RE: Nominalism

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Aug 29 2001 - 01:32:10 MDT


David McDivitt writes

> I will try to answer your question better. Modern men evolved
> technologically from cave men. Mental affluence and cognition were
> required to do that.

Good start; thanks. What's to keep you from quoting specifically
---the way most people do here---what question it is that you
are addressing? See how I intersperse your remarks with mine?

I didn't disagree with the rest of your post. Like the above, it
related to what is objectively the case, e.g., "modern [people] evolved
...from cave men [huntergatherers]".

But here are my questions again, now numbered for your easy convenience.

1. Why are you more certain that you live in a world of language,
   objectification, and mental abstractions, than you live in a
   world of earth, air, fire, and water? (Such things as language
   could not exist were they not evolved in matter creatures, nor
   could mental abstractions. You are choosing to build up your
   model of what the world is on top of very shaky ideas that you
   can't even know that other people possess, because you can't
   even know that there are other people.)

2. How do you know that there is a "we"? (I suggest that your inference
   that there are other people is much weaker than your inference that
   there is a 3-D world outside your skin.)

Lee



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