Is it correct to say that square circles (and other incoherent ideas) do not exist? Or would it be more accurate to say they neither exist, nor don't exist?

Over a year ago, I read Quine's Two Dogmas for a philosophy class. One part in it makes the step from talking about meanings to abolishing meanings and talking only about synonymy. I never quite got that. I mean, if there are two things similar (or the same) about something, don't they each have to have those things? If two pieces of string have the same length, they have each have a length, and they happen to be the same. Likewise for any other properties I could think of, such as color, volume, mass, etc. I don't see how sameness could not imply those "intermediary entities" which are the same. Thanks.

I believe that there are only 3 possible options. 1) That God or some all powerful being created the universe. This is a very bizarre state because it means we are all subordinates to an independent being that has always existed. Strange. 2) The universe was created out of nothing. Truly weird. 3) That the universe has always existed. This is simply incomprehensible. Because these are the only 3 options I see and because each is mind-bogglingly discouraging or incomprehensible - or downright goofy - I think this whole existence thing is either some sort of hallucination or a complete joke. (Another possibility is that I am in some sort of hell.) Therefore, I take nothing seriously and treat this whole thing sort of the way you deal with the pain of stubbing your toe. Kind of grit your teeth and wait for the pain to end. Any thoughts?

What do we owe to people who don't yet exist? Intuitively, it seems to me that we shouldn't, say, cause widespread damage to earth because it will so valuable to our descendants. But can we really be said to be doing something wrong to someone who doesn't exist? And would it be wrong to do something that would cause them never to exist in the first place? It seems that if we can do moral harm to future people, but it isn't wrong to cause them to never exist, then it morally superior to never have children rather to bring children into the world in which you have done the *slightest* damage. (The children, of course, would disagree.) But if it is wrong to cause them to never exist-and, since they would drastically prefer to exist-then we have a tremendous burden to reproduce as much as possible. If it make any difference, I am interested in how these question relates to our burden to reduce catastrophic/existential risks to the human species (global warming, nuclear war, gray goo, etc.).

The "new" atheist thinkers such as Richard Dawkins tell us that we should dismiss religions and the belief in God, since they are based solely on faith and have no adequate objective evidence for them. If we would follow this line of thought into metaphysics and especially ontology then wouldn't it become also a question of faith. Since there's no objective scientific way to demonstrate any of the arguments about universals or the ultimate building blocks of reality. Is it right to bring this kind of reasoning over from one topic to another and if so does it invalidate something? And if ontology never claimed to be objective in the sense described why anybody even bothered to deal with it.

I was thinking, Is "absolutely nothing" logically possible? And I would just like to know what you would think of this argument. IF it is accepted that 1) "X is true if X corresponds to reality" then it would be logically impossible for "absolutely nothing" to exist. "Absolutely Nothing" implies no reality. If there is no reality then one can never say that "absolutely nothing" can exist, since "absolutely nothing" does not correspond to reality. But I ask you, if "absolutely nothing" is even possible. And if it is not possible, then what logical proofs are there. Thank you!

I've been reading some online articles on the concept of "function", but I'm not very sure about it. An ashtray, according to my dictionary, is a "container for cigarette ash", but I don't know what this "for" means. It can't mean that people ought to put ashes in the ashtray, because there are other places where we may put it. And it can't mean that people may put there the ashes, since, once again, we may put the ashes in places which are not ashtrays. It can't either mean that the ashtray was made "with the purpose" of serving as a container for the ashes, because an object may be an ashtray now but haven't been made to be an ashtray. So, what is an ashtray?

"Unique" is surely an absolute. Something either is different to anything else or it isn't. So, suppose I have a collection of 100 CDs (and I'm referring to titles, rather than the physical objects). If someone else had 99 of the same CDs in their collection, then mine would only be 1% different, but it would still be unique (obviously assuming that no-one else had the exact same collection). However, if I again have a collection of 100 CDs and the closest anyone could get to having the exact same collection is to just match with one of my CDs - my collection would be 99% different, and would be unique. Both collections are unique, but is one *more* unique than the other? If so, surely being 'unique' isn't an absolute but a question of degree. If neither are more unique than the other, how can they both be equally unique if it would only take 1 changed CD to match someone elses collection (and lose the unique status), but with the other it would take 99 changed CDs to match another collection.

I have been reading Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy , and am puzzled by a paragraph in a section on Plato ('Knowledge and Perception in Plato') pertaining to the use of the verb 'to exist'. The paragraph reads as follows: "Suppose you say to a child 'lions exist, but unicorns don't'; you can prove your point...by taking him to the zoo and saying 'look, that's a lion'. You will not...add 'and you can see that that exists'...if you do then you are uttering nonsense. To say 'lions exist' means 'there are lions', i.e. 'x is a lion' is true for a suitable x'. But we cannot say of the suitable x that it 'exists'; we can only apply this verb to a description, complete or incomplete. 'Lion' is an incomplete description, because it applies to many objects: 'the largest lion in the zoo' is complete, because it applies to only one object". What puzzles me about this paragraph is quite how it is, as Russell sees it, nonsensical to say 'there is a lion, and it exists'. Is it because we do not...

Can we perceive relations? For example, if I have a cup of coffee I can perceive the cup as white, round, hard, and shiny; and the coffee as liquid, brown, hot, and delicious; but the relation in has no color or visual size or shape, and I cannot touch it, hear it, smell or taste it --- so how can I perceive it? It's tempting to say that I cannot perceive it because it isn't real --- but if it isn't real then how could I drink the coffee? The similarity between two oranges, the direction of a train whistle, the relative brightness of the sun and the full moon ... There are countless empirical relations that can/cannot be perceived. How come?