From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 7:37 AM To: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures. "Paul Holbach" wrote: > so all we can say about some > possible other-world fact S is that it might be the case that it is > nomologically, ie actually possible. "Nomologically possible" means possible under the natural laws of this universe. It does not mean possible under the natural laws of at least one universe. > OK, but then ontological possibility and nomological possibility > become hardly distinguishable. Only because you're not using "nomological possibility" the way it philosophers normally use it. > > actually define the concept (as opposed to enumerating its > > synonyms). > > OK, an explication of a concept may involve more than the dictionaries > tell us. Unfortunately, dictionaries are not subject to rigorous philosophical review... :-) > the statement > "Our world is actual.", when applied to the world as a whole, doesn´t > seem to convey much information other than "This is our world." This > certainly doesn´t hold good for distinctions within our universe. I´m > afraid ;-) your argumentation is more defensible than I thought, even > though I remain critical of several of Lewis´ basic views, especially > for the reason that there are also some substantial arguments against > the alleged absolute inevitability of regarding "actual" as an > indexical. I don't necessarily agree that it's inevitable; it's just that I haven't been able to find or think of an alternative in the short while since I heard of Lewis' idea. > > One expression of the concept might contain 'not' etc., but an > > equally valid expression of the concept might not. > > If I take you right, then you mean that, for instance, "not > intelligent" is equivalent to "stupid". Right. > > That's a fine example of a "causal relationship". > > ...only in an extended sense of causation. Indeed, the most extended possible sense -- the transitive closure of causal relatedness. I guess that wasn't obvious in my original phrasing. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net