>'What is your name?' 'Kate Riley.' 'Do you deny having written the
>following?':
Not in the slightest.
>I'd had Spinoza in mind when I'd written that.
I see. Well, Spinoza has no excuse.
>Nope. First principles are very important. But we REALLY ought to >keep
>them to a minimum, I'd say. A=A is good, for example.
A=A indeed is a first principle. However,it is uninteresting and uninformative, since you can derive precious little from self-identity alone, and therefore it makes a somewhat poor example for our purposes. So, with your permission, I would like to probe a bit deeper. What other first principles do you consider valid?
(By the way, I am perfectly willing to take this off list, since this line of questioning admittedly strays somewhat from the original thread. Just say the word.)
> > Second, could you please tell me why 1+1=2?
>
>By invention. :p
Come now, you didn't really think you were going to get off /that/ easily, did you? You cannot have invention without experience. In particular, 1+1=2 is an invention insofar as it is language describing the experience that if you have an apple over here, and an apple over there, and you put them together, you now have "two" apples.
In another post, you said that we do not have experiences, but rather merely the illusions of them. Forgive me, but I do not see the distinction, since we would, after all, be experiencing the illusion. That experience would also be an experienced illusion, ad nauseam. Care to clarify?
Kathryn Riley