From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 8:27 AM To: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures. "Paul Holbach" wrote: > Maybe [Lewis] really believes > that *the empty world* is an inconsistent ontological concept. A demonstration of such inconsistency would be interesting. > > A "world" is specified by a description, and I don't see why the > > description can't be empty. > > the existence of an ontic world doesn´t depend on any description > by minds. (What work is 'ontic' doing in this sentence?) When we say that a thing is specified by its description or properties, we're not saying that the thing doesn't exist when those properties or description are not being thought about. > The empty logical set exists solely owing to its being > logically described in an immanent *reality* of the human intellect > but not beyond. What is "an immanent *reality* of the human intellect". > In order to be able to construct an empty world you would have > to posit at least something ontologically positive firstly whose > existence you would then have to negate secondly. Why would I "have to"? > ontic worlds need no minds in order > to be ontologically possible/actual[..], > but logical worlds (=syn formal models) and their respective > descriptions presuppose existent minds by which the former are > determined. A world is only ontologically possible if it is logically possible, and whether a world is logically possible is independent of any mind. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net