"Existence exists". This is one of the three primary axioms in Objectivism. Today's post is not about its validity or validation - many people have done that by now, including myself (link in the comments), and quite frankly, it's rather boring. Instead, I will unpack a few of the axiom's interesting implications.
The first implication is what I call the "self-sufficiency of existence". Existence exists - it is not made to exist by some external factor, whether that is a deity, as countless religions claim, or "pre-existing laws of nature", as the Stephen Hawking type of
physicists often argue for. Both of these ideas, although superficially different, share the same flaw - they assume the existence of something which, by its very definition, does not exist. In other words, existence does not need, and cannot have a "cause", a "starting point", or a "precondition", because something that does not exist cannot act or effect change. If something did create the universe as we know it, it would be part of existence as much as its creation, and would abide by the same fundamental rules.
The second implication is what I call the "unity of existence". Mystics, whether religious or secular, often postulate the existence of different realities, with different identities - a "natural world" and a "supernatural" one. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic notions of hell and paradise are clear examples of this type of belief, but there are less obvious, and therefore more insidious instances of it. Philosophers and scientists who see the mind or the soul as fundamentally different from physical phenomena, for example, make the same mistake as every other mystic - they split existence into "the realm of matter" and "the realm of the mind/soul". This necessarily leads one to the belief that certain fundamental aspects of existence, such as identity, do not apply to one of the "realms".
The "brain in a vat" (BIV) thought experiment is a good example of such a mistake. Simply put, the BIV is the hypothesis that all we experience could be an illusion caused by of some sort of "mad scientist" stimulating parts of our brain in a laboratory. It is essentially a pseudo-philosophical version of the old Buddhist belief that this world is an illusion which keeps us from experiencing Nirvana. The axiom of existence does not contradict these ideas per se, as our hypothetical deluded mind would still be something that exists - the idea contradicts itself, as it relies on observations of the very reality it rejects. People who indulge these ideas, however, often do so because it allows them to split existence in half - the "real half", which is absolute and unknowable, and the "illusory half", which can be thought of as a Matrix-like experience, which can be bent to our desires.
Lastly, the axiom of existence also has psycho-epistemological implications. To grasp it is to grasp the fundamental difference between the minds of animals, children and primitive men, who view the world as a set of disconnected existents which are both mental and physical at once; and the mind of a rational individual, who views existence as a complex system of inter-connected existents possessing identity. It is only because we grasp the fact that existence exists, i.e. that everything shares certain fundamental similarities simply because they exist, and thus can be grouped into the concept "existence", that philosophy, and all its many benefits are made possible.
Some of you might have picked up on the similarity between the BIV/Buddhist world-view, and Immanuel Kant's split of existence into noumenal and phenomenal reality. That's what I'll be talking about tomorrow.
2949.140 SRY