From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Fri Feb 12 1999 - 09:36:21 MST
> Technically, I think ["why does anything exist"] fits in the
> category of teleology,...
The English word "why" has at least four different meanings:
physical causation, logical implication, agentive justification,
and agentive motive ("telos"). The teleological "why" may be
a waste of time to investigate, but the others might not be.
In particular, an interesting and useful question is "Is there
a relatively simple set of initial conditions from which the
complex Universe we see could have evolved?"
ObLojbanPlug: Lojban, of course, has distinct words for all of
these, making it difficult to pose the question as ambiguously
as it is posed in English.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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