Daniel Ust has seen fit to provide these comments:
> > If "reality = all that exists" isn't axiomatic, but rather a universal
> truth,
> > that's okay with me. I just think of it as a definition.
>
> The above equality is a definition, not an axiom. "Reality is real" is an
> axiom.:)
Thanks, that's the way I see it too.
> There's a difference between self-evident and obvious or well known.
> Self-evident means something that gives evidence for itself. Axioms and
> axiomatic concepts are like that. They give evidence for themselves -- to
> be aware of them requires mere awareness and conceptualizing from that; to
> deny them involves contradiction. Obvious means something which something
> we need not debate -- and this definitely depends on context. Tensor
> calculus is obvious to the GTR crowd, but not to, say, your average person.
> Well known is much the same.
Well, I'll stay with your previous comment that it's a definition.
> I agree here, though such obvious facts often need to be backed up by more
> than just pointing out they are obvious. To fail to do so often invites bad
> philosophy in.
Someone should have told me that when I questioned my first grade teacher about
*why* 2 + 2 = 4.
But then I was too young to read _Principia Mathematica_ anyway.
> But none of this seems to answer Jason's original concern. (I still have a
> few posts to catch up on, but now I must leave your reality temporarily...:)
Perhaps he misread the definition of reality as a description of reality. His
concern seems to revolve around the idea that everyone has a right to their own
version of reality or what is real. This in turn happens when one does not
differentiate between a *version* of reality (which means something that is not
quite reality) and what the word reality actually means. The fact that a belief
in multiple "realities" is irrational doesn't matter to someone whose primary
concern is that everyone should have the right to live in their own separate
reality if they so choose. I have no problem with that. Just don't ask me to
call it sane.
--J. R.
"Every man has a sane spot somewhere."
--Robert Louis Stevinson
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:37:05 MDT