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Juno_Watt comments on What do professional philosophers believe, and why? - Less Wrong Discussion

31 Post author: RobbBB 01 May 2013 02:40PM

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Comment author: Jack 05 May 2013 12:15:29AM *  0 points [-]

For some nouns, saying that it "exists" means that it has mass and takes up space, can be bumped into and such. For other nouns, "exists" means it can be defined without contradiction, or some such.

The whole Platonist position begins from a definition of "exists" that works equally well for abstract and concrete objects. You alternative definitions are bad: "has mass and takes up space, can be bumped into and such" isn't even a necessary set of criteria for a wide variety of concrete objects. Photons and gluons for instance.

Comment author: Juno_Watt 09 May 2013 10:44:47PM 0 points [-]

We don't know that it "works equally well", since we don't have omniscient knowledge about the existence of abstract objects. If abstract objects don't exist, then the quantification criterion is too broad, and therefore does not work.

Comment author: Jack 09 May 2013 11:37:22PM 0 points [-]

This straight-forwardly begs the question. I say "What it means to exist is to be quantified over in our best scientific theories". Your reply is basically "If you're wrong about the definition then you're wrong about the definition."

Comment author: Juno_Watt 10 May 2013 09:27:20AM 0 points [-]

Your claim was "If we are right about the definition, we are right about the definition".