Re: Successor Axiom: on what grounds TF?

From: Barb Knox (see_at_sig.below)
Date: 02/06/05 

Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2005 21:52:15 +1300

In article <cu4drr$bh6$1@news8.svr.pol.co.uk>,
 "Jeffrey Ketland" <ketland@ketland.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

>"Barb Knox"

[snip]

>You might be a modal fictionalist. You merely require mental images,
>and they're not referring to, or representing, possible entities beyond the
>images themselves. Roughly, this is some sort of (what philosophers call)
>"ersatzism": possible worlds are just consistent linguistic descriptions or
>mental images. Even so, does your imagined mental image of N sheep contain N
>subparts, each corresponding to an imagined sheep? Can you really imagine N
>sheep, for each N?

Not all at the same time (for large enough N). But I can imagine the result
of having them arranged in a line, counting off from the left (assuming
they're anthropomorphic sheep). The rightmost one will say N.

[snip]
>For modal fictionalism, see Daniel Nolan's article:
>http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fictionalism-modal/

An interesting read. Thanks for the reference.

[snip]
>>If I can imagine a flock of N white sheep,
>> then I can surely also imagine a flock of N black sheep; and then what
>> possibly prevents me from imagining a mixed flock of those 2 together?
>
>OK. You're a modal finitist, with some sort ersatzist view of modality,
>based on conceivablity or the imagination.

My Muse just gave me the first part of of this (TTTO G&S):

    I am the very model of an ersatz-modal finitist,
    With cosmoi hypothetical, not nominal or realist;

(Any suggested further additions welcome). 

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