From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2002 9:04 PM To: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures. "Paul Holbach" wrote: > > 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. > > I´m afraid I cannot help insisting that I´m not too thick to grasp > that difference... Isn't the difference between a description and the thing described an obvious one? > What you call a world is pretty close to a sheer metaphor. I don't see that at all. You might as well have said "what you call a stone is pretty close to a sheer metaphor." > > 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. Please tell me which part of your posting constituted an answer to these two questions. I could not detect an answer to either. > > 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. > > ..."so non-existent"? Are there degrees of non-existence? Of course not. This is my sarcastic way of pointing out that you seem to be ascribing consequences to nothingness that are not built-in features of the concept. > "2.01 A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of > objects (things)." As I said: "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." You explicitly assume that a "state of affairs" must include at least one object, but don't (as far as I can tell) attempt to justify this assumption. > an empty world in the concrete sense of the word "world" would still > BE something, namely a world, and so not absolutely nothing. Thus, the > *empty world* is no description of nothingness since if something is > something, then it´s not nothing. I define 'absolute nothingness' as the situation or state of affairs in which no entity has ontological existence. You can if you want trivially stipulate that 'absolute nothingness' instead means 'a situation that does not count as anything -- not even as a situation' and thus is self-contradictory. But surely you see that such a stipulation in no way demonstrates that there is anything contradictory about my alternative definition. If we're just disagreeing about the definition of 'nothingness', and not about the implications of the two different concepts that we each label as 'nothingness', then we should just agree to disagree. > You seem to hold that sets exist in > exactly the same ontological way as our physical universe does I never said that. How is that implied by anything I've said? > It´s arguable that every concrete object is contingent, ie it > might not exist. But it´s an outright fallacy to conclude from the > fact that there is a time when every particular object is inexistent > that there might be a time when absolutely everything is inexistent > altogether. You seem to be introducing a notion of time that isn't inherently part of what you're arguing against. In this context, it's better to adopt an B-series perspective on time. > When I die and then my body is > cremated, it´s not nothing which remains but a small heap of ashes. So > every ceasing to exist is in fact a material transformation resulting > in a new substantial form owing to the conservation principle. You're blatantly assuming our nomological conservation principles as necessary, when of course they're contingent. > the purely abstract thought process of "object > subtraction" as described in text grossly flouts the nature of being No, it just flouts some of the contingent physical laws of our particular universe. > the object of a concept to which no assignable intuition whatsoever > corresponds is = nothing. If Kant here is defining 'nothing', his definition is a poor one. If instead he is saying that there is not any thing that is "the object of a concept to which no assignable intuition whatsoever corresponds", I agree. > [..] since nothingness is no state of affairs at all. Why should I agree that there is no possible state that can aptly be described as nothingness? If you do not think that any such state is possible, just what do you think is the minimal possible state? How many things must it contain, with how many properties, for how long, in how many spatial dimensions? Why would you think that *any* of these parameters are necessary for a state to be a state? > Negation is pure absence referring to another > presence than the one negated, What "presence" does absence "refer to"? Nothingness is just like the current state of affairs, in which infinitely many possible things don't exist while some set of things do exist, except with nothingness all the things in the latter set are moved over into the former one. > but there is no possible state of > affairs such as *presence of the absence*. Nobody is saying that the "absence" of those infinitely many non-existent things is "present" in nothingness (in any sense that doesn't apply to the current state of affairs). > It´s NOT ME who´s been reifying *nothingness* > since I´ve proven THOSE PERSONS wrong who claim that *nothingness* is > a logically tenable concept! You clearly attempt to reify the *object* of the concept "nothingness" in order to show that the concept is self-contradictory. If you could grasp that the concept "nothingness" has NO OBJECT, then you would understand that it is not self-contradictory. Alas, it seems that you are determined instead to assign to the notion of "a reified (and thus self-contradictory) absence" the label n-o-t-h-i-n-g-n-e-s-s, and so we are not even debating the real issue: whether there is a possible state in which no entity could accurately be said to exist. > please replace "not independent of all human languages" with "not > independent of all cosmic languages". Doing so in no way contradicts my point that "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