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Article 1941 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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Subject: Re: Existence
Message-ID: <1991Dec7.154729.2221@arizona.edu>
>From: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Date: 7 Dec 91 15:47:29 MST
Reply-To: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
References: <1991Dec6.165648.6234@husc3.harvard.edu> <1991Dec6.204854.2218@arizona.edu> 
 <1991Dec7.070815.6257@husc3.harvard.edu> <1991Dec7.190338.2203@Princeton.EDU>
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In article <1991Dec7.190338.2203@Princeton.EDU> 
egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) writes:
>  [you just read it, didn't you? ]

  Thanks for your defence, but I don't quite agree with all of it
(especially the politics).

  As far as I am concerned, philosophers have the right to be
prescriptive about words, so long as they are *explicitly*
prescriptive.  My problem with Mikhail Zeleny is not that he
wants to use words such as "exist" in unusual ways, but that
he refuses to explain what his usage is.  He somehow thinks that
reeling off a list of names is an adequate explanation, but it
is not.

  What is especially amusing is that Zeleny thinks his attitude
is shared by mathematicians.  I am a mathematician (though I'm
now doing neuroscience), and I assert that any mathematician who
took Zeleny's approach would be lynched.  I can just imagine
the scene:

Mathematician:  "Now if we look at the projection of the 
	cotangent bundle . . ."

Audience:  "How do you define the 'cotangent bundle'?"

Math:  "What!  This is thoroughly discussed by Smale.  If you
	haven't read Smale, what the fuck are you doing at my
	lecture?!"

Aud:  "Kill."

Math:  "Gug-gug-gug."

	-- Bill



