Existential Reality [closed]

Discussion on existence falls into three general areas: the existence of things (objective existence), the existence of the observer (subjective existence), and finally existence itself. The first, the 'existence of things' divides into notional things (fully-determined concepts) and actual things. In Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (2nd edition, 1787) these are described as 'mere position' and 'absolute position' respectively. (In the following quote it is not yet fully explained quite what 'absolute position' entails.) The quote is from Heidegger's 1927 lecture course The Basic Problems of Phenomenology p. 40 where he starts with actual existence, and contrasts it to notional existence: i.e. "the copula of a judgement" e.g. the sky is blue. (For whatever work 'is' is doing there. – Attaching a predicate (blue) to a concept.)

In the proposition "A exists," "A is extant," an absolute positing is involved. Being qua existence must not be confused with being in the sense of "mere position" (being something). Whereas in the Beweisgrund (p. 77) Kant characterizes existence as absolute position, he says in the Critique: "It is merely the position of a thing, or of certain determinations in themselves. In logical use it is merely the copula of a judgment."¹⁹

19. Critique of Pure Reason, B626.

The preliminary interpretation of being as "mere position" and of exis­tence as "absolute position" should be kept in mind.  . . .   the mere what of a thing, is posited in the pure representing of the thing as in a certain way in itself. But this positing is merely the positing of the possible, "mere position." In one place Kant says that "as possibility was . . . merely a position of the thing in relation to the understanding, so actuality [existence] is at the same time a combining of it [the thing] with perception."²⁰ Actuality, existence, is absolute position; possibility, in contrast, is mere position.

20. Ibid., B287 n.; see also Beweisgrund, p. 79.

Now all this so far says is that things can be actual. They are made actual in the mind of an observer by "combining [the notional thing] with perception", that is by sense-data. Therefore, actual existence is achieved in the mind by taking a the idea of something and confirming its presence to be true on the evidence of one's own sense-data. Not guaranteed to be 100% correct but that is how objective existence works.

What about the subjective existence of the observer who perceives? This is subjective human existence: the type of existence a human being is. Much can be said about the ways of human existence, but for now I'm going to skip to the 3rd genre: existence itself. In order to approach this Heidegger analysed human being just to get a picture of what Being could mean. Nevertheless, throughout it is clarified that Being is nothing that can be defined or made into anything. Its elusiveness is awesome. This is how Heidegger describes Being at the start of Being and Time (1927), H. 3 & 4.

¶ 1. The Necessity for Explicitly Restating the Question of Being

1. First, it has been maintained that 'Being' is the 'most universal' concept: τὸ ὄν ἐστι καθόλου μάλιστα πάντων.ⁱ Illud quod primo cadit sub apprehensione est ens, cuius intellectus includitur in omnibus, quaecumque quis apprehendit. 'An understanding of Being is already included in conceiving anything which one apprehends as an entity.'^1,ii But the 'universality' of 'Being' is not that of a class or genus. The term 'Being' does not define that realm of entities which is uppermost when these are Articulated conceptually according to genus and species: οὔτε τὸ ὄν γένος.ⁱⁱⁱ The 'universality' of Being 'transcends' any universality of genus. . . .

2. It has been maintained secondly that the concept of 'Being' is [4] indefinable. This is deduced from its supreme universality,^iv and rightly so, if definitio fit per genus proximum et differentiam specificam [Wikipedia]. 'Being' cannot indeed be conceived as an entity; enti non additur aliqua natura: nor can it acquire such a character as to have the term "entity" applied to it. "Being" cannot be derived from higher concepts by definition, nor can it be presented through lower ones. But does this imply that 'Being' no longer offers a problem? Not at all. We can infer only that 'Being' cannot have the character of an entity.

i. (H. 3) Aristotle, Metaphysica B 4, 1001 a 21. "for Unity and Being are the most universal of all terms"

ii. (H. 3) Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica 11¹ Q. 94 art. 2. "The first thing to fall within apprehension is being, a grasp of which is included in everything that anyone apprehends"

iii. (H. 3) Aristotle, Metaphysica B 3, 998 b 22. "it is impossible for either Unity or Being to be one genus of existing things."

iv. (H. 4) Cf. Pascal, Pensées et Opuscules (ed. Brunschvicg),⁶ Paris, 1912, p. 169; 'On ne peut entreprendre de définir l'être sans tomber dans cette absurdité: car on ne peut definir un mot sans commencer par celui-ci, c'est, soit qu'on l'exprime ou qu'on le sous-entende. Done pour définir l'être, il faudrait dire c'est, et ainsi employer le mot defini dans sa définition.'

Thus existence enters its full conundrum phase. Meanwhile we can settle for being human beings, as we surmise the situation.

With the basics settled we can consider reality in the narrow definition as the totality of actuality: Hegel's surface show.

This true essence of Things has now the character of not being immediately for consciousness; on the contrary, consciousness has a mediated relation to the inner being and, as the Understanding, looks through this mediating play of Forces into the true background of Things. The middle term which unites the two extremes, the Understanding and the inner world, is the developed being of Force which, for the Understanding itself, is henceforth only a vanishing. This 'being' is therefore called appearance; for we call being that is directly and in its own self a non-being a surface show. But it is not merely a surface show; it is appearance, a totality of show. This totality, as totality or as a universal, is what constitutes the inner [of Things], the play of Forces as a reflection of the inner into itself. Phenomenology of Spirit, § 143 (1807).

This surface show corresponds to the empirical reality in physics as described by John Wheeler in Quantum theory and measurement, (1983):

No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.

And from his colleague and mentor, Niels Bohr in his 1935 reply to Einstein, Podolski, and Rosen:

The procedure of measurement has an essential influence on the conditions on which the very definition of the physical quantities in question rests.

The real in physics corresponds to Kantian actuality, i.e. absolute position.