1Z wrote:
>
>The clue is our failure ot observe HP universes,
>as predicted by Platonic theories.
>
>It a theory predicts somethig which is not observed,
>it is falsified.
But this is a bit of a strawman, because most on this list who subscribe to
the view that every possible world or observer-moment exists (which is the
idea that the 'everything' in 'everything-list' is supposed to stand for)
would argue for some sort of probability measure on worlds/OMs which would
assign much higher probability to worlds with regular laws than to Harry
Potter universes. Quantum theory predicts a nonzero probability of Harry
Potter type events too (a bunch of random atoms could tunnel into the shape
of a living hippogriff, for example), but our failure to observe such events
in practice is not a falsification of the theory, since the theory predicts
they'd be ridiculously improbable and we should not expect to observe such
events on human timescales.
>You are not going to get anywhere with the
>UDA until you prove mathematical Platonism, and your
>argument for that -- AR as you call it --
>just repeats the same error: the epistemological
>claim that "the truth -alue of '17 is prime is mind-independent"
>is confused with the ontological claim "the number of 17 exists
>separately
>from us in Plato's heaven".
But that is really all that philosophers mean by mathematical platonism,
that mathematical truths are timeless and mind-independent--this is itself
an ontological claim, not a purely epistemological one. Few would literally
imagine some alternate dimension called "Plato's heaven" where platonic
forms hang out, and which is somehow able to causally interact with our
brains to produce our ideas about math.
Jesse
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Received on Tue Jul 11 2006 - 10:44:45 PDT