From xod@sixgirls.org Mon Feb 12 10:56:44 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: xod@erika.sixgirls.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_3); 12 Feb 2001 18:56:42 -0000 Received: (qmail 91874 invoked from network); 12 Feb 2001 18:56:41 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 12 Feb 2001 18:56:41 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO erika.sixgirls.org) (209.208.150.50) by mta3 with SMTP; 12 Feb 2001 19:57:45 -0000 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by erika.sixgirls.org (8.11.2/8.11.1) with ESMTP id f1CIucD11404 for ; Mon, 12 Feb 2001 13:56:38 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 13:56:38 -0500 (EST) To: Subject: Re: [lojban] More damn imaginary world stuff In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Invent Yourself X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 5423 On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 pycyn@aol.com wrote: > xod: > notion of "doing it over again" is meaningless. It does not correspond to > anything in reality.> > Well, that is a position, but not one that corresponds well with ordinary > usage, of which logic tries to make as much sense as possible. The issue is > not doing it over but doing instead. is a > classic modal ambiguity and the sense in which it is obviously true does not > cut offthe possibility that I could have done something else then. "You could have done something else then" is a meaningless phrase. What does it mean in reality? It means you might have done something other than what you did. OK, but is that EVER observed in reality? Has there been once instance, ever, of anybody not doing what they did? And if nobody ever doesn't do what they did, or does something they didn't do, then clearly what you are thinking of as an option is actually not an option! > correlation against certain kinds of behaviors. That's all the > justification that is necessary,> > ["positive correlation"?] > In most societies, behavior is not enough, but a variety of circumstantial > items enter in, at least one of which is a plausible case that someone could > have done otherwise (often even in very remote senses -- look at the Leopold & > Loeb verdicts). > Perhaps that individual couldn't do otherwise. But other people did do otherwise when they found themselves in similar situations. The positive correlation appears when you realize that punishment for behavior X tends to reduce the amount of behavior X in that locale. > > every stement false IN THAT WORLD is true IN THAT SAME WORLD. > > Not really. The idea was that there are two classes of facts, ones that > are true in this world but might be false in another (John's marriage), > and others that must be false everywhere (2 + 2 = 5). But since other > worlds do not exist, this isn't an issue.> > Well, the other "worlds" do help exlain what is peculiar about "2+2=5" > compared to "I am the Pope," why one is easy to conceive and the other is at > least a whole lot harder, if not impossible. > Other worlds have nothing to do with it. We can imagine certain things, and we can't imagine others. I can picture you being the Pope, no matter how unlikely it is to occur. I don't even know what "2 + 2 = 5" MEANS, so I can't imagine it. > involves a logical contradiction.> > No. It may be that any deviation from the actual laws of physics (known and > unknown) is physically impoossible -- that no world could actually exist in > any other way -- but that is far from LOGICAL impossibility, that the laws > imply, in themselves, a contradiction. > Are you saying that it is impossible that the laws of physics are arranged such that any other arrangement requires a logical contradiction? Can you show me an alternate arrangement that is logically consistent? Since we don't have our complete picture yet, we are not yet sure if any other alternate arrangements are logically possible. > worlds that DO NOT exist can help us understand anything in this one. They > do not, and in a real sense could not exist! If we want to tie our logic > to observed reality and derive useable results, we are obliged to ignore > such fiction.> > The point is that we do talk as though there were other ways that things > might be and such talk seems often to make sense, even important sense. So, > let's see what we can do to find out what kind of sense it makes and what are > the conditions for its making that sense. Possible worlds are a nice fiction > for doing this, since we can set them up and examine the effects of various > restrictions on them on the truth conditions of what we say using them. We > can then come back to wwhat ordinary peple say and poiint out what conditions > make certain things true or even plausible and in this way get a better grasp > on what a person is saying. Ideally, we also get people to be more careful > about what they say. And maybe give up saying some things altogether -- or > at least thinking that there is any useful content to it. I haven't seen that to be the case here. Bytes were wasted considering the ramifications of taking objects to alternate universes and pondering the resulting effects in their name's meanings. Now I assert these other universes cannot logically exist, so I can't see the utility of this line of speculation anymore. > completely determined?.> > We can't but that doesn't mean that it isn't -- or that it is, of course. > Knowing and proving and being are three very different things. The last > guess I read was that the physical universe is deterministic but that > complete predictions are inherently impossible because of indetectable > parameters on initial conditions (Chinese butterflies). Since we can never know (according to the Copenhagen interpretation) the way a quantum state will really collapse, I don't see how the universe can be considered deterministic. ----- We do not like And if a cat those Rs and Ds, needed a hat? Who can't resist Free enterprise more subsidies. is there for that!