David Nyman wrote:
> 1Z wrote:
>
> > > This isn't a surprise surely, because 'matter' is defined purely
> > > relationally as behaviour.
> >
> > By whom ?
>
> Not by me! I mean that I assume that it is defined this way in the
> 'AR+CT+YD' version of comp. Whereas I need a 'substrate' to carry my
> sense of reflexive ontic 'realism' or 'seriousness'. I think our views
> can be reconciled (see below).
Hmm. I think the substrate is just down to Somethingism -- some
possible things
exist, other don't.
> > >I just can't
> > > see, except in 'as if' mode, how AR truly serves as 'ontic ground zero'
> > > in this 'maximally serious' sense.
> >
> > Some of us think matter does...
>
> And as it happens we both may be included in this 'some of us'! I've
> been reading with interest your exchange with Bruno re the 'existence'
> of numbers etc - also what you've been saying to Stathis about the
> significance of instantiation and the consequent difference between
> 'programme and process'. I've always felt that that much of our
> disagreement was language based, and reading these conversations has
> reinforced this. When you say:
>
> > If numbers don't exist in the sense that I exist, then I cannot be a number.
>
> I'm perfectly happy to agree. And 'in the sense that I exist' is what
> I always intended by 'personal', etc. Consequently, as far as I'm
> concerned, we can agree on 'reflexive necessity' as ontic ground zero.
Actually, you have lost me there.
The point I was trying to make was that I don't have to define
exactly what my existence is. (Bruno's rationalism makes
him think no question can can be settled unless it can be exactly
defined; my empiricism makes me believe there are Brute
Facts which are true even if we don't understand their nature).
So: even if I don't know in which sense i exsit, I exist
in some sense S, and if numbers don't exist in (at least)
sense S (whatever that is) , I cannot be one.
Therefore, there must be some kind of existence-claim
in Bruno's thesis.
> IOW, we both ask that whatever is postulated as the fons et origo of
> existence should exist 'in the sense that I exist'. I think the
> difference in language is mainly that my mental picture begins with the
> 'situated view' and yours with the 'external view', but I think we both
> believe that a 'serious' view of 'existence' cannot dispense with
> either, and must reconcile and unify them.
I am not at all sure that "views" equate to kinds of existstence.
I just think that arguments cannot come to sound existential
conclusions
without making existential assumptions..
> Hence the idea of a 'bare
> substrate' as indispensible to carry this basic sense of existence,
> within which relationally defined 'properties' and 'phenomena' can then
> coherently find their expression.
The bare substrate, AFAICS, is inferred empricially,
although having been inferred, it can then explain various
basic facts logically (through its very bareness!)
> But it seems to me that inherent in Bruno's (and Stathis') view is a
> desire to have relationality without the relata, and although this may
> lead to some unexpected epistemological insights, it leads IMO to a
> fatally incoherent theory of 'existence', with a concomittant
> trivialisation, amounting to dismissal, of the whole notion of
> instantiation.
I agree. They seem to found their arguments on an inability
to understand the difference between truth and existence.
> There is a fundamental disagreement here on the mutual
> dependency of 'personal existence' and 'conceptual existence'. I hold,
> and I think you do too, that 'I exist' must be prior to 'concepts
> exist', whereas AR+CT+YD holds the opposite.
I am not convinced that ther is anything special about
my existence objectively, it is just a convenient starting-point
(epistemologcially).
It might turn out to be inessential (ontologically).
> So its article of faith
> becomes:
>
> 'If I don't exist in the sense that numbers exist, then I cannot be.'
I don't think Bruno and Stathis are arguing that numbers are
neceesarily
the only things that exist (although a standard Platonist might argue
that
that they are the only things that exist necessarily..)
Bruno sometimes claims that the posit of material existence is
unnecessary once you have immaterial existence..and also
that material existence is not merely unnecessary but impossible.
> Actually, your recent debates on these issues have come as close as
> I've seen on the list to pinning down the precise terms of disagreement
> between what amounts two two camps. It would be a great service to the
> list if we could achieve a position where the 'articles of faith' of
> each camp could be unambiguously defined, even if not reconciled. For a
> start, have you a view on the status, as empirical *evidence* for your
> position, of what you intend by 'the sense I exist'?
The point of that particular formulation is to avoid giving an exact
meaning --
although I the meaning of existence in the
emprical-contingent-materialist
snese can be explained.
> I ask because both
> sides claim the 'sense of existence' as compatible with their views,
> and it would be really helpful if this could be shown to be false.
>
> David
>
> > David Nyman wrote:
> >
> > > This isn't a surprise surely, because 'matter' is defined purely
> > > relationally as behaviour.
> >
> > By whom ?
> >
> > >I just can't
> > > see, except in 'as if' mode, how AR truly serves as 'ontic ground zero'
> > > in this 'maximally serious' sense.
> >
> > Some of us think matter does...
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Received on Mon Aug 21 2006 - 11:44:21 PDT