From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!world!eff!mnemonic Mon Dec  9 10:48:59 EST 1991
Article 1958 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Existence
Message-ID: <1991Dec8.205413.16910@eff.org>
Date: 8 Dec 91 20:54:13 GMT
References: <1991Dec5.202144.3220@vax.oxford.ac.uk> <1991Dec6.165648.6234@husc3.harvard.edu> <1991Dec6.204854.2218@arizona.edu>
Distribution: world,local
Organization: The Electronic Frontier Foundation
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In article <1991Dec6.204854.2218@arizona.edu> bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs) writes:

>What does it mean to say "Real numbers exist"?  Both Chesters and
>Zeleny believe that this sentence is either true or false.  In fact
>it is merely meaningless.

[Much deleted.]

What a trip down Memory Lane this posting was! Bill seems eager
to lift this discussion of the existence of real numbers from
Platonism, which is centuries old and which has few modern
adherents, to modern linguistic analysis, which is only a few decades
out of date, but which also has far fewer adherents than it once had.



--Mike




-- 
Mike Godwin,     |"Even if a man's whole day be spent as a servant of 
mnemonic@eff.org | of an industrial concern, in his spare time he will 
(617) 864-0665   | make something, if only a window box flower garden"
EFF, Cambridge   |        --Eric Gill, AN ESSAY ON TYPOGRAPHY


