From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 6:57 PM To: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures. "Paul Holbach" wrote: > > I doubt he means precisely "here and now", as opposed to just "this". > > But anything "this" refers to must be here and now No, it need just be relative to here and now. > > Please identify this "something more than possible" > > that constitutes actuality for a world. > > For instance, mere possibilia do not causally interact and cannot be > real objects of sensory perception. An "actual" world can neither "causally interact" with us or be a "real object of sensory perception". > To me possible worlds (except for the actual one) are worlds of > imagination, ie logical phantasmata which are described realistically The same could be said of other "actual" worlds. > but whose content is irreal, ie non-actual. This is just a restatement of the stipulation that "merely possible" implies "non-actual". > itīs simply not true that any other, more commonsensical definition > [of 'actual'] must be untenable. In the absence of a non-question-begging definition of 'actual' as applied to worlds, a provisional conclusion of untenability is quite justified. > By the way, how does a Lewisian deal with a sentence like "This is > actual."? - "This is this." or what...? "This is causally related to the rest of the universe." (I never said that 'actual' was a synonym for 'this'.) > > temporality is just another > > thing that one might consider possibly impossible. > > there wonīt be any impossibility of time in the future either. You are (again) confusing 1) whether the impossibility of time obtains and 2) whether it is possible. I.e. you are confusing actuality with possibility (which are quite distinguishable for things like temporality that are aspects of worlds, as opposed to worlds themselves). > > You are again confusing the issues of whether absolute impossibility > > obtains (tenselessly) and whether it is possible. > > Am I...? Yes. > I fail to see that already > the definition of "universe" or "world" rules out the possibility of a > trans-world contact. If two things have even the slightest possibility of causally interacting, they are by definition in the same world. > to claim that possible worlds are just as literally > real as the actual physical universe is an onto-logical perversion. To claim there is a difference between "possible worlds" and "actual worlds" without being able to describe such a difference is a linguistic self-deception. > > the possibility of a world is independent of any minds, and > > does not vary from mind to mind. > > language&logic depend on the *social mind* of mankind The truths of logic are independent of the minds of human primates. I defy you to state "the truths of logic are dependent on the minds of human primates". > there are no signs and correspondingly no logical models in case > there isnīt any mind which produces them. Is this supposed to constitute an argument that the possibility of a world is somehow dependent on particular minds? Is this anything more than the facile observation that signs are only produced by sign-producers? > if some shrewd extra-cosmic villain found a way of penetrating > into our universe, weīd be in actual danger, wouldnīt we?! Such a villain would by definition not be "extra-cosmic", but rather would by definition always have been in our universe. > > "Absolute unknowability" is by definition immune to "new practical > > epistemological methods". > > Yes, but we donīt know where the exact limits of knowability lie. I have a pretty good idea of where they lie: http://humanknowledge.net/Thoughts.html#MindAndLimits I also know that "absolute unknowability" lies BY DEFINITION outside the limits of knowability. > I was just emphasizing the important distinction between the logical > possibility of a formal model of an empty world and the ontological > possibility of an empty world. And I was just emphasizing that there is no such distinction, since what is logically possible is ontologically possible. > Thereīs a concise article "non-being and nothing" (in "The Oxford > Companion to Philosophy", ed. Ted Honderich, p. 624f.) which fully > corresponds to what I hold. How does one justify the article's claim that "every absence requires an existent positive reality that logically excludes it"? Doesn't this analysis make the mistake of assuming that existence is a first-order predicate? > I also found a very interesting article from the "Blackwell Guide to > Metaphysics", which is mainly about modality but also mentions the > incompatibility analysis regarding positive&negative properties: > http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ap85/papers/ActualAndPossible.html I'll take a look at it. > > > I remind you of my dictum "To be is to be something." > > > > I'm not sure I buy this either. To logically be is to be the > > value of a bound variable. To ontologically be is to have > > causal relations with this sentence. > > You canīt subscribe to "Being is property-instantiation."...? For logical being I can. For ontological being I don't. > Actually, thatīs just a paraphrase of Quineīs dictum. Of course. > > Reifying nothingness here seems like a mistake. > > Iīve taken the reified notion of nothing just in order to show what it > would lead to, namely logical untenability. > I think thatīs sort of a reductio ad absurdum. Nothing is not a thing; Nothing is the absence of all things. > > You again seem to be confusing descriptions of worlds with the worlds > > themselves. > > I beg you pardon?? Isnīt it me whoīs always been emphasizing the > importance of that distinction?! You said "...then S itself wouldn't exist", where S is a sentence describing the state of Nothingness. You're confusing Nothingness with the sentence S that describes Nothingness. Nothingness could obtain and S could still be true even if there are no actual enunciations of S. A statement doesn't have to be enunciated to be true. > > There's definitely something wrong with a logical argument that > > seems to assume that logic can only apply if minds exist. > > Logic presupposes semiotics and semiotics > presupposes mentality. (1) Logic can only apply if minds exist. Do you claim (1), or not? Yes or no? If no, then what's your point? If yes, then why not just say so? -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net