BHA: definitions

[Ruth Groff <rgroff@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi everybody,

I've been using the set of definitions for real, existent and present that
Louis gave us a few posts back.  I thought they were helpful, and seem to be
accurate to Bhaskar (though I'm still not sure that I want to agree that
existence has no bearing on real-ness) and was aiming for pristine clarity
in my usage!
Sorry I wasn't explicit enough about having adopted them in the first place.

Here they go again:

>Here is my suggestion for nomenclature.  Consider some examples.  Let's say
>Sally is in the cafe and Pierre is not. Let's consider Socrates and Santa
>as well, giving us the following four statements:
>
>-Sally is real, exists, and is present.
>-Pierre is real and exists, but he is absent.
>-Socrates is real, but he does not exist and therefore cannot be present.
>-Santa is not real, does not exist and therefore cannot be present.
>
>I suggest that these four exhaust the typology regarding the logical
>relations between "real", "exists", and "absent".  So, existence implies
>reality, but not conversely: whoever exists in the examples is real, but
>Socrates is real without existing (he did exist, but no longer does).
>Non-existence implies absence though not conversely (Pierre is absent but
>exists).  Unreality implies non-existence, though not conversely (Socrates
>is non-existent but is real).

R.



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