Concluding Unsemantic Postscript

Abstract

Those who had expected an unravelling of the Enigma of Existence from this book must be thoroughly disappointed. My basic insight has been simply this: Existence which belongs to all that there is can still be meaningfully denied of some specific targets of linguistic reference. This is possible because on special occasions we — the speaker—hearers of language — can together switch our pragmatic (or, if you like, illocutionary) gears in between pinning down the topic of conversation and issuing a comment on it. Noticing this feature of our linguistic behaviour does not solve or dissolve the mystery of existence even for me. I am not one of those who write off all philosophical puzzlement on the nature of reality as merely a matter of being caught up in lexical or grammatical muddles. Even after the “is” of identity, the “is” of predication, the “is” of existence, the “is” of constitution and all other uses of the verb to be have been carefully distinguished and make-believe reference has been set apart from absolute spatio-temporal identification, I am sure a deeper metaphysical question about what it is really to exist remains. Forgetting about all my other language-games, even the informationally trite statements in game (1) like “I exist” or “You exist” or “Material bodies exist” or “The Universe exists” give rise to genuine philosophical problems. It is obvious that I did not even dream of raising those metaphysical issues in this work. Not that I have tried to shun onto-logical involvement altogether. Claiming such avoidance would be foolish for any serious exercise in the philosophy of language. My distinction between game (1) and game (4) is openly based on the ontological demarcation between concrete spatio-temporal particulars and abstract entities. To try to reduce game (4) to an indirect or compendious way of conducting game (1) could be Nominalistic.