THE ONTOLOGICAL CONCEPTS  OF ACTION AND CHANGE ARE A MEDIEVAL MYTHS

Peter  tries the soap  that Tinkerbell gave him to stick his shadow back on - but it does not work.

The pseudo " subject of study" called Ontology is claimed by transcendentalists both religious, agnostic and atheistic to be the metaphysical study of the nature of "being" and "existence." (Yes, atheists and agnostics can be just as dualistically imprinted in childhood as religionists with what the Nazi philosopher Heidegger notoriously called "the ontological difference.")

If the people involved in such tool-foolery are academics, then they are not only wasting their time and their student's, but more seriously, they are squandering the tax-payers' money, for neither /presence/ nor /being/ nor /existence/ exist  - either to be studied or ignored. For those who have faith in such reificative   wraiths - let them step forward and provide convincing evidence for their meretricious metaphysical claims.

Only material corporeal entities exist and are found in the world.  Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical concreta consist. A Nobel Prize for contributions to science awaits anyone who proves that non-material, insubstantial enties exist as well as real ones. And up to now nobody from the "Things that go bump-in-the-night" brigade have managed to convince anybody at all to the satisfaction of the Nobel Prize  Awards Committee.

A palpable object's so called reified "presence" does not exist in addition to the palbable object, whether that object be a meaty  human object or a church steeple. There is no such thing as a mentalised spiritualised doppelganger  of a living human.

 No gerundial abstraction  called presence or absence or existence or being haunts its living or insentient counterpart and tags along in a human's corporeal landlord's wake like some spooky, spectral pal.

What I write is not some specious attack on our beautiful English language  - but its many abusers -  those that Foucault depicts as being: “a caged animal” caught in a prison of language.

[2] (Foucault. Appleby, Jacob, Hunt 1994)

Existence, presence, being, beauty,  love, energy, motion, dancing and stamp-collecting are not attached to material objects like Peter Pan's shadow that Wendy kindly sewed back on after Nana the Darling family dog bit it off.  

What  can be found in the world is energised matter - material existents - moving objects.

What exist is thinking-meat like: lovers, dancers, stamp-collectors, together with the stamp albums and the stamps they stick in them.

The rest of the words in human vocabularies and dictionaries are extremely important symbols  employed for communicating, talking about and  describing the various existential modalities of genuine denotata. Denotata  are the existing  (rather than the imaginary) objects referred to by a word, sign, or linguistic expression. or  that which is named by a word that selects or denotes materio-spatial objects.

 We also use such verbs, adjectives, adverbs,  definite/indefinite articles and other  words  to comment upon  designata.  Designata are  much less strictly defined, for they  can also be used to designate concepts that do not exist.  The trouble is that many folk continue to  confuse their nominata with their designata.

1. We can define a  denotatum (plural denotata)  as: "An actual object referred to by a linguistic expression."  

2. We can define a designatum (plural designata) as: "Any object or so-called object - whether existing or not - that the linguistic expression labels.

Matergy is the modern term for energised matter.   It is portmanteau word - a new word formed by joining two other words (in this case) "matter" and "energy" and combining their dual,  irrealist meanings into that of a scientifically and ontologically more appropriate matergic singularity.

A lot of people (not all)  have great difficulty in grasping what is going on here - even when the underlying principle of abstract nouns and gimcrack gerunds (a noun formed from a verb) is explained in the most simple manner.

Explanations encountered later in life  that revealing that no action of any kind exists in the cosmos and that only acting (causal) matergic objects exist  is so novel and counter-intuitive, that when someone is first exposed to eliminative materialist ideas, it seems so illogical that one wonders how anyone could have ever conceived of it or been deceived by) in the first place.

I define Epigenetic Linguistic Conditioning as the neuro-linguistic imprinting of ontological dualism in infancy, resulting in an acceptance of abstract concepts as being real corporeal entities. Such forms of ontologically bad language are copied, encoded and internalised from parents, family, peer groups and greater society and are continually reinforced during a child's growth to maturity. A dualistically orientated lexicon and grammar is interiorised in infancy in the form of an illogical reification (concretisation) of abstraction.

