----- Original Message ----- From: "andie nachgeborenen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
So, before there were humans, 2+2 did not = 4? There were no twos or fours? Nine was not the number of the planets? ================= Then you might as well go all the way and argue for consitutive mathematical Platonism a la John Barrow, Einstein in some of his more speculative moments, Whitehead, Pythagoris etc.. Heck go for a full blown theism; angels and cherubs are abstract entities, unicorns, the works, let's be entity maximalists. :-). We can't know whether those abstract entities have concrete existence independent our cognition/expression of them in linguistic/artistic artifacts. Like I wrote earlier we have no decision procedure for adjudicating conflicting claims on this stuff Btw this makes utter nonsense of our best physical and biological theories of the world. So these entities are not dispensible, and Occam sez, keep 'em. jks =================== I didn't assert that the entities were indispensible, only that the Platonist theory of them is not indispensible. Ian
