Stephen Paul King wrote:
> Hi Peter,
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> From: "1Z" <peterdjones.domain.name.hidden>
>
> To: "Everything List" <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
>
> Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 5:47 PM
>
> Subject: Existence, individuation, instantiation
>
>
>
>
>
> Stephen Paul King wrote:
> > Dear Quentin et al,
> >
> > I keep reading this claim that "only the existence of the algorithm
> > itself is necessary" and I am still mystified as to how it is reasoned for
> > mere existence of a representation of a process, such as an implementation
> > in terms of some Platonic Number, is sufficient to give a model of that
> > can
> > be used to derive anything like the world of appearences that we have.
> >
> > AFAIK, this claim is that mere existence necessarily entails any
> > property, including properties that involve some notion of chance.
> [PJ]
> The existence of some (abstract, theoretical, hypothetical)
> thing involves all the properties associated (theoretically)
> with it. The existence of a camel entails the existence
> if a hump. The existence of a unicorn would entail the
> existence of a horn.
>
> [SPK]
>
>
>
> Humm, are you not using semantic inferences here? The notion of a
> "camel" entails the notion of a "hump", as well as the relation between
> "unicorn" and "horn", along with all of the other traits/properties that go
> into the "meaning" of the thing. I liken this to the meaning of words in a
> dictionary: every word's meaning is given as its relationship with other
> words, a *word* that has no relation with any other is by definition thus
> meaningless! (This may relate to the notion of "mutual information...)
Well, that's one metaphor. Another is class/object or type/instance
in a programming language.
> I like to think of this in terms of graph theory, where each word is a
> vertex and a "definition" (the meaning) is given by the graph of edges that
> connect any one to some other. Note that there is Dominance but no
> convexity...
>
> On the other hand, I was not considering the particularities of
> "properties", I am trying to drill down a bit deeper into the notion of
> existence itself. Whether or not a Camel or Unicorn exist does not add
> anything to its properties other than the obvious:
The fact that there are N instances of a thing is not soemthing
that can be arrived at by contemplating its Form (or archetype
or defintion or class..), so it is an extra item of information,
even if not property. Assertons that
something-or-other exists *mean* something, they are not
hollow tautologies!
I think part of the confusion is about which properties
belong to a thing, are intrinsic to it. Physical
existents have spatial locations , even though
a thing's location is not one of its instrinsic properties.
http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/met_space.html
> The fact that a graph of
> relations can be constructed that "identifies" a thing is not necessitated
> by Existence. Meaning is not the same as existence, or is it...???
>
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Received on Fri Jul 07 2006 - 16:53:47 PDT