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Article 1732 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: On Denoting
Message-ID: <10062@optima.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 28 Nov 91 20:52:58 GMT
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In article  <1991Nov28.011859.21399@milton.u.washington.edu> Tracy Monaghan writes:
]
]Would it be possible for you to express your position without resorting to 
]polysyllabic philosophical prestidigitation?

Mr. Zeleny is using the terminology customary to the field in which he
is debating.  If he did not feel free to use common words such as, for
example, "extension" vs. "intension" without further explanation, he
would be spending all of his time giving introductory lectures on
pragmatics, semantics, ontology, and epistemology.  You might as well
chastise a poster in comp.lang.misc for using the phrase "syntax".

]If the mind is not the result of normal (human) brain functioning, what
]else is there?

No one knows.  But then, no one knows how physical processes in the
brain could possibly give rise to the sort of self-awareness that
introspective persons are aware of.

]Please bear in mind that I no longer believe in myths, fairy tales, or
]mysticism.

Congratulations on your keen fashion sense in ontolgy.  Yours is
certainly the ontology of choice among the chic intellectual set this
century.  Of course the chic intellectual set are, as a group,
completely unfamiliar with alternative philosophies, but that is
beside the point isn't it?  What is important is that whenever some
less stylish person points out a fundamental problem with your
preferred ontology, you can always send the blackguard packing with a
cutting reference to "myths, fairy tales, or mysticism".
--
					David Gudeman
gudeman@cs.arizona.edu
noao!arizona!gudeman


