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It seems to me that something can only have existence for us if it can have a transitive causal influence upon us, and surely both particles and waves exist in
by jamesrcole 8y ago
It seems to me that something can only have existence for us if it can have a transitive causal influence upon us, and surely both particles and waves exist in that same sense.
- whatshisface 8y agoIf by existence you also mean, "something that continues to exist upon closer inspection," then neither particles nor waves exist, you can always design an experiment to refract something around a corner and meausre individual quanta of it when it gets to the detector.
- simonh 8y agoThe comment gave a meaning of existence: "...if it can have a transitive causal influence upon us", so there is no need to imagine up straw ones.
- whatshisface 8y agoZeus and Sherlock Holmes could both be argued to have had transitive causal influences upon us - so in order to make that statement make sense there must be some other implied constraints on what is considered to "exist."
- jamesrcole 8y ago> Zeus and Sherlock Holmes could both be argued to have had transitive causal influences upon us There's some philosophers who'd argue that, but I think the arguments are pretty weak.
- simonh 8y agoThe fictional character Sherlock Holmes certainly exists.
- jamesrcole 8y agoIt all depends on what you mean when you say "The fictional character Sherlock Holmes". I believe that thoughts, memories and knowledge "about Sherlock Holmes" exist and are physical details, as are Sherlock Holmes books, etc. And that there's no other reality to "Sherlock Holmes", above and beyond these things. But really, this discussion is too large to satisfactorily deal with here.
- lisper 8y agoTry this then: http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/02/31-flavors-of-ontology.html http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/02/31-flavors-of-ontology.ht...
- gowld 8y agoThe comment defined existence, but didn't define it. The followup commenter was clarifying that proving the is something that exists isn't a proof that a particular claimed thing exists.
- jamesrcole 8y ago"it" is something being referenced - some details in the territory being marked out by the map. The map, and this act, provide no evidence that something exists. The only real basis is if you have evidence there's some details, of the nature claimed by your map, that can have some sort of transitive causal influence upon us.
- openfuture 8y agoThen this is easy, we are discussing the concept infinity, hence it is having a causal influence on our actions and so by your definition it exists.
- jamesrcole 8y agoIt's not that easy. It comes down to what "the concept of infinity" means. Does Santa Claus exist because the concept of Santa Claus exists? (See my other comments in this subthread for my view of this.)
- openfuture 8y agoI would say he does. Santa Clause has a causal influence on the world. The image that we ascribe to 'him' (the concept) is different from the reality of it's influence but that is true for most things.. We characterize all sorts of things in all sorts of ways, trying to model the reality we perceive, but actually those models are also reality and they are not the same as the thing being modelled. From this standpoint everything fictional exists but whether there is an 'infinite' amount of it is a super annoying question that just keeps going in circles so I don't really care so much what the answer is. But if it's infinite then there is a god, right? :^)
- jamesrcole 8y ago> From this standpoint everything fictional exists No they don't. The mental representations exist, the thought processes exist. That doesn't mean the fictional entities exist above and beyond those.