On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 22:49:29 +0000 (UTC), John Forkosh <john@SeeSigForAddress.com> said: > Chris Menzel <cmenzel@tamu.edu> wrote: > : John Forkosh <john@SeeSigForAddress.com> said: > : > Of course, we'd like to find at least one unassailable definition > : > of "exist" whereby KAJ exists and numbers don't. > > : Why is that? > > There's an intuitively obvious difference between corporeal > "physical objects" and "abstract mental constructions".
Abstract entities, in the traditional platonic sense, are not mental constructions. There would have been a prime > 100 even if the historical accident that brought humanity into being hadn't occurred.
> And whenever there's such an obvious intuitive difference, > we'd like to find some model that permits us to formally > distinguish between them.
There is indeed an intuitive difference between the concrete and the abstract, though not the one between the physical and the mental.
