On 20 Sep 2009, at 02:49, Brent Meeker wrote: > > So does being "pure thought" mean "without a reference", i.e. a > fiction? As in "Sherlock Holmes" is a pure thought?
Consider the Many world theory of Everett, or the many histories of comp. Does it make sense to say that Sherlock Holmes exists in such structure? The problem is that a fiction like Sherlock Holmes is not well defined. It is a bit like unicorns. I would not compare such essentially fictional construction with a mathematical object, like a computation or like a number, which admits forms of realism. 17 is prime in all consistent extension of arithmetic, for example. And it makes sense to say that 17 is prime independently of my own thought process, or of any thought process, but it is not clear such independence can be define for fictional object. Any one looking like Sherlock Holmes in the UD* will be just like that: it looks like Holmes, but Conan Doyle could always object by saying that it is not the "real" Holmes. There is a lack of identity criterion. And if you decide to give a (non contradictory) identify criteria for Holmes (like clever detective living in the UK and having solved such an such case ...), then it is no more a "pure thought" and it will exist somewhere in some UD*-history, or in some quantum branch. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
