“What kind of a thing is that existing thing” and “what is existence anyway” are rather orthogonal questions. If you reject MUH, you need to explain what breathes fire into the equations.
“Exists” is one of the words I tend to taboo. People usually just use it to mean “is part of the Everett branch that I am currently in” but there are also some usages that seem to derive their meaning by analogy, like the existence of mathematical objects. I’m not sure if there is a principled distinction being drawn by those kinds of usages.
Instead I would talk about whether we can sensibly talk about something. And I can imagine people trying to talk about something, and not making any sense, but it doesn’t seem to mean that there is a “thing” they are talking about that “doesn’t exist”.
People usually just use it to mean “is part of the Everett branch that I am currently in”
Not when they are asserting the existence of other branches. And most people have never heard of Everett branches.
“Exists” is one of the words I tend to taboo.
Consitently tabooing it and all its synonyms is pretty difficult, and you are not succeeding, since your said ““to be a thing is to be a mathematical object”.
You are coming to a pretty contentious conclusion, and doing so based on inconsistent tabooing—allowing yourself to use words like “be” when expressing what you believe, but
insisting on tabooing when challenged or asked to explain yourself.
“What kind of a thing is that existing thing” and “what is existence anyway” are rather orthogonal questions. If you reject MUH, you need to explain what breathes fire into the equations.
I am not sure why you seem to think I reject MUH?
That began with an ‘if’. If you accept the MUH, the problem you have is lack of evidence for it, or even evidence against it.
Ah I see. How could fire be breathed into equations? That concept doesn’t make sense to me.
Can you conceive of one thing existing and another thing not exisitng?
“Exists” is one of the words I tend to taboo. People usually just use it to mean “is part of the Everett branch that I am currently in” but there are also some usages that seem to derive their meaning by analogy, like the existence of mathematical objects. I’m not sure if there is a principled distinction being drawn by those kinds of usages.
Instead I would talk about whether we can sensibly talk about something. And I can imagine people trying to talk about something, and not making any sense, but it doesn’t seem to mean that there is a “thing” they are talking about that “doesn’t exist”.
Not when they are asserting the existence of other branches. And most people have never heard of Everett branches.
Consitently tabooing it and all its synonyms is pretty difficult, and you are not succeeding, since your said ““to be a thing is to be a mathematical object”.
You are coming to a pretty contentious conclusion, and doing so based on inconsistent tabooing—allowing yourself to use words like “be” when expressing what you believe, but insisting on tabooing when challenged or asked to explain yourself.
There I was using “to be” in the sense of equality, which is different from the sense of existence. So I don’t think I was tabooing inconsistently.
Consciously tabooing a term like “exist” is what I have been doing, as well. Makes a lot of things less confusing.