RE: SUO: On the (existence of the) supreme supertype
Dear Pat,
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<snip>
> I think that a general-purpose SUO needs to allow non-actual entities
> - it cannot presume that the existential quantifier means existence
> in the real world - but that just allowing them casually, as it were,
> without some attention being given to their effects, is a well-known
> recipe for conceptual muddle. I would suggest that any nonreal thing
> needs to be thought of as enclosed within a non-real causal bubble
> which is large enough to provide a causal 'horizon' insulating any
> effects of the unreal thing from influencing any events in the real
> world, or vice versa. The safest such bubble would be an entire
> possible world, but we might allow somewhat smaller sets of
> circumstances or 4-d enclosing space-times to play the same role.
> Then the way to introduce 'possibilia' into the ontology is to
> introduce these 'bubbles', and allow 'IsReal' as a predicate on them
> (which asserts that that set of circumstances does in fact obtain in
> the real world somewhere/when). Then a possible-but-not-real person
> (eg my imaginary brother) is simply a normal person who has the
> misfortune to only be enclosed inside nonreal bubbles. This overall
> picture has no need for a special category of 'possibilia',
> therefore, and it is meaningless to even talk about
> possible-but-unreal things inside real worlds.
MW: By coincidence this is pretty much how the EPISTLE models are supposed
to work.
Regards
Matthew
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Matthew West
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