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xod: > On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, And Rosta wrote: > > > > So actually, yes McGovern was a ka'e, but Sherlock Holmes isn't > > > > and not all johannine nu are ka'e fasnu > > > > > > No good! There is only one reality, all others are (equally) unreal > > > President McGovern, Irish Socrates, and the one where I drank hot > > > chocolate last night are all equally false. The Verification Principle > > > shows this > > > > It's not a matter of how unreal the unreal worlds are; it's a matter > > of how different they are from the real word, to put it in crude > > terms. When we model conditional reasoning, and reasoning about > > potentiality and the future, we need to deal with 'potential' worlds > > (one of which sometimes might be the real one), i.e. those > > imaginary worlds that are relevantly similar to the real world > > Potential worlds are very different from what-if worlds. How can > anyone prove the idea that a McGovern presidency was more possible than an > Irish Socrates? It is true that, within recent memory, there were people > who thought that the former was possible, but perhaps it was never > possible at all So you accept the distinction between the two, but McGovern counts as a what-if, I take it. Okay, I had misunderstood you. So McGovern as president in 1972 is a what-if, but Colin Powell as president in 2010 is a potential, I presume. And all what-ifs are equally unverifiable. Fine. But we still need to find ways of expressing "could have been" as distinct from "imaginary", even though you subscribe to a philosophy that holds the two to be indistinguishable. > > (In a work of fiction, is the real world the fictional world?) > > Yes > > > --And, still bemused by a whorfian logical positivist! > > Where's the amusing contradiction? Bemused -- perplexed -- not amused. (Not surprised, because I expect to be bemused by you -- I can't work out your politics, for instance, even though it's clearly an interest of yours, and for a long time I had no idea whether you were male or female. You're short on giveaways and predictability.) It's not that I see them as contradictory, just a very curious combination, such that it is hard for me to guess what you will think on any given question.... You're eccentric even among this community of eccentrics. --And.