Does Being Mean Being in Some Place?

Where is your Mind? Does existence imply existence in some place? It depends on the type of existent considered.

For an entity to exist does require that it exist in some place, for place is that which exists between bodies in result of their being extended. Body and place are inseperable in concrete physical reality. We can have placeless bodies only in our imagination. (Even at the level of quantum physics, things have place, even if that place is fuzzy or, due to its size compared to the precision of our instruments, indeterminable.) To be a separate body is to occupy a separate space. Just as a body is its attributes, it also is its relations. The one relationship which exists between all bodies is the relationship of place. Indeed, just as one can consider body to be the primary example of entity, place (location in space) is the primary example of relation. Since existence is the sum of all entities, their attributes, and their relations, it follows that every entity, since it exists within existence, exists in some relation to all other entities. A body is necessarily either here or not here. And if it is not here, it is because it is there - i.e., in some other "here."

But entities are not the only existents. Relations exist too. Awareness is a type of relationship. Location is another type of relationship, as are equality, friendship, and anything that exists metaphorically "between" existents. Consider the relationship fatherhood. Does it have a place? One might be tempted to imagine fatherhood as existing where the father and his child exist. Likewise, consider the relationship of awareness. One might think of awareness existing where the sensing and where the sensed entity exist. But this is naive. I am aware of you existing in California while I exist in New York. Perhaps we are speaking on the phone. Is my awareness through the phone? In one sense, yes. In another sense, no. My awareness does not travel down the wire to you in the way that my voice travels to you as an impulse on the line. If I pass out, that route does not thereby become bereft of "awareness." Neither does my awareness exist in a straght line, or, indeed, in any other spatial relation to you. For awareness is not a substance. The mind is not a thing. Indeed, if a relation existed in a place, this place would itself be a relation. The relation would have a place, which would be a relation, and that relation would also have a place. Indeed, one would have to draw the absurd conclusion that place must have a place, which must have a place, ad infinitum, just as Plato's theory of forms requires an infinite revress of forms of forms.

Place is a relationship of physical entities. Relations, such as awareness or fatherhood or even place itself are not entities, and hence, do not have place. The mind is not a thing, and hence does not have alocation. Dont worry, you haven't lost your mind. It wasn't there in the first place.