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

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 18:09:05 -0500 (EST)

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 [email-masked]
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
--Douglas Hofstadter