SUO: Re: natural lite of reason
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Mike,
The natural thinker is one who believes
that everything that happens is natural.
Those who extract small truths from the
roots of words will tell you that "be"
and "physical" are co-derivatives of
the same urpflanze. I am now, and
always have been a natural thinker,
and one who extracts small truths
from the roots (stems, leaves,
flowers, and seeds) of words.
So what? A natural thinker
says nothing of substance
until claiming something
about the form and the
structure of what is.
And that is what
makes all the
difference.
Jon
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Mike Pool wrote:
>
> This is a nice article. In light of the present discussion the following quote
> from it is interesting:
>
> Naturalism would not, however, rule out the transmigration of souls
> if our best scientific theories were to require the truth of this doctrine.
>
> Note that this version of naturalism, unlike the one that Ian presented, does not
> make any a priori ontological assumptions.
>
> Mike
>
> At 08:16 AM 7/2/2003 -0700, Jay Halcomb wrote:
>
> > See also:
> >
> > http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mathphil-indis/
> >
> > Indispensability Arguments in the Philosophy of Mathematics
> >
> > Jay
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Mike Pool" <mpool@iet.com>
> > To: "Ian Niles" <iniles@teknowledge.com>; "'Chris Angus'"
> > <chris.angus@btinternet.com>; "Ian Niles" <iniles@teknowledge.com>; "'West,
> > Matthew R SITI-ITPSIE'" <matthew.west@shell.com>
> > Cc: <standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>
> > Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 05:56
> > Subject: naturalism (was: RE: SUO: Monolithic ontologies)
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Ian,
> > >
> > > I may have missed something here in this discussion of naturalism, it's
> > hard to keep up with all the SUO mail. However, I find it puzzling that
> > you claim that the SUMO is firmly rooted in metaphysical naturalism defined
> > as the belief "that the natural world, the world of physical processes and
> > objects, is all that there is" while the SUMO partitions &%Entity into the
> > classes &%Physical and &%Abstract".
> > >
> > > The comment on &%Abstract is intriguing. "Instances of Abstract can be
> > said to exist in the same sense as mathematical objects such as sets and
> > relations, but they cannot exist at a particular place and time without some
> > physical encoding or embodiment." This is a little murky to me, I'd like
> > to better understand what it means for an abstract entity to be physically
> > encoded or embodied, but it does seem to suggest, if &%Abstract has any
> > instances, that there are things that exist outside of space and time. The
> > partitioning of &%Entity into &%Abstract and the class &%Physical also
> > suggests that there are entities that are neither physical objects nor
> > processes. After all, &%Object and &%Process are subclasses of &%Physical.
> > >
> > > Of course, there are versions of mathematical platonism that claim to be
> > consistent with naturalism (Quine argued that abstract mathematical entities
> > were required by our best scientific theories and therefore granted them
> > ontological status in a naturalistic framework but used a broader definition
> > of naturalism than you are invoking) and there are naturalists/nominalists
> > who go to great lengths to deny the existence of abstract entities, like
> > sets, numbers, (e.g., Hartry Field) and others who deny that mathematical
> > entities like sets are actually abstract (I think this is the line that
> > Penelope Maddy pushed.) However, I am unfamiliar with versions of
> > naturalism that simultaneously posit mathematical entities as abstract and
> > define naturalism as the view that physical processes and objects are all
> > that exist. Could you say a bit more here about the nature of the
> > naturalism in which the SUMO is firmly rooted and the notion of abstract
> > entity that appears in the SUMO? !
> > > Again, please forgive if you've already addressed this and I've missed it.
> > >
> > > best,
> > >
> > > Mike Pool
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