Descriptive dualisms in the form of abstract nouns (nominalisations lacking any nominata) such as: presence, time, numbers, motion, love, etc. which have neither mass nor occupy space are ontologically elevated to the status of real entities which actually exist in the world. Children are exposed to linguistically inherited socialised ways of thinking and speaking which mitigate against reality contactedness. This acceptance of hypostasisation results from an evolutionary imperative to conserve resources for their own survival and provide sufficient nourishment for their progeny. Epigenetic Linguistic Conditioning enables individuals and groups to overcome empathy and alienate human competitor groups on the basis of their physical appearance, colour, religion, culture, social class, economic position and behavioral differentiation.

We humans are animals and I believe the ontological fallacy of dualism to have been sensorially and linguistically internalised, incorporated within ourselves and made subjective or personal in early infancy via human imprintation in the manner observed in other animals by Konrad Lorenz.

Working with non-human animals - geese, Lorenz rediscovered the principle of imprinting (originally described by Douglas Spalding in the 19th century) in the behaviour of nidifugous birds. Judith K. Blackshaw the celebrated author of Notes on Some Topics of Applied Animal Behaviour, a book designed to deliver information about the behaviour of domestic and captive animals writes in an article available at:

                                                       http://animalbehaviour. net/Imprinting. htm

                                                                       ONTOLOGICAL DUALISM

The Eliminative Determinist views all forms of ontological dualism including mind-body, substance, property and religious dualism as the result of human imprintation which occurs initially within the (previously imprinted) family unit. There are people who say that such beliefs in the existence of incorporeal entities are variants of the nature or nurture argument and that some people are born with a genetical make-up which renders them altogether incapable of ever understanding that the reifications in which they believe are the result of childhood imprintation and that like other animals the imprinted knowledge is retained for life and that as Judith K Blackmore writes of the animals she has studied, of all forms of learning, imprinting is the least likely to be forgotten or unlearned.

Could it be that there are some people who are simply neuro-physiologically incapable of dealing with the idea at all?  One encounters others who hold to similar opinions that some are born with a gene that predisposes them towards religious and transcendentalist appetites rather than being imprinted to believe such things as young people. Could the condition be a bit of both?

Logically eliminative materialism is compellingly simple. Only material entities exist. Thus a standing tree exists (is present in a form we call "tree") and if it falls it exists as a falling tree. When it lies on the ground it exists as a fallen tree. It can be described as a fallen tree because it exists (or is present in the world)  in the existential modality or manner of what in the English language we refer to as: a fallen tree.

But beware! That is not to say that existential modality itself actually exists, for only the existent tree, the human descriptor and the material world and greater cosmos actually exist.

Because whilst it is falling a tree is described as a falling tree is not because it has assumed, taken-on, adopted or acquired the characteristics of a Platonic-style abstract template of fallingness, for fallingness, and the falling of a tree does not exist as a separate entity. Only the standing, falling, or fallen tree really exists.

The reader who is perusing these words right now exists - but his reading does not. If I travelled to wherever you live and met the reading you, or the you who read, I would not meet up with your reading - I would meet the reader - you.

Humans refer to a falling tree as a falling tree because that is the way that we describe the manner in which an object exists whilst it is crashing down under the influence of gravitational force. But the falling down (or the descent to ground level) does not exist - only the descending tree exists.

The seamless change by/of the tree from existing as an upright tree to that of being present as a horizontally prone tree is simply the way that humans linguistically describe the tree's existential spatial position  - but that does not mean that either uprightness, falling, lying horizontally prone, or even the tree's existential spatial position itself actually exists. Only the changing tree exists.

The useful religio-scientific fictions created to describe and account for the behaviour of objects when they impinge or are impinged upon by other objects and the powerful effects or influences or intensity that produces a change in a physical quantities are represented in a huge variety of imaginative words. Energy is usually defined as: the capacity for doing work and is described as being a variety of transformative forms capable of changing from one type of energy to another. "Energy" transformations are constrained by a Conservation of Energy principle which states that Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.

