“How we Talk and Think about the Things That Exist.”

As a generalised observation on the matter of existential nexus, I think it reflects my desire to break the link between entities and 'Being' [or their so-called 'Being,'] in the sense that 'Being' has come to be regarded by many metaphysical thinkers. It is obvious that the human mind is [has always been] aware and conscious of the importance of this question of 'Being' for humankind, for amongst all of the entities on earth, including the higher primates, the human animal is the only one which is ornamented with the added ontological specificant ‘being’ [as in human-being,’] whereas all the other entities of the world are simply addressed by the category-name: ‘rabbit’ or ‘gorilla’ etc., unless they become perhaps pets or zoo-animals, whereupon they are often awarded proper names but continue to be referred to as: ‘Fluffy the rabbit’ or ‘Zongo the gorilla,’ rather than: ‘Fluffy the rabbit-being’ or: ‘Zongo the gorilla-being.’

It is possible of course that the reason for this is that in ancient times only man was considered to have a soul – and as 'Being' was thought to equate with soul the word being was ruled out from animals as an ontological sub-categorial appellative.

Because for me the word ‘being’ has ontological implications which I find unacceptable, I suppose I have been casting around for a way in which what is known as being or soul can be replaced by a more scientific or materialistic replacement which doesn’t involve the mere substituting of one metaphysical idea with another one more palatable to analyticians, agnostics, materialists or atheists. One of my first ideas was that of the 'ontologator', but this in my mind proved to be too much of a mentalistic concept in the end, for all it was in fact was another name for ego or consciousness dressed up in a pseudo AITian garb.

The only way that this can be achieved IMO is the by the complete elimination of essence and accidence altogether in the combination of a new concept of entitic-essential unity or modalic re-combination – in which, for purposes of description in philosophical discussion, the entitic-essive ‘partnership’ can be thought of as the nexual entity which is “movement inclusive” which is a rationalisation or reduction of matter, and the essential and accidental action of that matter as resolved into one term or linguistic unity for the convenience of discussion.

Thus the expression ‘nexual entity’ operates not as a Leibnitzean singular physical entity from which material properties are said to derive, but as a monadic real or fictional monadular unity, which CONTAINS the material and essential properties as an existential singularity or wholeness.

Now I realise that much of what I have written of what now follows - apart from the introduction, is old-hat AIT-wise, but I thought it valuable to push the ‘re-set button’ in this case just to get my thoughts in some sort of organised sequence more than anything else. After the initial two or three following paragraphs the focus changes to what could be construed as “new stuff.”

It is my belief - a belief that I realise does violence to many cherished humanist and religious ideas - that what the religious and philosophical tradition of the ancient and medieval episteme, which was very different from that of our modern world, mistakenly thought of as soul or being, is or was in actual fact no more than the modalic response of man in respect of his mental reactions and interactions with the world and universe in which he found himself. This transactional processing of his responses, hopes, fears and conclusions, and the way this process moulded and influenced his character as to the way he presented himself to himself and to others is/was erroneously believed to be under the tutelage of a spirituous disembodiment, which is temporally resident in the body non-corporeally, and in some miraculous way, in spite of its insubstantiality and invisibility, manages somehow to enter into a synergistic communicative relationship with the matter of the brain.

No explanation is ever provided to explain the details of the nature of this interaction between disembodiment and embodiment, and this has led me to consider the nature and meaning of essence and how essence or bodily and mental processes can be mistaken for 'Being' or 'soul' in the first place, and even whether the term ‘entity’ itself may be the key to solving [for me] this ontological problem.

A consideration of the actions of a human body convinced me that any separation of entity and essential or accidental instances of a human entity's actions, such as breathing and digesting, and moving the legs and arms and hands in order to interact with the environment, and the imagined spirit or the self, or the ontologator, is merely an accidental by-product of our brain processes. The notion of the 'ghost in the machine" and similar such a theories of consciousness are fictions based upon the misunderstanding that mind and bodily activity is somehow ‘different’ to the existing of all the other multifarious existential modalities of an entity, which is impossible and therefore imaginary.

The actions of man are the way he exists as he executes these actions, whether these actions are essential or accidental, and a man's ‘tennis playing’ or a man’s ‘dancing’ doesn't exist, but are the actions of a man playing tennis or a dancing man.

Some might respond to this that it is a waste of time to bother differentiating between the actions of the dancing man and the gerundial reification of ‘his’ dancing,’ for everybody understands, when they see a sign outside a ballroom: “Dancing Tonight,” that there is not going to be some gerundial disembodiment dancing tonight, but that the activity will be enacted by any member of the public who purchases a ticket and goes along. The problem is however that with the passage of time these gerunds and gerundials have taken on a dimension of instantiation in the minds of the public to such an extent, that the mention of some versions of gerunds and gerundials by unscrupulous politicians and the like returns knee-jerk responses to divaginatory sentences containing “vacuous names' such as: “We must eliminate world poverty!” in such a way that it ideates ‘poverty’ as ‘a thing in itself’ and to a certain extent moves the focus of attention away from and de-naturalises the actual living entities – the poor people who are the ones who are actually experiencing the poverty.

