Re: OT: Reality (was: Re: Atlantean)

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> Sorry, but that is nonsense. Doubt is a behaviour, and as such *needs*
> someone to behave. By definition it cannot have stand-alone existence.
Well, if it is a matter of definition, then I bow to your right to use
your definitions, but reserve the right to apply my own.  I present,
however, this analogy:  When physicists discovered that light was a
wave, they introduced the aether, because where there was a wave,
there must be a medium to do the waving.  This aether turned out to
have almost contradictory properties (Isaac Asimov described it in
one of his articles as "the rigid vacuum"), and was eventually discarded
as unnecessary.  So far from saying that a wave must have a medium, we
now have waves that are themselves the medium (loosely speaking).
Similarly, it does not seem to me inconceivable that one might have a
doubting without a doubter, or a thinking without a thinker.

--
A witness cannot give evidence of his           John Cowan
age unless he can remember being born.          jcowan@reutershealth.com
  --Judge Blagden                               http://www.ccil.org/~cowan