> Date: Fri, 4 Sep 2009 10:21:17 -0700
> Subject: Re: Yablo, Quine and Carnap on ontology
> From: peterdjones.domain.name.hidden
> To: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
>
>
>
>
> On 03 Sep, 17:12, John Mikes <jami....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> > Dear Peter,
> > the Yablo-Carnac-Gallois-Quine compendium is an interesting reading - except
> > for missing the crux:
> > You, as a person, with knowledge about the ideas of the bickering
> > philosophers, could do us the politesse of a brief summary about "who is
> > stating what" (very few lines) which may increase the understanding of the
> > innocent by-reader about the generalities mentioned back and forth. I for
> > one looked at the 02 URL-s, long as one of them may be, and found further
> > generalities as in a style of scientifically 'expert' discussions/arguments.
>
> One of my reasons for posting it was to illustrate that there is in
> fact
> a debate about ontology. Bruno has been arguign that numbers
> exist because there are true mathematical statements asserting their
> existence. The counterargument is that "existence" in mathematical
> statements is merely metaphorical. That is what is being argued
> backwards
> and forwards.
Your summary appears fairly nonsensical. "Existence" is a word humans have invented, as such it means whatever we define it to mean, there is no "truth" about whether numbers exist independent of our arbitrary choices about how to define what the word "exist" actually means. If I choose to define "existence" as the property of walking around on four legs, then it is perfectly correct to say that cats and dogs exist but humans and birds do not exist, according to this definition. I have asked you in several previous posts (such as the one at
http://tinyurl.com/muh9a3 ) whether you agree that different philosophers define "existence" differently and there is no single "correct" usage, but you never seem willing to answer this straightforward question.
Philosophers may debate whether various concepts of existence like Quine's are internally coherent, or how well they match up with how we talk about the "existence" of things in everyday speech (these kinds of issues seem to be what Yablo is talking about), but they certainly don't debate about whether a particular definition of existence coincides with what "really exists", as if "existence" has some pure platonic meaning beyond human definitions.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Fri Sep 04 2009 - 13:55:25 PDT