Re: Sortal Individual Thesis
Chris,
>Fine. Now back to the point. Transworld identity is bogus, a
>pseudo-problem, a confusion of metaphysics and epistemology.
Indeed, metaphysics and epistemology are two separate studies,
typically published in different books. But both of them are
important for designing, defining, and using ontologies.
Again, I repeat a dictum by one of my favorite philosophers,
C. S. Peirce, that the total meaning of any concept consists
of all the implications that the concept has on our possible
observations and actions.
Peirce definitely believed in the importance of metaphysics,
but his pragmaticism implies that the choice of fundamental
concepts should have some connection to the way the concepts
are learned, observed, and used.
>If, like you, one insists on denying there is any intuitive content to
>the notion.
I am not denying that many people have published volumes
of intuitive speculation about them. But when I look at the
formalisms, *none* of that speculation appears in the axioms.
All I am asking is that people put their axioms where their
mouth is.
As I pointed out, your buddy Dov G. has finally noticed that
you get more computational content when you assume that a
possible world is a "theory" rather than as, Kripke and
Montague did, assume that it is just an element of a set.
>> If he means anything at all by terms such as "essential" or "rigid",
>> he will have to choose more meaningful terms to define them.
>
>Sez you. ;-)
Nicola is under no obligation to take my recommendations.
But until he chooses to define his terms in a way that has
some connection to observation and use, I am under no
obligation to accept them.
John