From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 7:37 AM
To: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures.

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

> so all we can say about some
> possible other-world fact S is that it might be the case that it is
> nomologically, ie actually possible.

"Nomologically possible" means possible under the natural laws of
this universe. It does not mean possible under the natural laws
of at least one universe.

> OK, but then ontological possibility and nomological possibility
> become hardly distinguishable.

Only because you're not using "nomological possibility" the way
it philosophers normally use it.

> > actually define the concept (as opposed to enumerating its
> > synonyms).
>
> OK, an explication of a concept may involve more than the dictionaries
> tell us.

Unfortunately, dictionaries are not subject to rigorous philosophical
review... :-)

> the statement
> "Our world is actual.", when applied to the world as a whole, doesn´t
> seem to convey much information other than "This is our world." This
> certainly doesn´t hold good for distinctions within our universe. I´m
> afraid ;-) your argumentation is more defensible than I thought, even
> though I remain critical of several of Lewis´ basic views, especially
> for the reason that there are also some substantial arguments against
> the alleged absolute inevitability of regarding "actual" as an
> indexical.

I don't necessarily agree that it's inevitable; it's just that I
haven't been able to find or think of an alternative in the short
while since I heard of Lewis' idea.

> > One expression of the concept might contain 'not' etc., but an
> > equally valid expression of the concept might not.
>
> If I take you right, then you mean that, for instance, "not
> intelligent" is equivalent to "stupid".

Right.

> > That's a fine example of a "causal relationship".
>
> ...only in an extended sense of causation.

Indeed, the most extended possible sense -- the transitive closure
of causal relatedness.  I guess that wasn't obvious in my original
phrasing.
--
brian@holtz.org
http://humanknowledge.net