From: Perry E. Metzger (perry@piermont.com)
Date: Sat Apr 26 2003 - 22:48:18 MDT
"Ben Goertzel" <ben@goertzel.org> writes:
> > Secondly, even if we can never tell the difference, the potential
> > inhabitants of the other universes can. If people in other universes
> > don't count, why would (say) Belgians count, if I never had anything to
> > do with them in my entire life? :-) Or, to use a more correct example:
> > how about aliens who live so far away we can never affect them or be
> > affected by them?
>
> If we literally can *never* affect or be affected by them, as a consequence
> of physical law, then the aliens don't exist in the sense of "Peircean
> pragmatist existence from our situated perspective", though they do exist in
> Simon's sense of "logical possibility implies existence."
Well, in the sense of producing tests that might falsify the "other
universe" hypothesis, being able to mutually impact each other isn't
needed. I'm not sure what "Peircean pragmatism" is so I can't say
whether testable hypotheses are sufficient for its perspective...
-- Perry E. Metzger perry@piermont.com
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