> > I answered: >> if there were no concrete entities, I > couldn't make statements at all, of either the true > or false variety.<< > > > JKS writes: >So? That doesn't mean the statements > you could make if you existed wouldn't be true or > false.< > > Assuming that JKS isn't engaged in willful > misunderstanding, I guess my prose is really, > really, bad. What I said is that if there were no > concrete entities, I couldn't make statements at > all.
Right, I understood your point. You couldn't make statements if you didn't exist. But mine was this: even if you didn't exist, the statements that, hypothetically, counterfactually, you could make if you did exist, would still be true or false. Hamlet doesn't exist outside a play, but if he did, and if he were to say to Laertes, It's pupid for us to fight, that statement would be (in retrospect) true. > JKS continues: > Even when there wasn't anybody, say > in the first few seconds of the big bang and for > several billion years thereafter, the proposition > ... "No conscious life exists" was true.< > > but in that case, there _were_ concrete entities > (the monoblock that's exploding and then its > pieces). > Doesn't really matter, since the concrete entities are not malking the statements in those cases. Your point is really that propositional content depends on someone being able to entertain it. No people, no statements, no content, right? So from your point of view, a world of nothing but quarka and muouns is effectively emopty. But you can the point to be aboura wholly empty world, nothing but the spacetime, if you like. > JKS: >All the propositions that could ever be exist, > though of course only an infinutesmal fraction of > them will ever be said or thought. ....< > > propositions are mental states. How can propositions > exist without minds? Here's ther nub of the disagreement. I think propositions are the contents of intentional mental states. I believe _that_ Jim's a smart guy. "Jim's a smart guy" is the content of my belief. But it's not, in my book, a mental state. Propositionally speaking, its content isn't even an English sentence. It's equivalent to "Jim ist intelligent" and other such statements in other languages that I don't know or which have never been invented, but which all say the same thing. It has to be this way, or we couldn't have the same thoughts, since I don;t have your mental states, but if we agree that capitalism sucks, we have a belief with a common propositional content, right? Now we _can_ say that (after > the Big Bang, at least), some propositions that we > _now_ think about were empirically true. I'd bet > that "E = m c squared" fit empirical reality before > Einstein thought it up -- and before sentient beings > arose that were able to think about such matters. So far so good. > But saying that "a proposition we now posit was > true" is different from saying "the proposition > _existed_." Fair enough. But I think that all these propositions do exist. One way to think about them is as possible worlds where the proposition in question in true. Then we can say, there is a possible world where, e.g., capitalism sucks. But the "there is" is an existential quantifier. It says that world exists. Whether it is our world we can argue with the right. But as a possible world it exists. This is David Lewis' approach, btw. Similarly, saying that 2 + 2 = 4 applied > before sentient beings developed mathematical > principles is different from saying that > mathematical principles exist independent of our > minds. (It's a mistake to confuse our consciousness > of something for that something.) Hmmm. This is less clear. How would that be? Do you mean that 2+2=4 "applied" in virtue od the possibility that someday a szentient being might think it? Among other > things, it's quite possible that our mathematical > principles turn out to be wrong in some sense (or at > least incomplete). Our mathematical principles do > not correspond to the abstract nature of empirical > reality _exactly_ because we don't (and can't) know > the world exactly. Well that is neither here nor there. 2+2=4 is a placeholder for whatever thetrue mathematical principles are. That one's provable, however,a s you know. > (By the way, even simple math depends on assumptions > (just as the number of planets orbiting the sun > depends on assumptions). If you take a piece of > chalk and break it in half, you suddenly have two > pieces of chalk. But it's the same chalk! so 1 = 2. I am not sure what this means. You need axioms and rules to state a formal mathematical system such as arithemetic, so there are assumptions, yes -- in expressing math in a fgormal language. But that is totally different from what the true mathematical relations between nuymbersa re thatw e express in the system. Likewise the numberof the planbets is what it is; our statements about astronomy. of course, involve assumptions. > ) > > JKS:>There, Ian, I'm really scary -- I am not only > realistic about maths, I'm realistic about > propositions! ...< > > JKS, I'd say that you heed a very specific kind of > realism, idealist realism (Platonism), rather than > realism in general. > No, I'm just not prejudiced about my realism. I'm a pragmatist, so I'm happy to posit whatever's useful. Do we need abstract entities? Sure, then let's help ourselves to them. What about unobservables? No problem. Angels and cherubs? Well, whatever for? No thanks. But not because their weird, rather because they do no work. _______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today! http://vote.yahoo.com
