From: brian@holtz.org (Brian Holtz)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Sent: Monday, August 26, 2002 5:41 PM
Subject: Re: Science & atheism are cultures.
Message-ID: <29c16047.0208261640.14aea51c@posting.google.com>

Paul Holbach wrote:

> You were wrong in claiming that the proposition list is empty

I disagree.

> "Nothing exists." may be read either as [..] or
> b) "Nothingness exists.", which means the presence of non-being,

I've never made any claims about such a meaning, and on the contrary
repeatedly warned against reifying nothingness in this way.

> your "model" may be re-formulated as follows:
> 
> D = {}
> PL = -(Ex)(x=x)

Perhaps, but then couldn't it also be re-formulated as
D = {}; PL = -(Ex)(x != x) ?

I agree that two models correspond to the same world if they have
the same domain and the same transitive closure of all statements
that can be deduced from their PLs.

> But now comes the metaphysical interpretation:
> This logical template doesnīt correspond to any empty world

I'll say it YET AGAIN: 'worlds' are here BEING DEFINED as those
things which correspond one-to-one with distinct world-models.
If you ALREADY HAVE some definition of 'empty world', then
you should stop pretending to agree with mine, and lay yours
on the table.

> because it
> negates any relation between itself and anything else.

I don't know what this means.

> [bh-minimal-world] means the absolute absence of anything

If your statement here means anything other than "D is empty",
then you are importing ontological intuitions that you need
to make explicit.

> but not the presence of something absent

Nothing means that, because that is nonsensical.

> there cannot be any relation  such as correspondence/representation 
> between a model and what isnīt there

Who says it "isn't there"?  We're DEFINING the thing that you're
claiming to already know whether it's "there".
On what authority do you say that it's nonsensical or contradictory 
to talk of "that which corresponds to [D={};PL={}]"?
I think you simply do not understand how completely I'm
demanding that we sweep away our prior intutions about what
a world/universe is.

> itīs misleading to
> speak of [bh-minimal-world] as if it were a model of the empty world

No, I said it was the DEFINITION of the empty world, and you
claimed you agreed with the definition.  Now you seem to have
some notion of "the empty world" beyond the definition you 
claimed you agreed with.

> [bh-minimal-world] simply doesnīt correspond to or
> represent *the empty world* since it negates all relations!

Despite the exclamation point, I still do not know what this means.

> So there
> are substantial reasons for you to revise your world definition as far
> as the empty domain is concerned, and to replace *the empty world
> model* with *the absent world description*.

You don't have to call the bh-minimal-world "the empty world", but
if you are still going to talk about "the empty world", then you
either have to define it or admit that you literally don't know
what you're talking about. :-)

> [bh-minimal-world] merely
> abstractly describes the absence of the world but not a world of
> emptiness!

You seem to be making at least two mistakes here:
1. Talking about "the absence of the world" presumes you have a
   meaningful definition of what it means for a world to be
   present -- i.e. exist.  I've yet to hear of such a definition,
   which is why I propose the alternative notion of whether a
   world is possible -- i.e. non-self-contradictory.
2. You seem to assume that a world is necessarily somehow
   container-like or space-like, above and beyond the idea that
   it involves a domain set.

> This means that AWD doesnīt refer to a possible state of
> the world because itīs fallacious to assume that the absence of the
> world is a state of the world.

As I just said, it's fallacious to talk about "the absence of 
the world", period.

> Accordingly doesnīt describe any state
> of affairs since a state/condition is always a state/condition of
> something; but if there isnīt anything, thereīs no state of what isnīt
> there.

If "state of affairs" means anything other than a world/universe,
please explain the difference.  If it's the same, then you can't
use it complain about how I'm defining it.

> I concede to you that I was mistaken in believing that "Nothing
> exists." is self-contradictory under any interpretation,

I of course agree that "nothingness exists" either means "nothing
exists" or is self-contradictory, and I note that I never said
otherwise.

> while you
> were wrong in believing that the proposition list is empty and that
> your world definition is correct regarding the empty domain.

I concede that the proposition list should be considered equivalent
to the transitive closure of all propositions deducible from it, and
that (Ex)(x=x) might be considered deducible from it. I don't agree
that this makes the bh-minimal-world self-contradictory, or that
there is anything self-contradictory about D={}.
--
brian@holtz.org
http://humanknowledge.net