Nexus and Existents.

Actual and Verifiable Existents.

For me there are a three ways of thinking about the referentia of name-words, depending on whether the name adverts to a real existing entity that could, if necessary, be existentially verified, or whether it is a known or declared fictional entity, or whether it is an entity about which there is no existential provenance, i. e., we are not sure if it exists or not.

So now we have our three existential categories:

(a) Actual Verifiable Existents.

(b) Acknowledged Fictional or Imaginary existents.

(c) Existentially Unconfirmed Existents.

I would like in this piece to address the first ontological category and to deal with the others in later pieces.

Actual and Verifiable Existents.

In the first category I would include any entity which is personally known to me through the medium of my senses, and in a descending hierarchy of belief - entities which I believe to exist on the basis of written, verbal, or pictorial evidence of people or sources which I trust, and then the written, verbal, or pictorial evidence of people or sources for I have no evidence as to their trustworthiness, and lastly the written, verbal, or pictorial evidence of people or sources which I do not trust.

On this basis I would be willing to believe you, if you told me that there was a man called Mr Brian Brown who lives in the apartment next to you, for I know you and trust you and understand that you have no reason to tell me information that is incorrect, although there could theoretically come a time when you would deem it necessary to provide me with incorrect information for any number of reasons.

In all these ontological matters concerning the existence of the referents of signifiers, we always bear in mind that all sentences are really claims about how you or another person sees aspects the world, or wants somebody else through the medium of predicational information contained in sentences, statements or propositions to see the world or believe certain things about the world in a certain way that coincides with the agenda of the utterer.

If it turned out that I discovered that Mr Brian Brown did not actually exist, then that referential-less signifier: ‘Mr Brian Brown would be removed by me from the first category
(a) nexual working folder and placed in the second category (b) as a fictional or imaginary existent.

The nexual working folder model of an actual and verifiable existent would be initially very small-scale, and my comprehension of Brian Brown’s nexus would be very unspecific at first, until perhaps in subsequent conversations you told me more about him. However because he is a human-nexus and I am aware that all humans exist within certain existential parameters I am already aware of many more of his existential modalic physical constituents than it would seem at first glance. I could be fairly certain for example that Mr Brian Brown would have two arms and a head, and two eyes and a nose, and he would be within a certain range of height etc., and these working assessments of Mr Brian Brown’s nexus would be placed into my Outline Working Model folder under the name of the referent: Mr Brian Brown. As I elicited more information from you regarding Mr Brian Brown, that additional information would be added to the folder, and any amendments following from wrongful pre-suppositions on my behalf regarding the outline working model would be changed if for example Mr Brian Brown turned out to be Spanish in spite of the fact that he had an English sounding name.

But it is not only the physical aspects of Mr Brian Brown that would find a place in my working model folder, for as the nexual loom of Mr Brian Brown is further strung with the fabric of alethic modalities, it is possible for me to weave in many of the essential and accidental manifestations of the way in which Mr Brian Brown entitic body very probably exists. I know that he will have bodily processes and functions for example that I could probable enumerate fairly accurately. I could almost certainly put into my folder the fact that he showered or bathed and cleaned his teeth and emptied the rubbish from his flat on the basis that if he didn't carry these modular functions he would be ejected from the apartment. I could be sure that he had or had had a mother and father and I would assume that he had language and friends with which he communicated and interacted, I could be fairly sure that he had experienced pain and modalities of sadness and despair at times in his life, and that perhaps he had had love affairs and visited cinemas and perhaps theatres or football matches, and that he had been to school at some time in his life.

Now it is quite clear in my mind that this Nexual Working Folder or Ontological Approximation concerning the nexus of Mr, Brian brown is not his actual existing nexual body, but is a mental representation of that nexual entity for the purposes of cognition in order to refer or reference the said phenomena.

All these dimensions of human nexuality i. e., the existential fusion of his physical existing and the modalities thereof, actions and manners of that existing would be included in the Mr Brian Brown’s Outline Working folder and would form part of my ongoing referential update as you told me more and more about Mr Brian Brown. It is my opinion that this is the way our minds think about the existence of real entities. We have a working folder on the provisional nexus to which the name Mr Brian Brown corresponds and we are constantly updating it for the whole of the period that Mr Brian Brown or President Bill Clinton or any other entity living or inanimate has a meaningful significance in our lives.

People that we have known and forgotten about from our past (perhaps a boy called Denis Lewin) you knew at school have become dead folders which are lying gathering dust, no longer updated, just part of the working models some forgotten nexus.