From cowan@ccil.org Sat Feb 10 15:08:12 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: cowan@mercury.ccil.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_3); 10 Feb 2001 23:08:06 -0000 Received: (qmail 18316 invoked from network); 10 Feb 2001 23:08:05 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 10 Feb 2001 23:08:05 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mercury.ccil.org) (192.190.237.100) by mta3 with SMTP; 11 Feb 2001 00:09:09 -0000 Received: from cowan by mercury.ccil.org with local (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 14Rj8b-0006FD-00; Sat, 10 Feb 2001 18:09:05 -0500 Subject: Re: [lojban] Imaginary worlds (was su'u) In-Reply-To: from Invent Yourself at "Feb 10, 2001 03:33:10 pm" To: Invent Yourself Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 18:09:05 -0500 (EST) Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL66 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: X-eGroups-From: John Cowan From: John Cowan 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