From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2002 9:07 AM To: Alt.Atheism.Moderated Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures. "Jesse Nowells" wrote: > If you say there is an equivalence between actuality & possibility for > "worlds" then you are implicitly defining possibility for worlds as > "existence". Recognizing synonymy in usage is simply not the same thing as stipulating a definition. > > I don't stipulate any definition of 'existence' for other worlds. I > > merely note that people who naively try to apply the intra-world > > definition of 'existence' to other worlds are confused, in that they > > cannot distinguish that notion from mere possible existence of said > > worlds. > > You're equivocating between a degree of knowledge of an X with that X. Huh? > Signifying that the X refers to "other worlds" is a phony distinction. Huh? > > existence is for other worlds indistinguishable > > from -- and thus synonymous with -- possibility. > > Existence is not synoymous with possibility for any X. For other worlds, existence is indistinguishable from mere possibility. Your assertion that they are nevertheless not synonymous for other worlds is merely that -- an empty assertion. You claim they are non-synonymous, but you are utterly incapable of identifying any difference between them. > Your degree of knoweledge of this X is what is indetermined. Even if you knew every possible internal fact about an other universe X, you still would be incapable of telling me whether that universe exists or not. This is because you don't have any methodology for determining from the facts about a universe whether it exists or not. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net