ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (04/15/86)
>The only way to define "physical" such that it is not tautological with >"existence" is to create some arbitrary anthropocentric boundary that says >"ah, THESE things are physical, but these things aren't!" - Rich Please tell us then, Rich, what ARE things like 3, sets, groups, functions, Turing machines, and Cantorian infinities? Do they exist? If they DO exist, apparently, you believe they are physical. Most peculiar. If they do not exist, then what are we to make of such facts as "There exist N solutions in the complex plane for any polynomial of degree N", or "There exists no smallest positive real number"? Whatever can "exist" mean in such contexts besides "exists in some NONPHYSICAL sense"? -michael Scientists are salesmen of ideas and gadgets, they are not judges of truth and falsehood. - PK Feyerabend