From cowan@ccil.org Sat Feb 10 17:47:19 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: cowan@mercury.ccil.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_3); 11 Feb 2001 01:47:09 -0000 Received: (qmail 43178 invoked from network); 11 Feb 2001 01:47:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 11 Feb 2001 01:47:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mercury.ccil.org) (192.190.237.100) by mta2 with SMTP; 11 Feb 2001 01:47:08 -0000 Received: from cowan by mercury.ccil.org with local (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 14Rlci-0008Pb-00; Sat, 10 Feb 2001 20:48:20 -0500 Subject: Re: [lojban] Imaginary worlds (was su'u) In-Reply-To: from Jorge Llambias at "Feb 11, 2001 00:04:23 am" To: Jorge Llambias Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 20:48:20 -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 Jorge Llambias scripsit: > What if we did to the table what those ancient Greeks did to > that ship (I don't remember the name). The ship of Theseus. > We replace one small > piece of wood by a piece of plastic, the table is still the table, > and we keep doing that until all the wood has been replaced > by plastic. Well, perhaps it is and perhaps it isn't. But this case is not that case. We are talking about whether "T is (and always has been) made entirely of plastic" is a possible world (given that T is in fact made of wood and always has been). I think it's a self- contradiction. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore --Douglas Hofstadter