Brent wrote > > Okay, suppose that there are no observers, and the Earth > > has been burnt to a cinder except for one copy of Milton's > > "Paradise Lost", and one copy of the Oxford English dictionary. > > It seems to me that we should say that just two books still > > exist. Do you agree? > > > > Supposing that you do agree that these two book in our > > spacetime still exist, then as you have said, all the > > words in "Paradise Lost" can be found in the Oxford > > dictionary. > > > > Next we begin the slippery slope argument where Paradise Lost > > is broken apart into its separate pages and scattered > > throughout the cosmos. I agree with you that in one sense > > Milton's book no longer exists, but it still does exist in > > the sense that there is enough redundancy to piece it back > > together again were a new sentient life form to come into > > being, and to find those pages, and to bind them. > > > > What I disagree with is your statement that the mind of the > > observer really played any key role. > > I find that implausible. You're assuming that the pages could be put back in > order without > recognizing any meaning of the words. Do you think you could put the pages > of a book written in > Chinese in order? - I couldn't. I think you are implicitly assuming that > rules of syntax and > grammar are in the text itself. For a long book, it might be possible to > infer those rules with > some confidence - but not with certainty.
Yes, you're right. Assume that it's a long enough book that all the hints from sentence length, apparent word usage, and so on (e.g. who is speaking, if there are, say, quite a number of characters and the hypothsis is that " " denote speech associated with one particular capitalized Name). Then they might do it. Thanks for the correction. Lee --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