Most synonyms and similes of the word "energy" describe exactly the same fictive farce, or vary slightly in accordance with the precise nature of the specific  incident described concerning the particular impingement of the causal objects involved.

None of these counterfeit conceptual reificative terms signify anything (has an actual denotatum) that actually exists:

Solely energised objects exist.

Commonsense informs us it is physically impossible to exist (to be present in the world) purely or entitatively - bereft of any existential modality or property at all. It is infeasible to be here in the world and be physically propertyless at the same time, in the absence of a single characteristic, attribute, essence or state.

                                                                  REIFICATIONAL RUN-AROUNDS

Anyone who looks up the word "energy" in any dictionary will soon get my drift, for to seek a definition of "energy" is to step aboard a lexicographical merry-go- round from which on alights at precisely the same point where one embarked - back to the word energy. Such a definition synonymy-fest is in fact the semantic equivalent of the oogly woogly bird which spins at ever increasing velocity in ever diminishing circles, ultimately vanishing up its own fundamental orifice in a puff of smoke, completely baffling its pursuers.

As is the case regarding all so-called  force, Gravitational force doesn"t exist - only the gravitationally captured matergic object [the tree] exists in the state or mode of changing its spatial position under the influentially greater attraction of the capturing energised planet  - the matergic earth itself.

Change and changing does not exist either. The ontologically corrupt but useful bundles of human communicative fiction that promote such imagined duality is initially imprinted and internalised by the human child within the family in infancy. Such transcendentalism is comprehensively reinforced later by an similarly antecedently imprinted society. This explains the claim pointed to above in my opening remarks that there are some who are simply neuro-physically incapable of dealing with the idea at all for they have been brainwashed to accept concepts of ontological duality in their  latency phase.

Such ubiquitous internalisation of reification forces me to correct and qualify each phrase I write which may suggest that action and change exists dualistically as well as - or in addition to -  the actor or the changing material entity. All human languages are the end product of the millennia-old reification of transcendental abstraction.

As far as western society is concerned the main culprits are religionists and false philosophers like Socrates and Plato his puppeteer and their ilk. It was principally they who reified their abstruse abstractions into so-called aspirational behavioural templates, or shadowy Forms designed to torment their younger ingenuous discussants using a highly repetitive inquisitorial form of elenchus worthy of a Gestapo interrogator.

Such was the irritating nature of this Socratic form of cross-examination, with its constant dismissal of the conversational partner's supply of witnessed examples of human "honourable conduct, good acts, or "pius" behaviour he almost always alienated his interlocutor. Socrates"insistence on further qualificatory statements usually led to the frustrated addressee becoming annoyed. Few of the Socratic dialogues ever led to any disclosing of philosophical or ontological profundity. The dialogues were more like unequally staged verbal wrestling matches for reifiers - with points scored on the basis of which hypostasizer was judged to have concretised the most abstraction. .

Platonic elenchus" (exetasis or scrutiny) was a means of cross-examining a person about a statement he had hitherto made regarding an example of some reification under discussion. This was followed by rejecting any real life societal examples provided in such statements and persistently demanding a specific definition of some abstraction (like "righteousness" or some other woolly variable) presumably in the vain the hope that they will magically determine an absolute meaning and reveal its truth-value. Often the form of Plato's question is a ploy which renders the opponent incapable of providing a reply. But it is not because the opponent has contradicted himself, but because the question itself is ambiguous or equivocal. The ploy succeeds when both the interlocutor and the reader of the dialogue fails to spot the difference.

As top-dog transcendentalist and templateur Plato characterised abstractions such as: "honour, righteousness or piety," as aeriform non-natural "properties" which, when they were needed as elements of Socratic argy-bargy drifted down like heavenly himations from some great platonic emporium of Forms in the sky to gently alight upon the shoulders of the deserviingly honourable and pius man or woman. Thus piety exists as an intrinsic property that supervenes on the natural properties of its sanctimonious bearers.

