Back in the rain-drenched UK. Returning seems like entering a room with a low, darkened ceiling (I was in sun-drenched Greece, not far from Aristotle's birthplace in Stagira, though did not have time to visit).
Meanwhile, I had time to think long and carefully about Maverick's 'circularity objection' to the thin conception of existence, and I now think I missed a trick. The thin conception rests on a definition. But how can a definition be circular at all, so long as it truly is a definition? Suppose we forget the word 'exists'. Suppose I want to define the verb 'xxxxts'. Thus
(1) A-B xxxxts =def A is B
I mean that anything of the form 'A-B xxxxts' -- for example 'A white man xxxxts' -- means exactly what 'A man is white' means. That's all. Nothing more, nothing less. I am explaining a term whose meaning is not initially known (the verb 'xxxxts') by the use of terms whose meaning is known. How can that be 'circular'? So long as the term I am trying to define does not appear in the definiens side, the right-hand side, so that I have to return to the left-hand side and so on in an infinite regress, there is not even a hint of circularity.
Why then does the Maverick even think the definition is circular? I think I have an answer to that as well, but more tomorrow.
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