Re: [lojban] Imaginary worlds (was su'u)

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

Invent Yourself scripsit:

> Not only that but, since there is only one real world and any number of
> imaginary ones, how can you say that you would not be identical to your
> current "self" if you HAD been born to George Washington? Since we are
> departing from reality, we can construct an imaginary world by copying
> John Cowan's life and pasting it after George Washington.

That would not be about me; that would be a world in which George Washington's
son was a professional computer programmer.

> How can it be said that this is any less "realistic" than a world where
> John Cowan never married Gale McGhan?

Because I could have not married her (failed to take the English honors
class where we met, e.g.) and still have been *myself*.

Consider Kripke's table T, which is brown and made of wood.  We can
have a possible world in which T is black because someone painted it.
But can we have a world in which T itself, that very table, was
made of another material?  There might be some other table, T', which
served a corresponding function (sitting in my dining room, for
example), that was made of plastic.  But that would not mean that T' = T.
Whereas T is T whether painted black or not.  Thus Kripke and me.

-- 
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
	--Douglas Hofstadter