Le 20-juil.-12, à 20:02, meekerdb a écrit :
On 7/20/2012 8:40 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:
Hi Jason,
The problem that I see with this definition is that it makes
existence contingent and not necessary. The contingency (or
dependence in the weaker case) on the capacity of "having objective
properties that could be studied by independent entities, and the
independent entities would come to the same conclusions about that
thing" would make observers prior to existence and that works if we
are considering non-well founded system, but not for the canonical
case. Existence must be prior to everything, literally, and thus
cannot be contingent on anything, including observers and/or their
capacities.
You're trying to define 'exists' as (logically?) prior to knowledge.
I think this is backwards. First we perceive things, then we form
theories about them.
This is close to Berkeley idealism. I guess you are not literal, for
you will have a problem to approach sensations and perceptions in the
third person theoretical deductive way.
This includes the theory that other people exist. We find we agree
with other people about perceptions. This leads to a theory of an
external, objective world to explain the agreement. We have developed
different theories about this objective world over the centuries with
successively greater scope, accuracy, and predictive power. But each
new theory has had a very different ontology: from demons and
demiurges, rigid bodies, corpuscles, atoms, fields, strings,
computations,... What is preserved are the perceptions, i.e. the
observations, on which we agree. So each theory tells us what,
according to that theory 'exists' as most basic, but it is really the
observations that are basic.
OK. And it is here that "conventional physics" has a problem, for to
relate observations with perceptions they rely on the physical
supervenience thesis, which does no more work when comp is assumed.
They don't precede observers chronologically, but the theory tells us
what happens beyond the range of observation and so what the world
was like before there were observers.
OK, then.
Bruno
Brent
Epistemology precedes ontology.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
