From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Sunday, August 11, 2002 10:03 PM To: Alt.Atheism.Moderated Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures. "Jesse Nowells" wrote: > If other worlds exist, then there would be a congruence between their > possibility & their actuality which is self-evident. You don't need any > so-called "principle of the identity of indiscernibles" to claim that. No, what'd you need is a way to explain how "if other worlds exist" isn't meaningless. But you don't. > you appear to be using this tautology as an excuse to > make the presumption that possibility of other worlds is necessarily > equivalent with their actuality without the "if" clause. I dare you to try to explain what you mean by "necessarily equivalent". If it's anything other than my lexicographic observation that no differing definitions are on the table, then you just haven't been reading what I write. > If not, & you're merely addressing the obvious in a convoluted > way, then this whole argument you're making here is trivial. The beauty of analytic philosophy is that it can demonstrate that seemingly deep and vexing philosophical issues -- like whether other worlds exist -- are really just semantic confusions. You can call such demonstrations "trivial" all you want, but I for one like it when I am made less confused about things. > without any evidence, criteria or data, one has no way > of determining whether another world's possibility is congruent with any > "reality" whatever "reality" means under those particular circumstances. I've got my criteria: I've defined 'reality' for other worlds to be equivalent to possibility, in order to make sense of the statements of people who talk about the existence of other worlds without having any clear idea of what they're talking about. > > > What criteria is being used > > > to make the suggestion that it is equivalent? The non-discernibility of > > > actuality & possibility for such worlds?! > > > Yes -- as I've told you about half a dozen times. > > The non-discernbility of *both* is not grounds to presume any *necessary* > equivalence *between* the two. It's only "necessary" in the sense that the recognition of the equivalence is motivated by the principle of the Identity of Indiscernables. Every time you use 'necessary' to imply anything else, you're misreading my position. Feel free to continue doing so... -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net