> ken wrote:
> > ?? Let's take a volcano on Mars as an example. Using a
> > telescope or whatever, we find X - which is to say that X
> > comes into our perception. Then we create a name for it:
> > Olympus Mons. Olympus Mons was created, not discovered.
> > It's like coming over to my apartment and seeing an orange
> > in a fruit basket. You don't say to me, "Look Ken, I just
> > discovered an orange." I mean, you can say that but it is kind
> > of foolish. You "create" the category, and then transpose
> > it onto X. Until something has a name, it doesn't exist
> > (existence is a predicate - a predicate of "for us").
>
> You are confusing epistemology and ontology. The distinction between
> what exists and how we can know what exists. The object denoted by the
> word "orange" exists independently of human cognition but the word we
> use to refer to the object is a part of a social creation viz. language.
When I hear people make ontological claims like this I can't help but ask: how do you know the object referred to by the word "orange" exists independently
of human cognition? The only way a human being can perceive the world is via human cognitive processes, and it's a kind of epistemological whistling in the dark to claim that you know that the object exists independent of human perception. It's like the claim "God exists"--you just have to take it on faith, and there is no meaningful empirical test to validate it.
Miles "dammit I read too much Nietzsche as an undergraduate" Jackson cqmv at odin.cc.pdx.edu