From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Aug 14 2004 - 12:44:19 MDT
On Aug 14, 2004, at 12:56 AM, Paul Fidika wrote:
>
> Actually I was only referring to the truth of falsity of a statement
> in a
> formal sense, and the viewpoint I was describing (which is not so
> common) is
> called Intuitionism (e.g., see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionism).
> However, I suppose the position could be defined analogously in a more
> informal setting as well--we could say that a statement is true if we
> could
> (at least in theory) construct some experiment which would confirm its
> truth
> or the truth of its negation. Now consider the existence of parallel
> universes--if there is no experiment which can prove or disprove their
> existence, then these generalized-intuitionists would say that the
> statement
> "parallel universes exist" is neither a true nor false statement--it's
> nonsense. The Platonist would say that either parallel universes exist
> or
> they do not, although we may never be able to determine which is the
> case.
> Despite Intuitionism's name, I find Platonism the more intuitive of
> the two.
>
I don't see why only Platonists would say that some statements have an
unknown truth value or even have a truth value that is by nature unable
to be determined. That is not the same thing as saying that such
statements are "nonsense".
- s
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