Philosophical Ramblings #13: What is existence?

May 7, 2026

What is existence? The meaning of words arises through their usage. We use words and learn what they mean not through strict dictionary definitions, but more through associations, so that each word carries a network of related meanings and experiences. From this, meaning emerges. But this meaning is varied; there is no single strict definition of existence. Rather, we often use different senses of the word in different contexts.

When I say that the table exists in front of me, I associate existence with something I can touch, clearly see, and physically interact with. When I say that love exists, I mean something different: not a physical object, but a lived reality expressed through feeling, action, relation, and interpretation. When I say that a unicorn exists, I mean that there are stories, symbols, and cultural imaginaries in which unicorns appear.

So when we speak about free will or other abstract concepts and ask whether they exist, the question is often too simplistic. Free will clearly does not exist in the same way a table does, but perhaps more akin to the way love exists. By the very fact that we are speaking about a concept, it already has a certain kind of existence.

Words do not have meaning because they correspond to a single hidden essence, but because of how they are used within forms of life and human practices. The word “existence” is not a rigid logical operator with one universal meaning underlying all cases. Rather, it gathers together a family of related uses.

So when we say:

• “The table exists,”
• “Love exists,”
• “Unicorns exist,”
• “Free will exists,”

the word “exists” is not functioning identically in each sentence.

The table exists as a publicly encounterable object: durable, spatial, touchable, measurable.

Love exists more as a lived structure of behavior, emotion, relation, interpretation, and intentionality. It is not a thing among things, yet it is not therefore unreal.

A unicorn exists mythically or narratively: as an element within stories, imagination, symbolic systems, artworks, and cultural memory.

And free will may exist as a phenomenological, ethical, social, or interpretive reality, even if it does not exist as some metaphysical “uncaused cause” hidden inside the brain.

Once something enters discourse, imagination, or practice, it already possesses some mode of being. Not necessarily physical being, but presence within human existence.

The mistake many debates make is assuming that “exists” must mean one single thing everywhere. Then people ask:

• “Does love really exist?”
• “Does morality really exist?”
• “Does free will really exist?”

But often the hidden assumption is:

“Do these exist in the same way tables or atoms do?”

And once phrased that way, the answer may simply be: no, but why should that be the only legitimate mode of existence?

Human reality is layered. Some things exist physically, some socially, some symbolically, some phenomenologically, some mathematically, and some fictionally. Money, nations, laws, marriages, depression, melodies, and fictional characters all “exist,” though not in the same way rocks exist.

By the very fact that we are talking about a concept, it already has a certain kind of existence to us. That does not automatically grant it physical or metaphysical independence, but it prevents the simplistic dismissal:

“It doesn’t exist, therefore it is nothing.”

A hallucination does not exist as an external object, but the hallucination itself undeniably exists as an experience. A fictional character does not exist biologically, but they exist culturally and imaginatively.

So perhaps the deeper philosophical question is not:

“Does X exist?”

but rather:

“In what way does X exist?”

“Within what mode of being?”

“Within what human practice or disclosure does it appear?”

That reframing avoids forcing all reality into the model of physical objects alone.