RE: [jboske] factivity of nu

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>]

xod:
> On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, And Rosta wrote:
> > > > So actually, yes McGovern was a ka'e, but Sherlock Holmes isn't
> > > > and not all johannine nu are ka'e fasnu
> > >
> > > No good! There is only one reality, all others are (equally) unreal
> > > President McGovern, Irish Socrates, and the one where I drank hot
> > > chocolate last night are all equally false. The Verification Principle
> > > shows this
> >
> > It's not a matter of how unreal the unreal worlds are; it's a matter
> > of how different they are from the real word, to put it in crude
> > terms. When we model conditional reasoning, and reasoning about
> > potentiality and the future, we need to deal with 'potential' worlds
> > (one of which sometimes might be the real one), i.e. those
> > imaginary worlds that are relevantly similar to the real world 
> 
> Potential worlds are very different from what-if worlds. How can
> anyone prove the idea that a McGovern presidency was more possible than an
> Irish Socrates? It is true that, within recent memory, there were people
> who thought that the former was possible, but perhaps it was never
> possible at all 

So you accept the distinction between the two, but McGovern counts
as a what-if, I take it. Okay, I had misunderstood you. So
McGovern as president in 1972 is a what-if, but Colin Powell as
president in 2010 is a potential, I presume. And all what-ifs are
equally unverifiable.

Fine. But we still need to find ways of expressing "could have been"
as distinct from "imaginary", even though you subscribe to a
philosophy that holds the two to be indistinguishable.

> > (In a work of fiction, is the real world the fictional world?)
> 
> Yes 
> 
> > --And, still bemused by a whorfian logical positivist!
> 
> Where's the amusing contradiction?

Bemused -- perplexed -- not amused. (Not surprised, because I
expect to be bemused by you -- I can't work out your politics,
for instance, even though it's clearly an interest of yours,
and for a long time I had no idea whether you were male or
female. You're short on giveaways and predictability.)

It's not that I see them as contradictory, just a very curious
combination, such that it is hard for me to guess what you
will think on any given question.... You're eccentric even
among this community of eccentrics.

--And.