the problem of the copula

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MTIME: [2025-07-17 Thu 22:24],[2024-12-25 Wed 16:07]
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copula (n.) The name for the existence verb, which is English is "to be".

It establishes a relation between two things that from one persepective is as featureless as you can get it to be, but from another the most restrictive. In a syllogistic approach, a copula makes reasoning possible; therefore all apologia for syllogism absolve the copula with a surrounding axiomatic justification: "We are reasoning within the confines of an abstraction", or "we are only saying things inside the portion of universe where things can be said".

Older, bolder philosophers committed to the conceit of the ontology more seriously - see:

To those for whom reality feels solid, not to be trifled with, the copula is a weighty fact, and the restricted reasoners of today who use it in similar fashion without following through to similar consequence represent a bitterness in the intertext.

Phenomenologists construct a partial recovery of the concept by asserting that the copula does represent an essential cognitive or conceptual process, central to the process of sensemaking. In this interpretation, it's an almost empty assertion of relation, which can be refined and overloaded any which way the thinker likes.

We like Wittgenstein, who likes to opt out of the contentions about the reality or otherwise of these games, and notes that they are all useful ways of moving through the world once you have taken the trouble to name their use. At this point in my thinking, everything is rhetoric until proven otherwise (which fortunately it will never be).

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Author: Nix build user

Created: 2025-07-19 Sat 07:59

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