Comment on Open Thread: July 2009

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:23:21 GMT

That was a bit confusing, and I have to go now, so I'll try and give a more thorough response later. I'll just say right now that I don't think it's as easy as you claim to differentiate between "higher-level" and "lower-level" entities/concepts/laws, or rather, to decide whether an entity is actually a fundamental thing with laws, or whether its just a concept. You appeal to changeability, but this seems like unsteady ground.

EDIT: Here's a better way of formulating my objection: tell me the obvious, a priori logically necessary criteria for a person to distinguish between "entities within the territory" and "high-level concepts." If you can't give any, then this is a big problem: you don't know that the higher level entities aren't within the territory. They could be within the territory, or they could be "computational abstractions." Either position is logically tenable, so it makes no sense to say that this is where the logical incoherence comes in.

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