Chaos

To "exist" is to be part of an inter-relationship. This has significant implications about the natureof reality.
(Note for example that according to this, "unicorns exist" because we have a particular type of relationship with them which in this case is confined to images and stories).
A "property" is a prediction of the nature of the relationship.(In the case of unicorns this includes "visual" and "mythical")

What "matters" is context specific. The particular "properties" of "cat" depend on the situation. Physiological "properties" give expectecies of internal and external visual and behavioural phenomena. Language is a method of transmitting these expectancies between observers sometimes with unfotunate consequences. To take a celebrated example, the naming of gas drums as "empty" can lead to explosions if they still contain vapour. (Whorf).

I must qualify what I said above. I endorse phenomenology to the extent that, as I said, MY world consists only of experiences or potential experiences. I accept the events on Venus as aspects of MY world because they can, at least in principle, be experienced. But God, elves and devils do not exist FOR ME. I have THOUGHTS of God's, elves and devils--derived from discourse but not concrete experience--but that does not mean that such thoughts have referents beyond themselves.
Nevertheless, I do not totally reject Kant's "thing-in-itself" because I have the persistent thought that ants, flies, lions, and many sentient creatures throughout the Cosmos have experiences/perspectives that are not available to me--even in principle. That means that The World is larger than just my mind. I am not a solipsist--one of those extreme egoists who would shrink the World to the size of his mind.
Nevertheless, I am only concerned with MY subjective reality, i.e., MY world, while acknowledging that it is not, "objectively speaking" all there is.

JLN.

You want "existence" to have a aspect of "concrete experience" but perhaps we should consider an ancient physician with "his concrete experience of the four humours". To me this does not seem very different to our "experience" of "atoms" or for deist's "experience of God".

LATER EDIT.

I am just reading about the EPR Paradox in physics which implies that some separate " particles" (separated in space) have a single "entangled existence" such that the "concrete observation" of the spin parameter of the first will determine that of the second even those those parameters can take a random fluctuating value. This seems to have some bearing on the nature of "existence" with respect to observation.

Fresco, does the EPR Paradox point to the unity of nature, i.e., that at least some "particles" of Nature ignore spatial separation in their "connection" to very certain distant particles? To me, this is but one indication of the unity or "entanglement" (and mutual entailment) of all things, often symbolized by Indra's Net of Asian mysticism.
You're right in that I gauge "existence" in terms of experience; to me existence IS experience and vice versa. But as I said in my last post, I am referring to MY subjective experienced reality, meaning "this particular aspect of the general Brahmin". I am very willing to acknowledge the "existence" of events such as the phenomena uncovered by particle and quantum physics as hypothetical realities. By "hypothetical" I mean that as far as I am concerned their reality is purely theoretical rather than experiential and pragmatic. Their existence, I understand, is inferred indirectly from highly technically generated observations, and these observations may have--in principle--implications for future experience.
At the same time, everything is "ultimately" me, my true Self, but I, my little self, live in a relativistic or perspectivistic world. This Atman (i.e., egoless "me") can only reflect part of Brahmin. If I wished to point to the entire "truth" of Reality, I would have to do so in blissfully ignorant silence.

fresco, this is not what I, or many other people think of, when I talk about "existence." I guess we have different definitions attach to it.



I think, that the properties of the cat that you think of the most at a particular time, are dependent upon the situation, but properties of the cat are not dependent upon the situation. I think you're looking too much at it from an expectancy point of view. Yes, I am aware of the cat being able to scratch me or walk around or something, but I don't know what the cat is going to do. Of course, I would expect the cat to move around, once in a while, because I have seen many cats do that and so I assume that is what cats normally does. There is an expectation of normalcy or consistency, but I don't see how it translates to the property of the cat being that expectancy, unless we have different meaning attach to the word "property" again.

Oh, and isn't the EPR paradox, a failed or incomplete thought experiment?

Ray and JLN

http://library.thinkquest.org/C008537/cool/bellsinequality/bellsinequality.html

That link might help illustrate my thinking which turns out to be much in line with "Absolute Idealism" .

That is very much to my liking, what I sometimes call the Condition of Contingency. Everything is "ultimately" contingent on everything else, but for practical purposes it seems that some things are more contingent on some other things than they are on others. This works for our everyday practices, but a "religious" perspective sees only the unity in diversity (or the diversity in unity).
I'm having trouble with my computer, so if I should drop out for a while, you'll know why.

to be contigent one must first be named, to not be named is to not exist. in the beginning was the word and all that such stuff.

Focus, I just looked at your link. I don't understand much of it, of course, but it IS fun the way they open the world up for us. I'm surprised by Einstein's absolutism/objectivism.

Dys, don't make trouble.

But I think I see what you mean. God exists for some people because of the word, God.

By the way, Dys, I wasn't sure of your existence until I learned your real name--THEN I met you, but at THAT time I began to doubt your existence again--the way you keep fading in and out of the phenomenal world. Wierd.

My parents want me to clean my room, but if you want before I do I can take a picture of it and show you what 'chaos' really is.

Ah Fran, it just looks like chaos, but is it really?

A chaos scientist could predict what kind of junk you would expect to find with a given radius of your bed. He could also define what kinds things are extremely unlikely to be found at all. There are patterns where there seem to be none, and none where you would expect them to be !!!

No thanks, I have my own room to amaze me...

fresco, thanks for the clarification. It's always interesting to see other's ideas.

I've just read more on this, and seems like absolute idealism was first thought of by Hegel and Schopenhauer. Moore opposed abs. idealism's effect on language, and so did a couple of others.

::looks around::

No, this is definitely chaos, all right.