Is "exists", ambiguous?

Existence is at once an intuitive and ambiguous concept. In ordinary discourse, when we say that something "exists," we often mean that it shares the same physical space and material conditions as we ourselves do. If I ask, “Do I exist?”, what I am typically seeking is confirmation that I occupy the same empirical realm as you. This is the world of bodies and surfaces, of chairs and computers, of phones being tapped and screens being lit. This is what I refer to as actuality: the tangible, material domain in which we live and move.

In this everyday usage, existence often refers to what has actual presence, what can be observed, touched, or interacted with. However, the term exist does not always operate within this narrow frame. It is far more flexible and philosophically fraught. It extends, or appears to extend, to things that are not part of physical reality.

Take, for instance, the number 7. One might say that "7 exists." Yet clearly, 7 does not exist in the same way a tree or a hand exists. We cannot hold it, touch it, or locate it in space. Rather, 7 exists in the mode of representation, within a mental or conceptual domain. We encounter 7 as a symbol, a numeral, or an idea. When we think of 7, we might visualise a glyph with one descending diagonal line and one horizontal stroke. Alternatively, we might imagine seven apples, seven stars, or seven days. In all these cases, we are invoking representational existence. The number exists not as a thing in itself, but as an abstraction that helps us understand other things. Its existence is cognitive rather than physical.

There is another type of ambiguity involved in how we talk about existence: the case of fictional or cultural entities, such as Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is not part of the physical world, so he is not actual. He is also not quite the same as the number 7, which is a formal abstraction that describes quantity. Holmes is different. He is a constructed entity, endowed with traits, habits, and a life narrative. These are assigned by his creator and preserved through cultural continuity. We know where he lives, what he likes, and whom he interacts with. Yet we also know that he never lived.

So does Sherlock Holmes exist? Not in actuality. Not precisely in representation either, if that category is reserved for abstract tools like numbers or geometric concepts. Holmes exists as a narrative referent, a being that continues through collective imagination, cultural memory, and linguistic usage. He is a fictional entity, but one with a real cognitive and cultural presence. He was not discovered. He was created, and then attributed with qualities through storytelling.

This leads to a useful distinction. Some entities exist because they are used to describe reality. Others exist because we ascribe reality to them. Numbers fall into the former category, as they describe how many or how much. Fictional characters belong to the latter. They are given attributes, forms, and actions by authors and sustained by readers.

Therefore, existence is not a univocal term. It is a concept with multiple modes. It stretches across actuality (the physical and empirical), representation (the mental and abstract), and fictionality (the constructed and imagined). Each of these domains carries a different meaning for what it is to be, and each alters how we refer to entities when we speak of them.