Such sybilene jabberwocky was eagerly plagiarised by the early Christian Fathers who grasped at such straws of subtle speciousness and metaphysical moth holes of meretriciousness to camouflage their lack of conceptual credibility and doctor-up their doctrinal disparities.

For Plato  there is a Form for every object, property or quality in reality.  There are  Forms for pigs, toilet requisites,  human beings, gold rings, beauty, mountains, colours, courage, love, and goodness and equivocal truthfulness. The question of universals - or how one specific object or thing in general could magically be at the same time  many things in particular (universals) - was solved with the presumption that a Form (presumably deposited in some capacious celestial depository of metaphysical models or conceptual conveniences - Plato remains significantly stumn on the matter) was a distinct singular thing but caused plural representations of itself in particular objects.

For example, there are countless rolls of toilet soap in the world, but the Form of toilet-soapness is the über-template which is the essence of all of them and the subject of countless imperfect ready-made, ready-to-hand imitations manufactured for frustrated earthlings with sensitive posteriors. Its a pity that the supermarkets can"t get their hands on the master defintional template for toilet-paperness.  But no doubt they would have much trouble defining toilet-soapness as Meno had defining virtue, or arete, meaning in this case virtue in general, rather than particular virtues, such as justice or temperance.

                               A COMPLETE REJECTION OF THE ARISTOTELIAN CATEGORIES.
I am an Eliminative Determinist and such a position  holds that not one of  Aristotle's usefully fictitious categorical mentalisations is ontologically viable though they make excellent grammatical categorial fictions for use in human communication - but that is as far as they can be said to be meaningful to eliminative ontologists.

En passant, two of the most ontologically abused signs in human communication are the "is" sign (and its conjugates of "am/are") which were originally labelled "copulae" by medieval thinkers.

Such is also the case with the equally notorious ontologically dissolute and semantically unrestrained existentialiser - the  backward E  () of so-called Predicative "Logic."

1. Therefore ontologically the terms "is" and "exists" are terms are both at the same time  syncategorematic and redundant - for:

(a) no object in the cosmos does not exist.
(b) No object lacks any existential modalities.

2. Because of (a) and (b) above, in sentential or propositional forms such usefully fictional syncategoremes as: /is/ and /exist/ have no meanings other than facilitating ontological truth claims.

When standing by themselves, as contrasted with categorematic terms like "elephant, cat and soup spoon" which are cognitive instantiations of objects (denotata) which CAN be found in the real world - they are ontologically meaningless.

As Sten Ebbesen writes:

(For even more curious forms of exercise in reification and useful fiction employed in modern philosophy and elsewhere to knowingly/unwittingly perpetuate ontological dualism please read my dissertation here: : 

What is important is what actually exists. It is ontological nonsense to claim that one can show what is actually present in the world  by arguing that the existence or presence of something needs to be assumed by the employment of useful fictions in order to justify, resolve or vindicate certain inherited pseudo-existential  instantiations  and override  ontologically counterfeit grammatical or semantic sense regarding  such putative "existence claims."

In other words it is far more important for humans to be aware of what is actually present in the world rather than to transcendentally existentialise the actantial tool or legitimise a semantically primitive linguistic model used to analyze or describe  some objective  material actant  by  concocting ontological fictions in order to comply with the grammar of an ontologically corrupt system of semantic description.

Kant was also aware of the dangers of transcendentalism, for he wrote:

  Here is a résumé of Aristotle's treatment of the subject from wikipedia

                                THE ELIMINITIVIST REJECTION OF TRADITIONAL ONTOLOGY
Eliminative determinism holds that not one of  Aristotle's categorical mentalisations are ontologically viable.  They make excellent grammatical categories - but that is as far as they can be said to be meaningful to eliminative ontologists.  

