Curt Jaimungal: What is Existence, Exactly?

Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal

Curt Jaimungal

Society & Culture, Physics, Science, Philosophy

4.6 • 616 Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2026

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

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Summary

I personally subscribe to The Economist. TOE listeners get 35% off the annual subscription. No other podcast has this! https://economist.com/TOE Does Batman exist? Not really—but proving he doesn't turns out to be a logical minefield. This episode tackles negative existentials: why saying "X doesn't exist" seems to require referring to X in the first place. We trace the debate from Russell's theory of descriptions, through Kripke's devastating critique in Naming and Necessity, to Meinong's radical claim that non-existent objects still populate our domain of discourse. Plus: null pointer exceptions as computer science's Meinongianism, why AI struggles with fictional facts, and why three competing theories—descriptivism, Meinongianism, and abstract realism—each come with a steep philosophical price tag. I hope you enjoy. TIMESTAMPS: - 00:00 - The Batman Paradox - 03:26 - Russell’s Theory of Descriptions - 06:36 - Kripke’s Rigid Designators - 09:44 - Meinongian Domain Quantification - 12:45 - Nuclear and Extra-Nuclear Properties - 15:50 - Modal Descriptivism and AI - 18:54 - Presentism and Temporal Ontology LINKS MENTIONED: - Diana Pasulka [TOE]: https://youtu.be/E5MuTHUbMUs - Why I Don't Buy The Simulation Hypothesis [TOE]: https://youtu.be/3_lBPMc6JRY - Elan Barenholtz [TOE]: https://youtu.be/A36OumnSrWY - Naming And Necessity [Book]: https://neuroself.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/naming-and-necessity-full-text.pdf - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/0486404455?tag=toe08-20 - Critique Of Pure Reason [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/0140447474?tag=toe08-20 - The Interpretations Of Quantum Mechanics In 5 Minutes [Article]: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/the-interpretations-of-quantum-mechanics - Alexius Meinong: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/meinong/ - On Denoting [Paper]: https://www.uvm.edu/~lderosse/courses/lang/Russell(1905).pdf - Graham Priest [TOE]: https://youtu.be/ZGOMmGK4eeY - Nonexistent Objects [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/0300024045?tag=toe08-20 - Abstract Objects [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/9027714746?tag=toe08-20 - Noam Chomsky [TOE]: https://youtu.be/RIY0GFtHU2U - John Vervaeke [TOE]: https://youtu.be/GVj1KYGyesI - Presentism: https://iep.utm.edu/time/ - Joscha Bach [TOE]: https://youtu.be/3MNBxfrmfmI - Existence [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/1107625262?tag=toe08-20 FOLLOW: - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e - Substack: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/subscribe - Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt - Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs - Crypto: https://nowpayments.io/donation/TOE - PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=XUBHNMFXUX5S4 Guests do not pay to appear. #science Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the producers of Baby Rainier comes Alice and Steve, exclusively on Disney Plus.
0:04.5	I wish I was in love.
0:05.6	You're my best friend.
0:06.5	Anybody'd be lucky to have you.
0:08.5	Meet Alice and Steve.
0:09.8	We've known each other for over 30 years.
0:12.0	When Alice's daughter starts to date, Steve...
0:14.1	Mom, I want to keep seeing him.
0:15.8	Things start to unravel.
0:18.3	Your mom just tried to shoot me.
0:19.6	What?
0:20.5	Steve! Alice and Steve, a Hulu original series. unravel. Your mom just tried to shoot me. What? Da!
0:21.6	Alice and Steve, a Hulu original series, exclusively on Disney Plus.
0:27.6	18 plus subscription required to T's and C's Apply.
0:29.6	When you say that you exist, what is it exactly that you're claiming?
0:33.6	That there's a physical body at a particular location, that there's a continuous stream of consciousness.
0:40.5	Well, presumably you'd still be you with a prosthetic arm, and also the stream that you think of as continuous, gets continually interrupted every night when you sleep.
0:50.1	We're confident about our own existence, yet we can't articulate exactly what we're so confident about
0:55.4	other than some unspecific reference to patterns. Today, let's take on the frightening task
1:00.8	of analyzing existence. To make this more palatable and less psychiatric hospital-inducing,
1:07.2	let's distance this from the analysis of the first person that can lead you to the dark night of the soul.
1:12.1	And let's just talk about the dark night.
	...

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