existence?

Question

is there a way to prove that existence in itself exists

if you can't define something can it really exist at all so can you define existence

Answer 1

We are here , That's all I know.
How we got here I don't know, but I guess we exist.

Answer 2

Kant said that existence is not an attribute. You take a red apple. Take away the red, the roundness, the weight; et cetera. cetra. and you will not find something left over called existence. On the other side you have Descartes saying "I think, therefore I am." Meaning that of all things that are doubious I cannot, at least, doubt that I am here doubting. The question of being has not been settled. Heidegger would have us go back and redo the entire history of philosophy leaving out the Greeks. Good luck and good question.

Answer 3

Define "existence"

Answer 4

Can you define what "midnight" is to somebody who has never seen a clock? Can you define what cold is without a thermometer? I tell you, it would be a tough concept. So, it would be with answering your question. Don't lose any sleep over this one. You exist because you are able to ask questions. Is that good enough for you?

Answer 5

Argument by Parmenides: "It rains"; there is no subject for this impersonal verb because it expresses the simple fact of raining without specifying what is doing the raining.
Plato: this impersonal verb has subject embedded in the root/substance (the source of the all sub-sources) of rain - THE RAIN.
Through my own experience the cause of raining is confined to true love and to the actions of good people…to make life better. It's the only way to prove the proof of existence.

Answer 6

We know we exist when we become conscious and intensely aware of our individuality, the specialness of our own being. We bcome capable of questioning ourselves, existence precedes essence; that is, meaning can only be aplied to what already is within an individual's experience. Man can define his existence by three traits: mood(or feeling), understanding, and speech this according to Heidegger which traits he called 'existentialia' and the philosophic tradition deried from his theories is known as 'existentialism'.
Plato insisted, man must become conscious of his bodily functions, appetites, and his reason to know with transcendence the essence of his existence parallelizing with Heidegger. Kant believed that man must be able to understand sense perception he experiences in his world, and transcend above reasoning in order for him to understand his presence in this universe.
Descartes believed man is consisted of two substances, the mind and the body(dualism) suggesting the mind and the body make contact through the pineal gland. He also pioneered his theory of absolute truth(distinctness and clarity) of premises that the mind is able to bring forth-that ideas indeed are thought about clearly and distinctly by a thinking mind(I think therefore I am). In here there is an existing knower who should advocate the trueness of what is being thought about.
For my prsonal experience, I exist because i am able to understand and rationalize this world I am in with transcendence. I dont just follow its laws and patterns, I say no to fate if I must, . I feel,see with my senses, i react with my emotions, and lastly I care interdependently with my brethren.

Answer 7

Not so long as you can question the very existence of the proof itself. The best that you can ever hope to get from logic is proof of in ternal consistancy (that is, no contradictions).
See Immanuel Kants' 'Critique of Pure Reason' and Kurt Gödels' Incompleteness Theorem.

As Spock observed, "Logic is only the beginning of wisdom."

Doug

Answer 8

Existence of what? There is only one thing I am sure of, there is perception. I know this for I experience this perceive, therefore something exists even if it is only a perception. if something exists than existence exists.

Answer 9

In general, I think you'll be a lot more relaxed and less timid in your life if you come to realize that humanity's existence is quite abstract and absurd.

Answer 10

Like many philosophically interesting notions, existence is at once familiar and rather elusive. Although we have no more trouble with using the verb ‘exists’ than with the two-times table, there is more than a little difficulty in saying just what existence is. Existing seems to be at least as mundane as walking or being hungry. Yet, when we say ‘Tom is hungry’ or ‘Tom is walking’, it may be news to those not in Tom's vicinity, whereas ‘Tom exists’ would be news to no one who knew Tom, and merely puzzling to anyone who did not. Again, we know what it is like to be hungry or to walk, but what is it like to exist, what kind of experience is that? Is it perhaps the experience of being oneself, of being identical with oneself? Yet again, we can readily indicate what is meant by Tom's walking, but surely Tom's existing is not something we can indicate to anyone. On the face of it, there would seem to be no way at all in which we can explain what existing is.

It may be tempting to think that ‘Tom exists’ means merely ‘Tom is real’. In fact, this could be distinctly appealing, for ‘real’ is what has been called an ‘excluder’ predicate, meaning thereby that it attributes nothing positive to Tom, but operates in a purely negative fashion simply to exclude Tom from being imaginary, mythical, fictional, and the like. To say that ‘exists’ meant ‘is real’ would be to say inter alia that it attributed nothing positive to Tom; and that would do much to relieve our frustration at being so fluent in our use of ‘exists’ despite having no idea of its attributing anything positive to Tom. It would be a relief to discover that ‘exists’ attributes nothing positive to him at all.

Unfortunately, this won't do; for among all the negatives that ‘is real’ might be applying to Tom would be not only ‘not imaginary’, ‘not mythical’, etc., but also ‘not nonexistent’. Now, suppose a seer predicted that in two years that a son would be born to Bill and Mary, and that he would be called ‘Tom’. When the prediction was finally fulfilled, we might imagine the seer announcing triumphantly ‘At last Tom exists, exactly as I predicted he would’. If ‘exists’ were an excluder like ‘is real’, then the seer could only be understood as excluding something from Tom; and in this case it would be non-existence. As said by the seer, therefore, ‘At last Tom exists’ could only mean ‘At last Tom is not-nonexistent’. And if he really were to mean that, we should be entitled to ask him just when Tom could ever have been said to be nonexistent, i.e. never to have existed. In fact, before he existed Tom could never even have been referred to, and hence at that time nothing at all could have been attributed to him, not even the property of being nonexistent. Promising as it may have seemed, therefore, ‘Tom exists’ is not to be understood simply as ‘Tom is real’.

Of course, the failure of attempts to understand ‘exists’ as ‘is real’ leaves plenty of room for other suggestions, each proposing to substitute one or more terms for ‘exists’, and thereby to show why our original disquiet about it and existence has been sadly misplaced. If one thinks that ‘exists’ is readily dispensable in favour of some other (less troublesome) expression, then there will be no difficulty in dismissing the thought of there being some such property or attribute as existence. Alternatively, if one thinks that ‘exists’ is not to be dispensed with in this way, then one might be inclined to continue pursuing the puzzle of just what existence is.

It is probably now reasonably clear that the question of existence is inextricably intertwined with the question of ‘exists’. In some languages, the predicate ‘is’ does duty for ‘exists’, and even in English there are archaic uses of ‘is’ in that role. In discussing existence, therefore, we shall be much concerned also with the predicates ‘is’ and ‘exists’.