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gRR comments on A wild theist platonist appears, to ask about the path - Less Wrong
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I'd say not. I tend to use two independent terms when discussing the nature of a thing's existence; I will discuss first whether or not something is real; and then whether or not that real thing exists.
To be real; a thing must be an accurate description of some pattern of behavior that things which exist conform to. (I realize this is dense/inscrutable, more in a bit.) To exist; a thing must directly interact in some fashion with other things which exist; it must be 'instantiable'.
So numbers, mathematical constructs, words; these things are real but they do not exist. We can recognize them in how the things which do exist behave. The concepts are not themselves instantiated -- ever -- but we can handle them symbolically. If I hold three pebbles in my hand, that means there is a precise arrangement of pebbles; it has a precise relationship with two the arrangement we'd call "two pebbles" and the arrangement we'd call "four pebbles" and so on. But you'll never see/hear/touch/smell/taste the number 3. It's physically impossible for that to occur; because the number, 'three', does not exist. Pebbles on the other hand do exist; you can take a pebble and throw it into a lake.
I find that this differentiation between different meanings of the term "to be" makes the discussion vastly simpler. It eliminates whole swaths of silliness (like TAG for example); I am perfectly free to say "I can prove using the Laws of Logic that the Laws of Logic do not exist."
This is a philosophical mire. Do pebbles actually exist? But they are composed from quarks, electrons, etc, and these are in principle indistinguishable from one another, so a pebble is only defined by relations between them, doesn't it make the pebble only 'real'?
On the other hand, when I play a computer game, do the various objects in the virtual world exist? Presumably, yes, because they interact with me in some fashion, and I exist (I think...). What if I write a program to play for me and stop watching the monitor. Do they stop existing?
I refer to this as the Reductionist Problem of Scale. "Psychology isn't real because it's all just biology. Biology isn't real because it's all just chemistry. Chemistry isn't real because it's all just Physics." I don't see this as so much of a 'minefield' as a need to recognize that "scale matters". In unaided-human-observable Newtonian space, there is no question that pebbles are "totally a thing" -- they are. You can hold one in your hand. You can touch one to another one.
Of course; if you look solely at the scale of subquarks, then this distinction becomes unintelligible.
No. Interacting with the symbol of a thing is not interacting with the thing itself. They are, however, fully real -- just like you yourself are fully real, but do not exist (you are not your body; you are not your brain; you are not the electrons and chemicals that flow through it. You are the pattern that is so-comprised. But that pattern itself is entirely non-physical in nature; it is non-instantiable and does not itself interact with anything -- nor can it ever.)
I... am not rightly sure how you could come to the conclusion that this is a relevant question to the definition I provided. I did not say "to exist, things must be observed" -- I said "to exist, things must interact with other things". Pebbles interacting with lakes are interacting. Regardless of whether someone watches them.
If a tree falls in a forest, the tree exists. Regardless of whether it makes a sound.
Hmm. Under your definition, "to exist, a thing must directly interact in some fashion with other things which exist". For this to be non-circular, you must specify at least one thing that is known to exist. I thought, this one certainly-known-to-exist thing is myself. If you say that under your definition I don't exist, then what can be known to exist and how can it be known to do so?
There is nothing circular about the definition -- merely recursive. "GNU" stands for "GNU is Not UNIX".
As soon as you observe two things to directly interact with one another, you may safely asssert that both exist under my definition.
This is, frankly, not very complicated to figure out.
Recursive definitions must bottom out at some point. The ones that do not are called circular.
You didn't say so before. Now, we two are interacting now (I hope), so we do exist, after all? And what about the characters in the virtual world of a computer game I mentioned before? I certainly saw them interacting.
So sorry for my stupidity.
See Corecursion, Non-well-founded set theory, Barwise&Moss Vicious Circles.
Cool, thanks!