No object in the cosmos undergoes change of any sort whatsoever  - there are no temporal interstices of existential modality  - existential modality does not exist  - only the modulating object is extant- only changing objects can be found to be present.  Doing things and being something do not exist. Only the stative acting object exists. There is no spurious ontological duality. Such transcendentalist occultish nonsense is an insidious misapprehension that continues to stalk science and philosophy like some ontological Banquo's ghost.

The stage direction, "exit ghost" appears in three of William Shakespeare's plays: Hamlet, Macbeth and Julius Caesar. Only when similar directions to rid our thinking of such primitive ontological categories will humanity understand the social, academic, political and ghastly  intellectual damage such ignorance has wreaked upon our world whilst reification rules.

Predicationally language allows us to describe changing objects in uncountable sentential variations- but none of these grammatico-semantic "properties" actually exist. Such communicative signification is no more than the currently existing neurological network of the addressor and the addressee to which the communication is directed, received and understood.  

The Existential Noctet  (which of course does not actually exist in itself)  is a simplified version of Aristotle's ontological fantasies. It is an attempt to update precisely what the "IS" word actually does in in relation to the nominatum (the object referred to) of a sentence from a onto-linguistic point of view. It is meant as an essay at a further critique of the Russell/Frege view of the "be-function"  function and not as a modernisation or replacement for the Aristotelian categories.

Thus the inclusion of the is-word in a sentence points to the object's:

1. Existential modality.
2. Existential state.
3. Existential numerosity.
4. Existential relative positionality.
5. Existential identification.
6. Existential classification
7. Existential nominality.
8. Existential transcendentality.
9. Existential spatial occupancy.

For an "IS-word" equivalent  - substitute any of the above terms in the following sentence in place of the "IS" word:

             " features the anthropocentrically attributed inexistent existential modality of xxxx."

Example:

"The leaf is green." becomes...

"The leaf features the anthropo-centrically attributed existential modality of greeness(or being green) ."

"The apple is red."

becomes...

"The apple features the anthropocentrically attributed existential modality of being red."

"The tree is falling." becomes...

"The tree features the anthropocentrically attributed existential modality of falling."

Therefore redness, greenness, and falling are no more than homocentric attributions of  modality, state, numerosity, positionality, identification, classification, nominality, transcendentality,spatial occupancy and do  not  exist as the (so-called)  medieval properties owned by the tree.

Plainly the photonic wavelengths which bounce off the surface of an observed object  (such as a tree) are neurologically moderated perceptions of the transactions of the human sensorium as to the way that certain wave-lengths of light are reflected from the surface of the tree onto the lens of the observers eye. This visual data is then transported as electro-chemical signals attributed to the observed object  which (if required for communication to other humans ) is converted into linguistic signs as adjectival descriptives and claimed to be inherent or intrinsic features of the manner in which the tree exists.

In fact the so-called properties of objects are in reality no more than neuronal verbalisations of the manner in which humans perceive different wavelengths of light.

The same pattern and attribution of properties is true of the other four senses of mankind - touch, taste, hearing, and smell.

              ARE ALL EDUCATED PEOPLE CAPABLE OF GRASPING SUCH META-ONTOLOGICAL CONCEPTS?

I do not personally subscribe to the belief that some people hold - that there are people who are congenitally incapable of ever grasping the ontological principle involved here. My own view is that for tens of thousands of years the human race has been imprinted in infancy by their parents and society to believe (take for granted)  a non-existent duality of object and action and have internalised the fiction of action as an  apparent existential norm or a "fact of the cosmos." 

To find the "fact" challenged at first seems utterly incredible. In my experience of meeting many people who have at first rejected eliminativism as preposterous, and who have later seen the light, they all admit that it was the hardest intellectual problem that they have ever experienced, and that it took a lot of concentration.

One man described the experience as being as if his brain was rebelling against thinking about it - as if it was "intentionally avoiding the strain"  [his words.]  An "occurrence" cannot happen because "occurrences"  do not exist to be able to happen.  "Accidents" do not exist.  What exists are the two cars that collide - not the "collision." Put another way both cars exist in a modality of colliding - but the "modality of colliding"  does not exist - only the colliding cars exist. I realise that this is a VERY DIFFICULT concept to grasp and there is absolutely no shame to be felt if one cannot understand it immediately.

