Hi Lee,
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin.domain.name.hidden>
To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 1:02 AM
Subject: RE: Only Existence is necessary?
Stephen writes
> it seems that we have skipped
> past the question that I am trying to pose: Where does distinguishability
> and individuation follow from the mere existence of Platonic Forms, if
> "process" is merely a "relation" between Forms (as Bruno et al claim)?!
>
> In my previous post I tried to point out that *existence* is not a
> first-order (or n-th order) predicate and thus does nothing to distinguish
> one Form, Number, Algorithm, or what-have-you from another.
[LC]
I don't know about that; I do know that 34 and 3 are not the
same thing, nor are they very similar. I wonder if you are
joining those who might say that I cannot speak of 34 or 3
without mentioning the process by which I know of them. (In
my opinion, that puts the cart before the horse. A lot more
people in history were more certain, and rightly so, that there
was a moon than that they had brains.)
[SPK]
Think of the meaning of what you just wrote if you where to remove all
references that implied in one form or another some kind of "act of
distinguishing".... I am merely trying to drill down to the source of our
notion of the act of "distinguishing" and to see what remains when we strip
away all forms of notions of "observers".
> The property of
> individuation requires some manner of distinguishability of one "thing",
> "process", etc. from another. Mere existence is insufficient.
> We are tacitly assuming an observer or something that amounts to the
> same thing any time we assume some 3rd person PoView and such is required
> for any coherent notion of distinguishability to obtain and thus something
> "to whom" existence means/affects.
[LC]
Well, I just disagree. Before there were people or even atoms, quarks
and leptons were not the same thing. They didn't have to be perceived
by anyone in order for that to be true. I know that you disagree with
this: they didn't even have to affect anything in order for that to
be true. If there had been just one quark and one electron in the whole
universe, and if they were separately by almost infinitely many light-
years, then there would still have been one quark and one electron.
[SPK]
Interesting claim, especially if we where to buy into the thinking of
many prominent physicist today: If we where to go back in time far enough we
would find that all the particles would indeed be identical to each other!
But I digress. ;-)
I am not making any claims about whether or not some statement is true,
I am merely trying to make sense of the metaphysical positions that we are
taking here on the Everything List. I wish to be sure that we are not
allowing assumptions to be made about metaphysical primitives that may lead
us into deep errors. For example, my appearent "attack" on Platonism is an
attempt to understand its intricate details and implications, especially
when they are taken the the wonderful extreems that Bruno is toiling to
explain to us. ;-)
[LC]
Unfortunately, I probably can be of no more assistence to you on this
question.
[SPK]
Your posts are always valuable and greatly appreciated.
Onward!
Stephen
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Received on Wed Jun 28 2006 - 20:52:14 PDT