From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 9:08 AM To: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: Infinity (was: You' have to be God....ATTN: PH) Jim Humphries wrote > > > You may not be able to distinguish > > > qualitatively, say, your idea of 6 today from your > > > idea of 6 yesterday, but that does not > > > mean that they are the same single idea > > > > Yes it does, from the principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles. > [..] > with the present example [ an idea of 6 *today*, > and an idea of 6 *yesterday*] every property > of the one does not belong to the other! You are yet again confusing the events of consideration or contemplation with the abstraction of what those events have in common. Individual events or acts of contemplation can of course be distinguished. However, the abstraction or concept of "six-ness" or "six-hood" -- that which is in common to all such six-ish acts of contemplation -- cannot be distinguished as being different across those acts. Indeed, this is true by the very definitions of "abstraction" and "common". > > You are again confusing my consideration or contemplation > > of an idea with the idea itself. > > > Ah.. but the 'idea itself' is Platonism! Platonism is the notion that ideas have ontological existence independent of the minds that contemplate them and the entities that instantiate them. Talk of "the idea itself" does not commit one to such a notion, any more than does talk of "the color red itself". > the idea or concept itself is (by definition) the same for everybody. > > > Then you have let Platonism in through the back door. Wrong. Something can be "the same for everybody" without having ontological existence independent of all minds and instances. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net