From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2002 8:09 AM To: Alt.Atheism.Moderated Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures. "Jesse Nowells" wrote: > > what'd you need is a way to explain how "if other worlds exist" > > isn't meaningless. But you don't. > > I say exists on whatever terms they exist. 'Exists' is a word in English, not a word in God-ese. What 'exists' means is decided by speakers of English, and not by any other agents or circumstances. > The term "actuality" is > meaningless if you don't have any criteria to say something exists unless > all you're saying is that what is actual about them from what you discern > about them is only their possibility. If "possible" has a meaning -- and it DOES -- then any synonym of it has the same meaning, and is thus not "meaningless". > Just because you can't determine that the > possibility of other worlds are actual, (because you don't know what *is* > means for other worlds), it doesn't follow that therefore they are the > same Your use of "determine" makes it obvious that you think I'm making a metaphysical claim, but I've told you perhaps a dozen times I'm instead making a semantic/lexicographic claim. > & to presume an equivalence is just an arbitrary convention > you adopt. No, it follows from the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles. > It's confusion to define the "reality" of other worlds as > this relationship because the term implies more than that. Your mistaken belief that "the term implies more than that" is in fact the true source of your confusion here. > why do you have to define "reality" for other worlds without any sort of > data for other worlds? You can by definition never have empirical data about other worlds, but (since they are hypothetical) you can by definition hypothesize/stipulate anything you could want to know/specify about them. > Your "criteria" is just a semantical game. It's about semantics, yes, but semantics isn't a game. > > It's only "necessary" in the sense that the recognition of the equivalence > > is motivated by the principle of the Identity of Indiscernables. Every time > > you use 'necessary' to imply anything else, you're misreading my position. > > & what in plain langauage is the identity of indiscernables? Things that are not different are the same. > That still > doesn't indicate what *is* means for other worlds You obviously think that "what 'is' means for other worlds" is something to be discovered, when in fact it's something to be DECIDED. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net