On 17 Aug, 20:49, Jesse Mazer <laserma...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Peter Jones wrote:
>
> > On 17 Aug, 11:17, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> > > On 17 Aug 2009, at 11:11, 1Z wrote:
>
> > > > Without Platonism, there is no UD since it is not observable within
> > > > physical space. So the UDA is based on Plat., not the other way
> > > > round.
>
> > > Are you saying that without platonism, the square root of 2 does not
> > > exist?
>
> > Yes, the square root of two has no ontological existence.
>
> > > Prime number does not exist?
>
> > Yes, prime numbers have no ontological existence
>
> What do you mean by "ontological existence"?
Real in the Sense that I am Real.
>The modern perspective among analytic philosophers is to tie ontology to the
>notion of objective truth--if we imagine a book containing an exhaustive set
>of *all* objective truths about reality, then the minimal set of entities that
>we would need to refer to in such a book, in such a way that we could not
>remove all reference to them by coming up with a "paraphrase" of all
>statements involving them, would be the ones that must be part of our ontology.
That acount ties ontology to objective truth AND reality. We anti-
Platonists think
the truths of mathematics are objective but without any necessary
connection to reality.
>This idea goes back to Quine, it's discussed
>athttp://philosophy.uwaterloo.ca/MindDict/ontology.htmland there's also a
>discussion in the introduction to the book "The Oxford Handbook of
>Metaphysics", which says:
> "Quine's criterion of ontological commitment is understood to be something
> like this: If one affirms a statement using a name or other singular term, or
> an initial phrase of 'existential quantification', like 'There are some
> so-and-sos', then one must either (1) admit that one is committed to the
> existence of things answering to the singular term or satisfying the
> description, or (2) provide a 'paraphrase' of the statement that eschews
> singular terms and quantifications over so-and-sos.
We anti-Platonists do the latter.
>So interpreted, Quine's criterion can be seen as a logical development of the
>methods of Russell and Moore, who assumed that one must accept the existence
>of entities corresponding to the singular terms used in statements one
>accepts, unless and until one finds systematic methods of paraphrase that
>eliminate these terms. .... Most philosophers today who identify themselves as
>metaphysicians are in basic agreement with the Quinean approach to systematic
>metaphysics"
> The "paraphrase" condition means, for example, that instead of adopting a
> statement like "unicorns have one horn" as a true statement about reality and
> thus being forced to accept the existence of unicorns, you could instead
> paraphrase this in terms of what images and concepts are in people's mind
> when they use the word "unicorn"; and if you're an eliminative materialist
> who wants to avoid accepting mental images and concepts as a basic element of
> your ontology, it might seem plausible that you could *in principle*
> paraphrase all statements about human concepts using statements about
> physical processes in human brains, although we may lack the understanding to
> do that now.
> As the quote says, most philosophers (analytic philosophers anyway) adopt
> this point of view when dealing with metaphysical questions. For instance, if
> you believe there are objective truths about mathematics which cannot be
> reduced to statements about the physical world using an appropriate
> "paraphrase", then in Quine's scheme you'd have committed yourself to some
> form of mathematical platonism. Likewise, if you believe there is an
> objective truth about what it is like for a human to experience the color
> blue which could not be deduced from an exhaustive set of facts about their
> physical brain, as suggested by the "Mary's room" thought-experiment
> (seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary's_room), then you've committed yourself
> to an ontology where qualia have some sort of nonmaterial existence (even if
> they are entirely determined by the physical arrangements of matter and the
> physical world is 'causally closed', as proposed by David Chalmers).
Yep. I have no problem with any of that
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
