From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 8:33 AM
To: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures.

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

> the concept of nothingness is such an illogical concept and
> hence logic itself rules out the possibility that such a thing as
> *nothingness* falls under it

As I told you on Apr 23:
----------------------
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.  Any possible world can be described by a model. 
What is contradictory about a world described by a model with 
an empty domain set? [I note that the definition of model I
cite above stipulates that the domain set be non-empty, but
I don't see anything self-contradictory in it being empty.]

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.
----------------------
Your reply to the first paragraph was a non sequitor argument
that because the empty set is empty, an empty world would
be self-contradictory.  You didn't reply to the second
paragraph at all, except to hand-wave in the direction of
your proof to Buridan. If you can't understand or address
the distinction I make in the second paragraph above, then
there's not much point in this discussion continuing....

> Speaking analogously of *the empty world* is an unjustifiable
> metaphysical reification of purely abstract and formal concepts such
> as "the empty set".

This is ironic, since my argument is that YOU illicitly reify
Nothingness into a Thing that a universe could not contain and
still be empty.

> > And thus, despite your blanket claim that "there [is] no
> > language-independent thing *set*", sets are indeed
> > language-independent in the sense that there are aspects
> > about them (such as Russell's paradox) that
> > are independent of any language.
> 
> That the logical content of concepts is globally inter-translatable is
> made possible by the one world and the one biological human mind we
> all share.

Are you claiming that non-human terrestrial minds could not talk to 
us about sets?  Are you claiming that extra-terrestrial minds could
not talk to us about sets?  Are you claiming that any mind from
any other possible universe would in principle be unable to form
a conception that could in principle be recognized as what we call
a set?  Each of these claims would be absurd, and thus sets are
indeed language-independent in the sense that their conceivability
is not dependent on contingent facts about particular languages.
--
brian@holtz.org
http://humanknowledge.net