On Fri, July 22, 2011 12:05, Avril Styrman said:
> Matthew,
>
> my point is that modality gets easily very complex, and in order to
> keep it understandable, we can commit to some naming conventions. The
> first and the most obvious convention is that this world -let's call
> it Universe- is the only world that exists in the concrete sense.
> Everything that exists is a part of Universe, and every part of
> universe is accessible to every other part of Universe, directly, or
> through other parts of Universe. Even infinite chains of accessibility
> are allowed. (01)
I note that this is a definition of "existence". (02)
I assume that intangibles (such as organizations, laws, accounts, and
conceptual works) can exist in "this world". (03)
> Now, you can say that there might be other worlds that exist in the
> concrete sense and are necessarily inaccessible to all parts of
> Universe. But that is against the above naming convention. Although
> other worlds could exist, the only utility of them for us is to
> acknowledge that they could exist, and immediately after that commit
> to the above naming convention. (04)
Hypothetical worlds can be useful for planning, disproving some
assumptions, or determining what might occur if some unknown set of
statements is true. (05)
> I don't seen any better starting points to modality, can you? (06)
What is the need for dismissing all possible worlds when the postulates
used to generate a hypothetical world might be true? (07)
When reasoning within any world, the reasoning must assume the statements
of the world are true, and that that world exists. There is no need to
make such assumptions a priory from outside such a world, though. (08)
-- doug f (09)
> -Avril (010)
=============================================================
doug foxvog doug@xxxxxxxxxx http://ProgressiveAustin.org (011)
"I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great
initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
============================================================= (012)
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