Ousia in Plato: From essence to something broader? Lesley Brown (Oxford) Ousia, an abstract noun derived from the verb einai,’to be’, was used with the meaning ‘property’ or ‘wealth’ in Plato’s day. Plato pointedly endowed it with a different and apparently new meaning, ‘essence’, by deliberately glossing it as ‘what something is’, in connection with Socrates’s familiar inquiries: ‘what is the pious?’ or ‘what is virtue?’. At Euthyphro 11a Socrates contrasts the ousia of the pious with a pathos, something that happens to it (such as: being loved by all the gods). At Meno 71b he contrasts knowing what something is with knowing what it’s like (hopoion ti) and at 72b imagines asking ‘about a bee, about its ousia, what it is’. In Phaedo, where Plato lays out the developed theory of forms as the immutable objects of the intellect, at 65d11-e1 ousia is again glossed with ‘what it is’. As the dialogue progresses, the term is used to designate the forms (the true beings, in this account), a usage which continues prominently into Republic. But the picture is far less clear in some later works. I select two controversial passages, to ex- plore whether ousia is used to designate something different, and if so, how we should understand it. First Theaetetus 184-6, where some scholars (Burnyeat, Kahn) find Plato using ousia to designate propositionality, invoking the ‘is’ implicit in any statement or thought about how things are. Fi- nally, I consider the famous ontological inquiry in Plato’s Sophist (246-9), the so called Giganto- machia, or battle of gods against giants, where rival ontologies—materialist and idealist— are investigated, labelled as theories about onta (beings) or, alternatively, about ousia. A broader us- age, perhaps, but would it be correct to say that Plato now uses it to mean ‘existence’?

Aristotle on Existence. A Reconsideration

Gabrielle Galluzzo (Exeter) Discussions of existence in Aristotle have mainly focused on three crucial questions: (1) does Aristotle have an independent notion of existence? (2) Does he provide an essentialist treatment of existence? (3) Do declarative sentences have existential import for Aristotle? This paper re- considers all three questions with the aim of showing the sometimes-overlooked complexity and qualified nature of Aristotle’s discussion. Roughly, the paper argues that the answer to 1) is in some sense ‘no’, but also that it all depends on the perspective (linguistic, epistemic or meta- physical) from which the question is raised. Similar considerations apply to question 2), which should broadly be answered in the affirmative. Finally, as to question 3), the paper argues that declarative sentences do have existential import for Aristotle, though he shows some level of flexibility in dealing with different kinds of empty terms.

Avicenna on Existence and Identity Fedor Benevich (Munich)

Avicenna develops his understanding of existence in his famous theories of the distinction be- tween essence and existence, mental existence, God’s description as the Necessary Existent, and throughout his explanation of the sense in which shared properties of concrete objects (universals) really exist. In my presentation, I am systematically revisiting the question what existence actu- ally means for Avicenna. First, I will show that existence has two senses for Avicenna. In the first sense, existence applies to all entities (apart from God) as their extrinsic attribute which is really distinct from them. In the second sense, existence is an abstract secondary intelligible that ap- plies only to further abstract notions, such as humanity and even God Himself, in the sense of “being instantiated.” Second, I will address the problem how existence relates to identity for Avi- cenna. Avicenna would deny Quine’s famous “no entity without identity” slogan. Common prop- erties of things (their “natures”) have their own existence in reality but they do not have any iden- tity of their own. I will show that Avicenna consequently distinguishes between existence and identity when he develops his understanding of existential dependence: things may depend on others for the sake of their existence but be independent in terms of their identity (substances). Nevertheless, Avicenna’s position is that an object is anything at all and it exists only insofar as it can be identified – either in virtue of itself or through a reference to something else.

The Semantics of the Copula and the Metaphysics of Being in Geach, Buridan, and Aquinas

Gyula Klima (Fordham) In the title of this paper the three names of well-known philosophers stand in for three different theories of predication, and the corresponding semantic theories of the Indo-European copula, which I will identify as the verbalist (or Fregean) theory, the nominalist (or two-name theory), and the adverbialist (or inherence) theory, respectively. After a brief characterization of each and re- marking on the relative insignificance of the syntactical issue of whether the copula is syntacti- cally marked in language or not, I will raise the issue of which of these theories is correct. After concluding that this is a pseudo-problem, because given their logical equivalence they should yield equivalent truth-conditions for the sentences they generate, I will raise the pragmatic issue of which of these theories yields a conceptual framework that is most suitable for dealing with metaphysics. After clarifying the criteria of this sort of suitability, I will argue that the framework that best satisfies these criteria is the adverbialist or inherence theory, as represented here by the thought of Aquinas. Along the way, I may also fire off some snide remarks in the direction of the semantically abysmally obscure talk about "properties" in contemporary analytical meta- physics, but without any serious desire to engage the issue properly.

