From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Friday, May 24, 2002 8:35 AM To: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures. "Paul Holbach" wrote: > A literally empty world would surely contain no matter (neither > baryonic nor dark) and no energy (neither vaccuum nor dark), Nor would it even be comprised of anything resembling space or time. The fact that you use the word 'contain' here suggests that you're not fully understanding what is meant by an "empty world". > but it > would still be a world, ie it would still BE something; and so it > would have to possess some nameable substantial properties. A world is nothing more than a set of causally related circumstances. The empty world is the one associated with the empty set of such circumstances. > Rooms may be empty but this > possibility presupposes the existence of walls, floors and ceilings. The empty world is more like the empty set than like an empty room. > Russellīs paradox is a genuine paradox in every language in which it > can be formulated at all. And thus, despite your blanket claim that "there [is] no language-independent thing *set*", sets are indeed language-independent in the sense that there are aspects about them (such as Russell's paradox) that are independent of any language. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net