Re: Platonism

From: JXStern (JXSternChangeX2R_at_gte.net)
Date: 11/27/04 

Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 17:12:10 GMT

On 27 Nov 2004 06:16:09 -0800, examachine@gmail.com (Eray Ozkural
exa) wrote:
>> > Otherwise, it is nonsense. If I am allowed to
>> >distort the meaning of "exists" every now and then, I will be able to
>> >talk of God and angels as if they existed, and that will be heresy for
>> >me: I am a physicalist.
>>
>> Well, me too, I think, but my physicalism relates only to the
>> sub-domains of philosophy that I care about, those of cognition and
>> language and computation. As far as cognitive agencies go, they may
>> assume that things exist and make the appropriate ontological
>> commitments, and then we can get on with the internal matters that we
>> need to deal with, about how agencies do what they do, in a material
>> world.
>
>I think I understood this when I first read it, but I'm not sure. Do
>you mean you don't care what somebody assumes to exist? :)

Well, sure I *care*! My friend Fred, he assumes green dragons exist.
I have to take this into consideration when I parse any sentence that
I get from Fred, because I know that only blue dragons really exist.
Then again, perhaps (!) neither of us is much of an ontological
authority, no matter how handsome we may be otherwise.

>Yes, I can see that my claim was much closer to Russell than Meinong,
>and for the most part I've found Russell to be a very reasonable
>philosopher. But I surely hope I am not becoming a logical positivist
>or anything like that. I should watch my steps. :)

Indeed, for many faults are built in at the very beginning. But I am
not arguing for Meinong, either. I'm arguing Turing, and Fodor, some
Dennett and Millikan, some Wittgenstein and a little revionist Quine,
some axiomatics that may be more Hilbert than Tarski, a little
Berkeleyian abhorence of abstraction, and a modern nominalism that is
all my own, mine and about three million practicing software
developers who don't know that they're doing it, too.

>What do you mean by unsoundly combining several domains of philosophy?
>You mean combining metaphysics, language philosophy, method of
>philosophy (logic, etc.), philosophy of science like the logical
>positivists did? Do you think these should be taken as separate
>inquiries? (Your meta-philosophy? :)

42.

J.

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