On 2/26/2020 4:54 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:
On Wednesday, February 26, 2020 at 1:36:49 PM UTC-7, Brent wrote:
On 2/26/2020 2:48 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> Being sure of that sentence is true, "Dr Watson was a friend of
>> Sherlock Holmes." doesn't mean the things named in the sentence
exist.
>
> It certainly means that Watson and Homes exist, in some sense. The
> question is “is that sense interesting with respect to our goal of
> explaining "everything” (matter and consciousness) in a coherent
way?
They exist in exactly the same way arithmetic and Turing machines
exist.
Brent
Are the integers, and by extension arithmetic, fictitious? AG
I wouldn't say necessarily say "fictitous". They are abstractions, like
"red". They are descriptive of sets of things.
Brent
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