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Article 6069 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Grounding: Virtual vs. Real
Message-ID: <1992Jun03.201438.36413@spss.com>
>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1992 20:14:38 GMT
References: <22133@castle.ed.ac.uk> <60758@aurs01.UUCP> <22243@castle.ed.ac.uk>
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In article <22243@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>For example, let us imagine a completely demented individual, still
>capable of feeding himself and crossing the road without getting run
>over, but living in a paranoid fantasy world which renders ordinary
>communication impossible. I think it quite appropriate to say of such
>a person that they are still grounded with respect to the physical
>world, but have lost touch -- lost grounding -- with respect to the
>social world.

If you mean that their mechanism for finding out facts about the (social)
world is on the fritz, I'd agree with you.  If you mean that their terms
or propositions referring to society are now ungrounded, I don't think so.
For instance, if they talk to you and announce that you are a spy for the 
KGB, their statement is meaningful and presumably grounded; it's just
mistaken.


