more from this thinker     |     more from this text

Single Idea 7022

[filed under theme 7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 6. Criterion for Existence ]

Full Idea

A thing really is if it has any capacity, either by nature to do something to something else or to have even the smallest thing done to it by the most trivial thing, even if it only happens once. I'll define those which are as nothing other than capacity.

Gist of Idea

To be is to have a capacity, to act on other things, or to receive actions

Source

Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 247e)

Book Ref

Plato: 'Complete Works', ed/tr. Cooper,John M. [Hackett 1997], p.269

A Reaction

If philosophy is footnotes to Plato, this should be the foundational remark in all discussions of existence (though Parmenides might claim priority). It seems to say 'to be is to have a causal role (active or passive)'. It also seems essentialist.

Related Idea

Idea 2329 Causal power is a good way of distinguishing the real from the unreal [Kim]

The 33 ideas with the same theme [what is the hallmark for deciding what exists?]:

7022 To be is to have a capacity, to act on other things, or to receive actions [Plato]
527 Everything exists which anyone perceives [Metrodorus of Chios]
20860 Whatever participates in substance exists [Zeno of Citium, by Stobaeus]
5992 Chrysippus says action is the criterion for existence, which must be physical [Chrysippus, by Tieleman]
16660 Are things distinct if they are both separate, or if only one of them can be separate? [Duns Scotus, by Pasnau]
12554 Existences can only be known by experience [Locke]
19393 What is not active is nothing [Leibniz]
3952 I know that nothing inconsistent can exist [Berkeley]
18995 Frege mistakenly takes existence to be a property of concepts, instead of being about things [Frege, by Yablo]
18899 Frege takes the existence of horses to be part of their concept [Frege, by Sommers]
18521 The criterion of existence is the possibility of action [Santayana]
14173 What exists has causal relations, but non-existent things may also have them [Russell]
3534 To be is to have causal powers [Alexander,S]
7680 Ontology is possible only as phenomenology [Heidegger]
16965 All we have of general existence is what existential quantifiers express [Quine]
19277 Quine rests existence on bound variables, because he thinks singular terms can be analysed away [Quine, by Hale]
1633 Absolute ontological questions are meaningless, because the answers are circular definitions [Quine]
9811 It is of the essence of being to appear [Badiou]
14746 What exists can't depend on our conceptual scheme, and using all conceptual schemes is too liberal [Sider on Wiggins]
6062 Existence can't be analysed as instantiating a property, as instantiation requires existence [McGinn]
6065 We can't analyse the sentence 'something exists' in terms of instantiated properties [McGinn]
12216 Real objects are those which figure in the facts that constitute reality [Fine,K]
12218 Being real and being fundamental are separate; Thales's water might be real and divisible [Fine,K]
8300 Perhaps possession of causal power is the hallmark of existence (and a reason to deny the void) [Lowe]
4768 The 'epistemic fallacy' is inferring what does exist from what can be known to exist [Psillos]
12447 That all existents have causal powers is unknowable; the claim is simply an epistemic one [Azzouni]
9501 If all existents are causally active, that excludes abstracta and causally isolated objects [Bird]
18480 Maybe it only exists if it is a truthmaker (rather than the value of a variable)? [MacBride]
19654 We must give up the modern criterion of existence, which is a correlation between thought and being [Meillassoux]
14942 Only admit into ontology what is explanatory and predictive [Ladyman/Ross]
14948 To be is to be a real pattern [Ladyman/Ross]
14493 Existence might require playing a role in explanation, or in a causal story, or being composed in some way [Thomasson]
18917 Existence and nonexistence are characteristics of the world, not of objects [Engelbretsen]