Eliminative materialists are the most extreme anti-reificationalists you will ever encounter. They are in fact ontological revolutionaries. One way of coming towards an understanding of the idea is to look at the semantic value of words - because it is the words we use that cloak and obscure the ontological reality that lies behind our imperfect view of the world around us. This is where I part company with Hume. You will notice that the eliminativist assiduously avoids certain states of the verb. It is a constant struggle for me to achieve - for I have been exposed to the old way of thinking all my life  and I have been as much brain-washed as the next man.

The way we think about the IS-word is a very important part of the confusion - I constructed a whole website on the BE-Mechanism alone.   (Analytical Indicant Theory.)

But the BE-word apart, many innocent-looking words are fraught with ontological problems. For example verbs that have been turned into nouns which we call gerunds.

The insidious nature of language and the way in which it affects our understanding of ontological actuality can be seen in these following examples:

I. The gerund is a verbal noun, just as the participle is a verbal adjective. That is, just as the participle is a verbal form that functions as an adjective, the gerund is a verbal form that functions as a noun. You must be careful, however, because in English both the gerund and the present participle end in -ing. You will have no problem, however, if you ask yourself whether the verbal form is adjectival or substantive. Noun or Adjective?

(1) Leaving the theatre, we ran into our friends. ("Leaving" = adj. modifying "we")

(2) I like running. ("running" = a noun, the direct object of "like")

(3) We saw a man running across the field. ("running" = an adj. modifying "man")

(4) Swimming is fun. ("Swimming" = a noun, modified by the adj. "fun")

So if we look above and pick one example out at random, we can see that our use of certain forms of language reinforces our illusion that action exists, for in (2) the use of the word running as a noun [the name of something] suggests that what is named exists - when plainly it does not - only the running runner exists. It is all fine and dandy to use the present participle [continuous present] form of a verb, but because in English in the gerundial form of a NOUN (the gerund) ALSO ends in -ing it continually confuses our ontological grasp of what really exists and what does not. The same problem is now recognised in the field of computerology and ontology-talk is all the rage within the world of computer programmers and AI experts and theorists.

Nuclear Reaction

Fig. 1: It is claimed that a "fusion" of hydrogen into helium takes place.  A star is like a gigantic nuclear furnace. The nuclear reactive matergy within converts hydrogen into helium by means of a process known as "fusion."  But the  fusion process does not exist. It is the reactive matergy that exists - its "reaction" does not exist - does not have objective reality or being - for objective reality and being do not exist either.

It is the reacting nuclear matergy that actually exists and reactivates reactive the energised  star its energy. It is only that which reacts and fuses that exists. Within the star, a deuterium atom combines with an atom of  tritium forming a helium atom and an aditional neutron. The combination does not exist - only that which is combined. An incredible amount of energised matter (matergy) is then released.


If one seeks to speak  strictly scientifically rather than in terms redolent of occult phenomena existing outside of, or not in accordance with nature,  any word-forms suggesting that anything extra  (dualistically speaking) exists over and in adition to the actual fissionable energised material itself should be rigorously avoided.

As I have my linguists-hat on at the moment I shall be extra-nit-picking and observe that even in this sentence there is an ontological mistake, for technically speaking:

the simultaneous release of energy doesn"t exist either - what exists is simultaneously released. energetic material (matergy.)

         But as Foucault observed, we humans are caged animals caught in a prison of language.

For thousands of years human semiologological symbols have semantically distorted our perception of what exists and what does not exist  amongst that which surrounds us in the environment. Much of what we speak is no more than useful fiction, lazy non-definitive abstraction  promoting a diminution of

reality-contactedness.

