From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2002 8:09 AM
To: Alt.Atheism.Moderated
Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures.


"Jesse Nowells" <jnowells@transbay.net> wrote:

> > what'd you need is a way to explain how "if other worlds exist"
> > isn't meaningless.  But you don't.
> 
> I say exists on whatever terms they exist.

'Exists' is a word in English, not a word in God-ese. What
'exists' means is decided by speakers of English, and not by
any other agents or circumstances.

> The term "actuality" is
> meaningless if you don't have any criteria to say something exists unless
> all you're saying is that what is actual about them from what you discern
> about them is only their possibility.

If "possible" has a meaning -- and it DOES -- then any synonym of it has 
the same meaning, and is thus not "meaningless".

> Just because you can't determine that the
> possibility of other worlds are actual, (because you don't know what *is*
> means for other worlds), it doesn't follow that therefore they are the
> same

Your use of "determine" makes it obvious that you
think I'm making a metaphysical claim, but I've told you perhaps
a dozen times I'm instead making a semantic/lexicographic claim.

> & to presume an equivalence is just an arbitrary convention
> you adopt.

No, it follows from the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles.

> It's confusion to define the "reality" of other worlds as
> this relationship because the term implies more than that.

Your mistaken belief that "the term implies more than that" is in fact
the true source of your confusion here.

> why do you have to define "reality" for other worlds without any sort of
> data for other worlds?

You can by definition never have empirical data about other worlds, but
(since they are hypothetical) you can by definition hypothesize/stipulate
anything you could want to know/specify about them.

> Your "criteria" is just a semantical game.

It's about semantics, yes, but semantics isn't a game.

> > 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.
> 
> & what in plain langauage is the identity of indiscernables?

Things that are not different are the same.

> That still
> doesn't indicate what *is* means for other worlds

You obviously think that "what 'is' means for other worlds" is something
to be discovered, when in fact it's something to be DECIDED.
--
brian@holtz.org
http://humanknowledge.net