You are confusing language with meaning. The word “existence” varies but its meaning does not change: it has been, is and always will be the opposite of non-existence.
Meaning is something each person assigns to a symbol. Consider “spider”. I have a general idea of “spider” in my brain which I match with certain things that I see, and that I also match with the symbol “spider”. An arachnologist will also have an idea of “spider” in her brain, which is far more detailed than my internal idea and is built on her years of reading and study of spiders. An arachnophobe also has an idea of “spider” in his brain, and that idea contains a large amount of sheer terror as well as something similar to my idea.
There are three different “meanings” connected to the symbols “spider”. Which is correct? All, some or none of them? It is impossible for us to directly sense the spider as all our senses are indirect – they reduce to electrical impulses arriving on our sensory nerves. The brain matches patterns in the incoming impulses and retrieves the match “spider” from its internal storage. Each of us has our own individual matching pattern for “spider” in our heads, built from our own personal experiences.
Your internal pattern will differ, at least slightly, from my internal pattern. Neither of us has any direct contact with the external spider. Even our sense of touch is electrical impulses from sensors in the skin transmitted along nerves to the brain.
There may be a real external entity that we match with “spider”. There may merely be a bit-pattern in some Matrix-style computer feeding impulses along our nerves. We cannot tell the difference.
Does the external spider exist, in absolute terms? Does any of our internal spider-images exist in absolute terms? Can we prove the absolute existence of any of these things, bearing in mind the possibility that the whole thing is an elaborate Matrix-style virtual reality simulation?
I will grant you the contingent existence of the external spider as a convenient way of dealing with a world that seems to be reasonably consistent. I will not grant any absolute existence unless you have an absolute proof to show me.
A contingent proof can only prove a contingent existence.
Facts are eternal, immutable and destructible.
If they are immutable then they cannot be destroyed. If they can be destroyed then they are not immutable. Was “indestructible” intended here?
rossum
