On 4/22/2015 6:06 PM, LizR wrote:
I can't see how his categorisation works. Existence is generally considered to be a
property of "kicking back" - of something existing independently of us, and not
conforming to whatever we'd like it to be. For example. a planet is generally considered
to exist - we can observer it (or land things on it) and discover unexpected results -
Mars is /not/ covered in H.G.Wells' Martian civilisation or Ray Bradbury's crystal
cities, no matter how much we might want it to be. God (in the conventional sense of
supreme being who created the universe) is sometimes considered not to exist because
it's a concept that gets modified to account for new scientific discoveries - few
Christians nowadays consider that God created the Earth 6000 years ago, or directly
caused it to be entirely flooded, for example.
Roberto Unger and Lee Smolin are trying to claim that something can exist (kick back -
or as they put it, have rigid properties) yet not have existed prior to being thought of
by human minds. It seems hard to reconcile these properties. Something thought up that
describes something that exists could reasonably be called an accurate scientific
theory; something thought up that describes something that doesn't exist could
reasonably be called fictional (or a failed scientific theory). I can see no reason why
a fiction should have rigid properties. Conversely, if the subject of some theory kicks
back, it's reasonable to consider it a (possibly) accurate theory describing something
that should be considered (at least provisionally) real.
So is chess real?
Brent
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