Malcolm asked:

I love to hear some answers to these questions:

1. I am confused about our language subject-predicate structure. Have some philosophers suggested
this isn't reliable? Can there be other structures we could use?

2. Does Heidegger argue we cannot start from the subjective, personal first person certainty position
and if so why? also does Heidegger say that fear frames the basis of all thought or consciousness to
the world, and if so where?

3. In Being and Nothingnesscan you explain to me why Sartre rejects Berkeley's idealism? (I know
what esse est perciperemeans, but can you tell me the precise meanings of the words, percipere,
percipi?

4. What is the point of Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit argument?

5. What I don't fully understand is why saying 'unicorns don't exist' is a problem. Of course unicorns
don't exist in the physical world, but the idea of unicorns exists in our minds in the physical world.
Why don't people accept that we are referring to the idea, and saying something about it — which
might be something like, 'the unicorn idea does not have the property of physical embodiment in the
world?'

6. We do after all talk about ideas like this all the time, we often talk about the idea of God. If I said
'God does not exist,' is this a contradiction, do atheists contradict themselves all the time when they
say this?

============

1. Not reliable in what sense? I believe all languages have the same basic subject-predicate structure
or so the thesis of universal grammar has it. It is held to be a problem that while we use the
subject-predicate form grammatically when we talk of things that don't exist, when this is translated
into logical form a sentence like 'Pegasus is a flying horse' is false because the name fails to denote a
subject which exists.

Philosophers have tried changing the logical form. Russell and Quine have taken Pegasus as a
description and have re-arranged logical structure to account for cases of non-denoting terms. But
this means that when we say grammatically 'Pegasus is a flying horse' what we really mean, under
their form of logical analysis, is 'There is a thing and that thing pegasises', which is simply
counter-intuitive. If logical structure determines our ontological commitment, we might say that it
doesn't apply to talk of non-existents, but then logical structure would fail to reflect the structure of our
language in a general way because a lot of our talk is of non-existents.

2. Heidegger thought that when thinking about being, or existence, we shouldn't withdraw from the
world into a subjective state as Descartes did when he sought a foundation for knowledge. Rather we
should recognise that we are immersed in the world and should look at what everyday experience is
like to describe being and existence and dwelling the world. We are already in the world which opens
itself up to us and likewise we open ourselves up to the world. This is what existence is like and a
Cartesian approach falsifies thinking about being because it demands some proof of the external
world. But we already live there.

I don't think Heidegger mentioned fear. He mentions dread and a being-towards-death, but this is
because we are temporally orientated towards to the future in our being.

3. Sartre thought that appearance isn't given any more substance or reality by being supported by the
fact that it is perceived by God, than that it just appears. There need be nothing beyond appearance
since the way things appear to us is the essence of the way things are for us.

Well I'm not quite sure about percipere/percipi. I think percipere is the act of perceiving and percipi is
that which exists or is seen. Sartre says that the percipere cannot affect the perceptum of being which
I take to mean that the act of perceiving cannot change that which is perceived. The percipi is that
which can be known, his example being a table.

4. Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit is an example of 'seeing as' or aspect-perception. We can see the duck
rabbit in two different ways. Using the same sort of activity we can see a face in the moon or a shape
in the clouds.

5. Yes, but isn't a unicorn a mythical animal? Is an animal an idea in the mind? If you have been
reading Sartre, you will have seen that we think of the unicorn and negate its being. It is part of the
idea of the unicorn that it has non-being. But this can't be right. It has mythical being as an 'animal'
and mythical reality. There is more than the physical existent and the idea. When we think of the
unicorn we don't create it. It is in some sense more than an idea, in that it has some sort of objectivity
that enables us to think about it. It is available to be thought about.

But I don't think its existing in our minds gives the idea of a unicorn a place in the physical world. The
mind isn't physical. The idea may have a particular place in the physical brain in which it is realised,
but this isn't unicorn. It is just a part of a brain state.

But yes, we do say grammatically, in discourse, that unicorns don't exist (should someone suppose
that they do), and the problem is at the logical level, as you note when you say 'God does not exist' is
a contradiction.

But there is also the problem of what 'exists' means, because there is mythical or fictional existence.
There are theories of possible worlds which attempt to account for fictional existences. For sure, it is
possible that a unicorn might exist. We can imagine it. But this is all a very complicated area and you
might look at Anthony Grayling's Introduction to Philosophical Logic.

6. Again, I'm not sure God is an idea. As far as I am aware, people who do believe in God don't share
the same concept. If God is infinite could finite beings have an idea of God? What are God's
properties? In any case the proposition 'God does not exist' is seldom used. Is this because we are
guided by the fact that we aware of logic and contradiction, or is it because the concept or being of
God is a matter of belief which it is inappropriate to assert? We say 'I don't believe in God'. My turn to
ask you questions, I think!

Rachel Browne