ext_1799 ([identity profile] alixtii.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] alixtii 2008-04-21 01:45 pm (UTC)

But if they aren't empirical what are they?

*shrug* Meta-ethical principles. I can give them names if you want: this one's Sarah, Michelle, Alexis, Aly, Joss, Summer. . . .

I--only in part--jest, but while what you asks makes sense to me, I don't think it's the sense you want it to make. Propositions might be independently-existing facts (which strikes me as needlessly metaphysical), or a certain type of property, or a function of language (probably the route I'd go), or whatever--but in any case, non-empirical facts are going to be fashioned out of the same "stuff" as empirical ones. Note that the laws of logic and mathematics--non-contradiction, modus ponens, the distributed middle, the distributive property, Euclid's first four postulates (but not the fifth), the rules of calculus, etc.--all fall into this set of non-emprical true propositions, so if you accept any of these and don't buy my explanation, I'm going to have to ask you what you think they are.

I have responses to the rest of the stuff in your comment, too, but I'm at work again . . . so it's going to have to wait a few hours until my next break.

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