Objects have spatiotemporal location, bring about effects, and are perceptible or detectable by the senses or instruments. Entities are not spatially or temporally located, do not bring about effects, and are imperceptible or undetectable by the senses or instruments.
Objects exist in the real world. Entities are produced by the thoughts of objects in the real world.
Existence is pre-conceptual (and pre-lingual). The objects of reality exist whether you think about them or place them in a category. Philosophical realism is uncontroversial. But ask about the status of thought and second substance, we have varying opinions.
The standard definition of abstract entities (to which concepts and symbols belong) is that iff it:
(1) and (3) are straightforward. I can’t see abstract entities in reality. And if they are not in reality to be interacted with, then there are no effects (2). But thinkable (4).
So, is it an effect for something to be thinkable?
No effects. NO effects. NO EFFECTS. (I am thinking.)
So, I can disregard them without any consequences (without any effects). This is what the definition says and means. But I can think about it.
Thesis kind of like thinking about stealing something but not taking it. Or having seductive thoughts about someone but not going through with the motions. Or are we to take the Minority Report path and say thought itself is already a done crime.
I think it is safe to say that thoughts and acting within reality are different issues. Or clearer, thoughts about stealing and actually stealing something are different acts—the former is not a crime, the latter is a crime.
Thinking is an action. Expressing verbally is an action. Stealing is an action.
But let’s also talk about the passive act of observing or seeing. The symbol for a referent, the concept of a referent, and the referent itself are three separate entities. Two are created as representations, and one is existent.
Again, the referent-object has effects in reality. The symbolic-entity and conceptual-entity has no effects in reality.
As I had just shown, it is not symbols and concepts that harm, but people who use symbols and concepts that harm. People are objects. Do not mistake them for their concepts or symbols.
People as objects think “things” and say “things”. Thoughts and words do not harms directly. People do.
Deal with what affects you—matter. Deal with people as matter or object; do not deal with thought and words as pseudo-objects or pseudo-matter.
One criteria of concrete entities is that they bring about effects. The antithesis of this, abstract entities (all non-concrete entities), therefore does not bring about effects.
But, many commit to abstract entities, which they claim have effects, and therefore ontologically exist.
For Aristotle, these are secondary substances. And for Meinong, these are subsistence. And Quine highlighted these ontological commitments to show how they are needed to keep such philosopher’s frameworks coherent.
My English teacher at high school taught me that there are more exceptions to the rules than rules themselves. I think Western philosophy is like this as well. This is perhaps English and philosophy’s strength, but more likely their weakness.
The internal is within the external.
There is one reality, not two.
What exists is not simply matter, but matter-in-relations.
Matter has spatiotemporal location, brings about effects, is perceptible to the senses.
Matter exists whether it is perceived or not.
There are no nonexistent objects, only nonexistent entities.
Objects are real. Entities are not real.
To talk about objects is to talk about what exists (ontology). To talk about entities is to talk about experience and knowledge (epistemology).
Concrete objects are the particulars of reality, the primary substances of Aristotle, what exist independently of thought.
Concrete objects are the only things that exist, the only matter that matter, so to speak.
While concrete objects are identical to concrete entities, the former is about ontology and the latter is about epistemology.
There is no outside-reality.
“There” signals other locations “not there”. One such location is “here”. It is from “here” that reality is known. “Here” is being inside reality, being a part of reality. Reality is the totality of matter in space and time. And I am one thing (matter) among many.
“Here” means inside reality, not apart from it.
There is no privileged perspective, no view from nowhere, and no view from the outside.
“Here” means one’s point of view is always situated.
To believe in a view not from somewhere is in itself a (mistaken) point of view when examined carefully.
theoria 