On 20 Sep 2009, at 02:49, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> So does being "pure thought" mean "without a reference", i.e. a
> fiction? As in "Sherlock Holmes" is a pure thought?
Consider the Many world theory of Everett, or the many histories of
comp. Does it make sense to say that Sherlock Holmes exists in such
structure? The problem is that a fiction like Sherlock Holmes is not
well defined. It is a bit like unicorns. I would not compare such
essentially fictional construction with a mathematical object, like a
computation or like a number, which admits forms of realism. 17 is
prime in all consistent extension of arithmetic, for example. And it
makes sense to say that 17 is prime independently of my own thought
process, or of any thought process, but it is not clear such
independence can be define for fictional object. Any one looking like
Sherlock Holmes in the UD* will be just like that: it looks like
Holmes, but Conan Doyle could always object by saying that it is not
the "real" Holmes. There is a lack of identity criterion. And if you
decide to give a (non contradictory) identify criteria for Holmes
(like clever detective living in the UK and having solved such an such
case ...), then it is no more a "pure thought" and it will exist
somewhere in some UD*-history, or in some quantum branch.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Mon Sep 21 2009 - 09:58:38 PDT