From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Sunday, June 02, 2002 11:14 PM To: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures. "Jesse Nowells" wrote: > The possibility of a world is not necessarily actual Why? Because 'possibility' and 'actual' have different numbers of letters? Because they are on different pages in the dictionary? While these words are of course not synonyms in their normal domains of applicaiton, you've done absolutely nothing to show that there is a necessary non-synonymy between them in the relevant narrow and specialized domain: logical worlds. > there is a possible difference between > the possibility & the actuality of a possible world. More argument by assertion. > That's self-evident because it's necessarily true. Not in the domain of logical worlds. > Possible worlds are an absurdity anyway because if world > means totality of existence, there is only one actual totality. By asserting that our actual world is the only world that could be considered actual instead of merely possible, you are completely agreeing with my core thesis -- only you don't understand my thesis enough to realize it! This despite the fact that I already told you: Are you saying there is no difference between other worlds that are merely possible and other worlds that are indeed actual? If so, then you're agreeing with everything I've said. > Your ambiguity is evident & apparently deliberate. The thesis I've described is called modal realism in the philosophical literature. Feel free to research it if you find my exposition of it hard to understand. > There is no necessary equivalence between actuality & possibility > in a possible world. Maybe, but there is no demonstrated difference between them, and so no reason to consider them different. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net