From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2002 1:11 AM To: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures. "Paul Holbach" wrote: > "There is an x ..." is the verbal formulation of the existential > quantifier which is a logical formula but nevertheless an ontological > statement establishing the fact that a particular property is > instantiated Instantiated in the relevant logical model. Whether that model corresponds to actuality is a separate question -- one of ontology, not logic. > to be is to have at least one positive property In logic, to be is to be the value of a variable that is bound under some particular model. > Superficially, it is tempting to regard holes as real instances of > nothingness, but thatīs entirely misleading. And to "superficially" reify nothingness is *not* "misleading"? > if absolutely nothing existed, there would certainly be no > notion of uninstantiated properties either... There would be no actual thoughts or conversations about properties, but property instantiation would not suddenly become logically self-contradictory. That would only happen if there were no possible world instantiating the property, but the fact that an (or the) existent world is empty doesn't imply that no worlds are possible. > We know that there is something (the universe) so there > can impossibly have been any real state of absolute > impossibility, for if that had been the case [..] You are illicitly assuming that temporality would obtain even in a state of absolute impossibility. Absolute impossibility would (if it weren't self-contradictory) imply no temporality. > "There is a possible state x such that absolutely nothing is > possible." is illogical since if nothing were possible, even > impossibility itself would be impossible. That is a fair summary of the more rigorous and detailed argument I posted last week. > The idea of absolute impossibility is as > self-contradictory as the idea of absolute nothingness I don't see how it would be self-contradictory for nothing to exist. > I think there is only one world being both possible and actual, > namely reality, which is the only world with full-blooded existence. It seems quite untenable to claim that the actual world is the only logically possible world. > itīs somewhat misleading to speak of pure possibilities as > being on a par with actualities I don't claim 'possible' is a synonym of 'actual'. I claim that there is no semantic difference between 'a possible other world' and 'an actual other world'. If you know of such a difference, please enlighten me. > David Lewis seems to hold that possible and actual worlds are equally > real in a non-homonymous way, but Iīm somehow reluctant to subscribe > to modal realism. It does seem counter-intuitive, but I've yet to see a semantic difference between 'a possible other world' and 'an actual other world'. > > Consider a possible world in which only one thing exists. > > Why would it be impossible for that thing to cease existing, > > and thus leave nothing in existence? > > thereīd still be the empty possible world. So, one might be tempted to > argue that nothingness is possible because thereīs a possible world > with no inhabitants (which would be an analogue to an empty > mathematical set). But thatīs an erroneous belief because if anything > remains, be it an empty set or an empty possible world, thatīs no > state of absolute absence. An empty set - by definition - has no > elements, but it is nonetheless an object of mathematical discourse. You're confusing an abstract description of a world (i.e. a logical model -- see http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Model+theory) with the world itself. Even if the only existent/actual world is one whose domain set is empty -- i.e. even if nothing exists -- that doesn't imply that one of the things in the domain set is the empty domain set itself. It's simply not a rule of model theory that the domain set of a model must include itself. > A true state of absolute logical nothingness would require the > complete subtraction of the possible world itself Just what, precisely, are you claiming is the difference between absolute nothingness and a world (i.e. state of affairs) in which no entity has ontological existence? To me, the latter is in fact the definition of the former. It sounds as if you instead define 'absolute nothingness' as a state of affairs which is so non-existent that it does not even qualify as a state of affairs. You can I suppose thus trivially stipulate that for you the phrase 'absolute nothingness' is self-contradictory, but that hardly demonstrates that it is self-contradictory to speak of a state of affairs in which no entity has ontological existence. > Try to imagine a possible world where there is no possible world... The state of affairs of nothing being possible is quite different from the state of affairs of nothing existing. I tend to think that the former is self-contradictory, but not the latter. And, as with your position about actual infinitudes, the alleged fact of this self-contradiction has somehow been omitted from every philosophy reference work that I've ever read. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net