On 6/12/2013 2:57 PM, Jason Resch wrote:


On Jun 12, 2013, at 3:23 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

On 6/12/2013 11:57 AM, Jason Resch wrote:


On Jun 12, 2013, at 1:52 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:

On 6/12/2013 2:20 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 11:17 AM, Bruno Marchal<marc...@ulb.ac.be  
<mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:
>
>On 11 Jun 2013, at 23:18, John Mikes wrote:
>
>Laughing stock: how can so many excellently educted and smart(est)
>scientists SERIOUSLY debate on farces like flying pink elephants?
>
>
>
>Those are test cases, extreme case, to argue more easily on the question of
>existence, which is not obvious.
>Of course we are not discussing on the existence of flying elephants at all.
Maybe on a smaller planet with less gravity or a denser atmosphere
flying elephants would be a viable evolutionary niche?

But in what sense would they be elephants? That's my point: 'elephant' is a category we make up.

Things are either consistently defined or they are not. Here though, I think the problem is not necessarily inconstency but lack of clarity.

Example:  Is an elephant in a cargo plane at 10,000 feet not a flying elephant?

I think We are wasting our time on matters of language when the core issue is the diffetence between how big some of us consider reality to be.

Some take reality to be whatever can be described in language.


Which language and described by whom?

Mathematics, arithmetic, english...  People who belong to Everything lists.

Brent

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