From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Wednesday, May 01, 2002 8:47 AM
To: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures.

"Paul Holbach" <paulholbachSPAMBAN@freenet.de> wrote:

> a quotation from "On the
> Plurality of Worlds" by David Lewis in the WWW:
> "There can be nothing much [at a world]: just some homogeneous
> unoccupied spacetime, or maybe only a single point of it. But nothing
> much is still something, and there isn't a world at which there's
> nothing at all." (p.73)

This sounds like nothing more than a stipulation about the term
'world'.  How would this follow from any non-question-begging
definition of 'world'?

> does it also
> involve the absence of any energetic state of the quantum vacuum

Certainly. Our actual physics is hardly necessary physics, and
philosophers rightly have no qualms about considering it contingent.

> Or is spacetime just a cognitive framework, a Kantian form of
> apprehension, which is transcendentally there prior to all possible
> perception?

No, spacetime is a physical thing, and not just a cognitive framework.

> the world IS the entirety
> of being itself and, therefore, if all beings cease to exist, then the
> world itself must necessarily cease to exist, too.

A "world" is specified by a description, and I don't see why the
description can't be empty.  Note that, by the identity of
indiscernables, there can only be one empty world; i.e. all
purportedly distinct empty worlds in fact have the same identity.

> The empty set can
> exist only by virtue of its being irreal, ie of its being nothing but
> an abstract concept. But an ontological world is more than a
> semiotically immanent entity since it possesses trans-semiotic,
> mind-independent reality.

This sounds a little too much like Continental philosophy for
me to consider it meaningful. :-)
--
brian@holtz.org
http://humanknowledge.net