually thought they were two different objects.
Then we found out that they were actually the same.
It's the morning star in the evening starts the same thing.
So we and it's not even a star, but I mean, you know that as well.
But so then we actually are saying that Hesperus equals phosphorus.
So then we talking about identity.
So here we OzEmail actually only have two different words for the same object.
And then we can talk about is for in terms of predication.
So we can say that Socrates is why that is not saying that Socrates exists.
That is saying that Socrates have a property, which is an instance of a general concept called wiseness
or a general term so that we could, you know, do some pretty good logic as this.
So wise, Socrates.
So there is a function here for wiseness and Socrates is having property.
And then the fourth one is the is some general indication, so here we are using is are on general terms
or concepts.
So we can say the man is an animal, what we don't mean is that are for all X, if X is a man, then
X is also an animal.
So that's a general implication and we will we have different ways of modeling all those types of things
using the model language we can talk about later.
This is called actually inheritance.
So, man, a subset of all animals.
So that's the four different usages of the term, yes, which could be a little bit good to have a couple
of minutes.
The other thing that is very common to talk about when talking about objects is that objects usually
are not just simple.
They could be complexes of objects.
So you can have objects out of objects.
And that is called either of the whole area that is handling this in philosophy is called Mary, Mary,
Mary ology, sorry, biology.
And the it's also called aggregation.
And you can call it whole part of it.
So you have a whole part relationship between different objects.
So one is a part of a larger whole and you can call that a larger whole is aggregating smaller parts
as well.
But the interesting thing here, which is kind of poses the logical problem here, is that when it's
an object composed of parts, that is not that simple.
Actually, let's look at a couple of examples.
You will see that it becomes very, very hard to say.
Do they need to be in contact, for example?
Do they actually have to have physical contact to be a part of the whole let's look at that, but that
means that if that is the case, then an item is not an object, right?
Because it's kind of that's the nature of an object.
The electrons can never actually touches on each other and they've been never touched to the core,
you know, in the in the atom.
So they will never meet.
And hence an object, an atom wouldn't be an object in that case.
And that's wrong.
Right.
So we cannot have it conditionally that they need to be in contact.
But let's say then that they need to be with some force.
Why collectively fastened to each other?
OK, but how much fast and must it be to each other?
So if we have this and we call this a deck of cards, yeah, we think of that as one object.
But is it still a deck of cards?
If I spread them around, we tend to think, yeah, it's still a deck of cards.
We're playing with one deck of cards, but we have those 52 different parts and there are many different
places at the same time.
OK, still that one deck of cards.
Right.
Or we have this to woman thing.
So if two people shake hands and their fingers stuck, are they then one object?
If they stuck for a very long time, I would say definitely not.
I will definitely say that they are still two different winners here, two different women.
So maybe there are no composite objects at all.
That's one conclusion to come to only marry a logical simples.
And that's the term to use here.
If there are no composition's out there, then they're just simple, small, small, small objects.
But that is also very problematic.
Right, because if there is only a small, small, small simples, then there are no human beings at
all.
So where is the identity then?
So how could a human being actually exist with an identity if there's only the smallest, smallest,
smallest, mean all or equal symbols to actually exist?
So we have a very natural way of looking upon our identity and ourselves as a person that we are actually
a composition of a lot of objects.
OK, but what we're trying to find here is if there is one general rule to say when an object consists
of other objects, so this becomes a little bit hard to think about, you see that directly.
So the thing that we thought was very, very simple when we started this lecture about those concrete
objects already now start to be very elusive.
What really existence about.
If you take this from a completely different angle and not focusing on objects, maybe it is the way
that existence is just a second level feature that applies to concepts and not objects at all.
So maybe we are saying that the we're looking on the concept of car and say, does the car have instances?
So this is a little bit related also to when we talked about conceptual anatomies, Atomism in the philosophy
of mind section.
So to say that something exist is to say that a concept has instances that not since.
That means if you have that way of looking at it, that it's in the concert.
So in this way, the existence of a composition is dependent on the concepts we have and not a specific
feature of the physical object.
So it's not actually the case that objects are composed of our object.
It's the case that we have concepts that tend to associate with other concepts.
And when we find instances for that whole kind of graph, we tend to also think those instances as composed
of each other.
And this yeah, this is a famous also example.
I don't know if you want what you see, you can see a rabbit, for example.
Looking in to the right, or you can see your duck looking to your left.
So what is the object here?
Is this a duck or is it a rabbit or is it the famous duck rabbit?
So where do you have the the the is the existence criteria here?
Is it on the object or is it on the.
Uh, the concept.
Or take this example, so we have ABC, right, we tend to think that the middle the middle character
here, the middle letter is a B, right?
It's a B in the same way that soccer does is that we have an existence of a letter B here.
Right.
Like that.
But isn't that quite contextualized?
Because is it still A B if I do like that.
Probably not, and we think about it as 13.
So how we categorize and how we say that different things exist as instances or concepts is very much
related to the conceptual apparatus that we use to understand the real world.
And that's Canada and discussion in this first lecture about objects, and we will come back to those
problems later on.
So here I'm just introducing some a little bit problematic notions about what it is to be an object
and what its existence is about.
Good.
So now will rush into properties and relations.
Silvera.