Abstract nouns and gerunds being no more than utilitarian bookmarks or avoidance techniques or alibi excuses  cloaking a the lack of a deeper ontological understanding, or as Roland Barthe's  put it: 

                                                                           CONCLUSION

Eliminative materialism seeks to DESCRIBE the way entities exist WITHOUT reifying the WAY that they exist into pseudo-entities in themselves.

Thus whilst the exploding massive nucleus undoubtedly exists, and the multi-versioned smaller energetic nuclei that are the new modality of what was once a conglomerated singleton exist - the actual process or action or occurrence does not exist,  for those sorts of words are just useful linguistic short-cuts or useful conveniences that we employ in order  to avoid using a long paraphastic  sentences.

Like Heidegger's phantasy of the existence of simple presence - the word existence is an abstract noun. Existence itself does not exist. What exists are the ACTUAL MATERGIC  OBJECTS in the cosmos. Put another way - Being does not exist, and like the metaphysical manikin Dasein neither does simple presence.

Only objects that BE [are] the objects they are - exist.

Communicating humans exist. The methods they use to communicate are gestures, signs symbols and sounds. We can even communicate with taste and smell. Examples?

An unfaithful wife says to her lover who sometimes visits the cafe where she works:

If I put sugar in your tea you will know it is safe to come tonight - no sugar means that my husband will be at home.

In this case the medium of communication whereby the message My husband will be away tonight [the dissolved grains of sugar which impart the taste-message] to the lover exist. But what about the lack of sugar which does not exist in the cup when the message is the opposite?  Then the objects involved are only the neurons that exist in the heads of the lovers and the sugarless tea.


You perhaps will see now that symbols like sugar, or the scent a woman wears as a signal that she is available sexually whenever she wears it HAVE TO BE agreed in advance in order to have any meaning in the brain of the addressor and the addressee. It is the same with letters and words and signs and symbols of all types - there has got to be antecedally agreed signification.

So while sugar exists, and scent exists, and the configured graphite particles or dried ink particles exist on a paper page [or as pixels on a screen etc.] in the shape of previously agreed shapes of letters the meaning of those shapes only exists as an existential modality of the writer's and the reader's brain. The words themselves are MEANINGLESS - like the sugar and the scent they contain no meaning. The meaning is attributed to them by the communicators. Only the meaningfully communicating addressee exists and the meaningfully updated human addressor between which the meaning of one can be conveyed to the other.

Ontologically debt does not exist. What exists is the human debtor who owes X-amount of money. You could certainly try to claim to your bank manager that your debt did not exist, but I would not advise it. Bank managers like scientists are notoriously uneducated in ontology - he would probably press the secret bell under his desk which signals for the men in white-coats. ;-)

The reification of money like the reification of number, mind, consciousness, time, speed, motion, space and all the rest of the importantly helpful abstractions which we have dreamed up and created as essentially useful fictions to make our lives a lot easier are human ways of existing which set us apart from the animals and have allowed us to emerge from the caves to Cape Canaveral.

Do abstract numbers exist? No - only numerate humans are present in the world. Numbers are a brilliantly conceived useful fiction which has  helped us move from the cave to Cape Canaveral.  They allow us to carry out all kinds of operations and create all kinds of things that we could not do if we had not created them. Originally men used stones or their fingers as counters - then they made the giant step for mankind of awarding names to the amount of stones or fingers that were held up. As time went by man abstracted and distanced number away from stones and fingers [broke the link of cognitive dependency.] But, since numbers (being abstract names created by man) change in shape or position from one digit to another, and since change is a condition that only real things experience, doesn"t that make numbers real? If so, what's wrong with considering that numbers exist -- especially, since they also have changing relationships to each other?

No - it does not make the abstract meaning of numbers real - it does not make them present in the world.  It just means that the material medium [the pixels, ink stains, graphite, paint, wood and plastic etc.,] changes its existential representational configuration on the page, screen or chequebook.

Only real mathematicians or enumerators are ontologically present - abstractive numbers do not - only abstracting humans  and the ink, paint and plastic which represent them exist:

References: