Exists
We can make statements that are not true
I exist. Here I am.
You exist. There you are.
Seems an easy idea but the details are tricky.
We use the word exists to say that something is actual. But what does the word add to the meaning of our statements?
The table that my computer rests on exists - but does that give me any extra information over and above saying that my computer rests on that table? The issue seems to only be important to people. People have the capacity to imagine things that may or may not exist.
That is; the idea of exists is significant to people because we can imagine things that don't exist.
When we talk to each other we do something that rocks don't do to each other. When we talk we come to act as if the world was this way or that. When we talk we are presenting our impressions of reality and those impressions can be wrong. The price we pay for me being able to talk about this table, for me to convey the information that the table is here, is that you can doubt what I say.
This isn't a problem for the table as a physical thing. The table and my computer don't ever have a crisis of faith about the other's existence. It's only a problem for people receiving my communication - they have to decide whether they can trust my assertions.
Thinkers like Bishop Berkeley could doubt that physical reality exists. He didn't do that by denying that we had experiences - he just had an explanation for those experiences that didn't depend on physical reality.
Does a bicycle exist?
Isn't it the case that there are just a bunch of atoms at a particular place?
What makes a bunch of atoms into a bicycle?
Reductionists acknowledge that the atoms exist but have a hard job accounting for the bicycle.
The bicycle riders among us have to acknowledge that bicycles exist but may doubt that atoms exist.
They can doubt that atoms exist because the evidence for atoms only makes sense if you accept a long narrative about what the world is like.
And many people don't accept that narrative - they have other explanatory stories.
So we have contrasting ideas about the idea of exists. On the one hand that which exists is like my computer on the table - it is physically there. On the other hand that which exists is the computer as a tool that enables me to write. And in that sense there are many different ways to provide the same tool.
With that we move away from existence being physically actual towards existence being something that is temporally stable. Something that exists lasts through passing time. Ideas exist but are not physical at all - we see their existence as a persistence.
Can we take persistence as the key to what exists? So - unlike ideas that link existence to objective reality (whatever that is) we move to new ideas that link existence to persistence That which persists, for whatever reason, exists. Now - persistence - that's a fact about reality that we don't talk about much. But it's real - some things persist and others don't. Think about clouds.
Do clouds exist? Well - sure they do. They are structures of condensation that are persistent enough that we can see faces in them.
What do you think?