(July 7, 2016 at 4:02 pm)Ignorant Wrote:Hmmm.... let me try this...pocaracas Wrote: An "action" of a thing is not a thing, then.... it is... wait for it... a PROPERTY.
Then describe the property. If you can describe the property of 'existence' in an adequate way that is not a thing's 'being' or 'acting' in some way, then I'll buy that existence is not an action.
[cheating through wiki] "Existence is commonly held to be that which objectively persists independent of one's presence."
But this makes no sense, to me...
Keep searching.... from the same wiki, this is curious... "A scientist might make a clear distinction about objects that exist, and assert that all objects that exist are made up of either matter or energy. But in the layperson's worldview, existence includes real, fictional, and even contradictory objects."
Are we before a second version of mixing up two concepts with the same word?
A thing with matter or energy is defined as existing. it's matter or energy properties imply existence, it seems. So... existence is a "conditional property"(?)
(July 7, 2016 at 4:02 pm)Ignorant Wrote:Are you saying that a "conceptual electron" is the same as a "real electron"?Quote:An electron has the property of existing in the real world. It has many other properties, too.... charge, mass, velocity, energy. All those properties, taken together, let us make the identification of "electron". A conceptual electron, one used by physicists when doing calculations, has no property of existing in the real world.
This illustrates your problem nicely. You say that a conceptual electron does not have the 'property' of existence, but it still has the properties of charge, mass, velocity, energy, etc. Fine. If there is a real electron, it has the property of existence. Remove the property of existence, and there is merely a conceptual electron, but still an electron.
What happens if we apply the same to a different property. Suppose there is a real electron. Remove only the property of 'charge'. Is an electron still existing? No. Is whatever-it-is still existing? Yes. So if existence is a property and not an act, then it is a radically different sort of property than the others. When a conceptual electron is being, then it is existing. If it is not, then it is merely conceptual.
All other properties are the same so we can still call it an electron, but there's a difference between the two, wouldn't you say?