Where does existence collide?

In metaphysics, existence is the fact that something is actual rather than merely possible or imagined, and a long debate asks whether existing is a genuine property a thing can have. Kant argued that existence is not a real predicate, that saying a thing exists adds nothing to the concept of it, and the 1936 symposium Is Existence a Predicate? by Kneale and Moore sharpened the question by treating existence as instantiation rather than as an attribute of individuals. This meaning is also drawn against essence, the what-it-is of a thing, so that a thing can be fully described and it can still be asked whether it exists. Here existence is the actuality of a thing as such, argued over in philosophy, not a formal quantifier in logic, a proof that a solution is there in mathematics, or a way of living studied in therapy.[1]

Unit

The actuality of a particular thing, that it is rather than is not

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Not measured but argued, through conceptual analysis of whether existence attaches to things or to concepts

In logic, existence is carried by the existential quantifier, written with a reversed E, which says that at least one thing satisfies a condition, so that the formula for it reads there is at least one x that is F. Quine's 1948 On What There Is made this the criterion of existence in a regimented language, in the slogan that to be is to be the value of a bound variable, so that a theory is committed to whatever its quantifiers must range over. A related point, existential import, is whether a general statement such as all F are G assumes that there is any F at all. Here existence is a formal device for saying something is there, fixed by rules of inference, not the metaphysical actuality of a thing, a mathematical proof, or a lived way of being.[2]

Unit

A quantified claim that at least one thing meets a condition

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Read off the logical form of a statement, by what its existential quantifiers must range over for it to be true

In existential psychology and psychotherapy, existence is the whole of a person's lived being-in-the-world, and therapy attends to the unavoidable conditions of that existence. Yalom's 1980 Existential Psychotherapy set out four such givens, death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness, and argued that much anxiety and distress arise from how a person confronts them. This meaning descends from existential philosophy but is put to clinical use, treating existence as something lived and faced rather than something analysed. Here existence is a person's concrete way of being alive and the conditions they must meet, not the metaphysical fact of actuality, a logical quantifier, or a mathematical proof.[3]

Unit

One person's lived existence and how they meet its given conditions

Recovery means

Explored in existential therapy, where a person is helped to face the givens rather than avoid them

Measured by

Approached through the person's own account in therapy of how they confront death, freedom, isolation, and meaning