Who believe in Concepts ? (Was: An All/Nothing multiverse model)

From: Georges Quenot <Georges.Quenot.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 13:56:10 +0100

Hal Ruhl wrote:
>
> I would appreciate comments on the following.
>
> I placed the definitions at the end for easy group reference.
>
> Proposal: The Existence of our and other universes and their dynamics
> are the result of unavoidable definition and logical incompleteness.
>
> Justification:
>
> 1) Given definitions 1, 2, and 3: [see original post]

I have already a problem here. It might not be specific to this proposal
but this is a good opportunity to raise the question.

Defintion 1 and everything that follows depends in a strong way of the
concept of concept and on strong properties of that concept (like the
possibilty to discrimate what is a concept from what is not and to gather
all concepts in a set/ensemble/collection with a consistent meaning).

Though we make such assumptions everyday and it work perfectly well in
practice for most current affairs, it is far from obvious (at least for
me) that it follows that "things are really so" (just think of the concept
of dog in an evolutionary and/or universe-wide perspective for instance).

Personnally, I do not believe in Concepts (the upper case denotes here
a solid sense for the concept of concept, for instance, a sense strong
enough to make correct assumptions such as: "concepts cae be isolated"
"concepts can be discriminaed from things that aren't concepts and/or one
from another", "concepts actually get (or not) at things in the real worlds"
and, last but not least, "concepts can be arranged in utterances that says
true or false things about the real world"). This has quite frustrating
consequences, including the one of not being able to apropriately comment
your proposal and, more generallly, to consistently take part in many
interesting discussions.

I find puzzling that many people, especially among those that are not
very religious and/or those that shares many of my views, believes in
Concepts. Or do they ? Or up to what ? This is why I would like to ask
participants of the TOE group what they believ or not about Concepts as
well as about their handling in natural language reasonning. I am also
interested in opinions about the impact of this in discussions in the
TOE group. Indeed, many questions seem relative to the senses that
should/could be given to sepcific concepts (existence, reality, physical,
universes, ...). Examples (positive or nengative) would certainly help.

Thanks,

Georges.

Let's assume nothingness exists. Therefore something (nothingness) exists.
Therefore nothingness doesn't exist. Therefore nothingness doesn't exist.
That's why there's something rather than noting.
Received on Sun Nov 14 2004 - 07:57:05 PST