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Descartes’ noneist conception of existence Dolf Rami (Bochum) In this talk, I will present my interpretation of Descartes noneist conception of existence. I will approach his view by addressing and solving a puzzle that was diagnosed with respect to Des- cartes‘ philosophical system in Kenny (1968, 1997). According to him, there is a tension between the conception of existence that the cogito-argument presupposes and the conception that is presupposed by Descartes version of the ontological argument. I will show that this puzzle can be dissolved on the basis of a specific rational reconstruction of Descartes conception of exist- ence, which Descartes didn’t develop in detail, but for which many different hints can be found in his works. This conception is also of systematic interest, insofar it is those part of Descartes‘ phi- losophy with the most current relevance. I will show that his view has more similarities with Priest’s view on existence than the more famous and less recent noneist view advocated by Meinong.

Leibniz on possible and real things Ohad Nachtomy (Tel Aviv)

Kant’s refutation of the ontological argument marks a moment in the history of philosophy in which the notion of existence becomes independent of that of essence. Kant’s point in fact implies a new picture of the relations between essence and existence. In this a picture the notion of es- sence is understood in terms of pure logical possibility, that is, in terms of the consistency rela- tions between concepts—relations that make no reference to existence, time or place. Leibniz provides an explicit and influential identification of the essence of an individual with its complete concept, a concept that specifies every truth about it, and which allows its consideration as a possible candidate for actualization. Leibniz thus carried out the program of divorcing the essence or the possibility of an individual from its existence a long way (by applying it to created things) but he stopped at God (in whose concept essence and existence are seen as inseparable). In my talk, I will explore Leibniz’s view of created beings or substances as it is developed against the distinction between existence and possibility. Thus, for Leibniz, creation is seen as actualiza- tion, that is, giving a possible course of action power of action; and the notion of created substance comes to be defined in terms of its primitive force – force that enables the realization of its com- plete concept. If time permits I will also present the transition from the Discourse on Metaphysics (1686) to the last phase of Leibniz’s philosophy, expressed in the Monadologie.

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Kant's thesis: Existence is not a determination Nick Stang (Toronto/Berlin) In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787) and The Only Possible Argument (1763) Kant asserts that existence is not a "real predicate" or a "determination."In this paper I will try to explain what this means. Firstly, I explain, in full generality, what it is to determine an object, according to Kant, and what a determination is. Secondly, I explain why existence is not a determination according to this definition. Finally, I connect Kant's theory of determination with his theory of modality and argue that there are different types of determination (logical, real) which correspond to different types of modality (logical, real).

Positing and Existence: Brentano and Riehl

Mark Textor (London) The positing view of existence holds that the non-propositional mental act of acknowledgement is conceptually prior to understanding the predicate ‘exists’. Franz Brentano inspired by Aquinas and Kant articulated the positing view of existence in his work and the Neo-Kantian Alois Riehl developed a particular take on it. In my talk I will expound and assess the contribution of these authors.

Gottlob Frege’s discussion of EXISTENCE as first order predicate and his conception of

EXISTENCE as predicate of higher order Rainer Stuhlmann-Laeiz (Bonn) In his DIALOG MIT PÜNJER ÜBER EXISTENZ Frege discusses the hypothesis, that EXISTENCE is a first order predicate. This discussion's result is: If you combine the hypothesis with the thesis, that existential statements ("Leo Sachse exisiert") are substantial, i. e. informative rather than self-evident like "Leo Sachse is identical with himself", than you run into a contradiction. Since Frege holds existential statements to be substantial, he refutes the hypothesis. - In DIE GRUNDLAGEN DER ARITHMETIK Frege explains, that existential statements - like number state- ments - are about concepts, and in his GRUNDGESETZE DER ARITHMETIK he thus introduces the existential quantifier as a second order concept into the BEGRIFFSSCHRIFT. The paper closes with a glimpse on the existence predicate in modal logic.

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