I think I actually manage to cover this in my part two post. Being able to evaluate arguments about things is about fitting them into your collection of mental objects with associations. We can absoloutely do this with both numbers and Dracula. But you can have mental objects in your collection that you don’t think have a corresponding object in the territory—strict existence involves extra properties that more or less boil down to having the object in a causal model of the world that’s connected to you.
Hm, that seems like kind of an important point. I may have overindulged my desire to lay out all the necessary pieces for people but not put them all together.
An argument that you can’t easily write in first order logic without resorting to subtle tricks:
1) Dracula is a vampire.
2) Vampires do not exist.
3) Therefore, Dracula does not exist.
A full explanation of “exists” should be able to account for this argument...
I think I actually manage to cover this in my part two post. Being able to evaluate arguments about things is about fitting them into your collection of mental objects with associations. We can absoloutely do this with both numbers and Dracula. But you can have mental objects in your collection that you don’t think have a corresponding object in the territory—strict existence involves extra properties that more or less boil down to having the object in a causal model of the world that’s connected to you.
Hm, that seems like kind of an important point. I may have overindulged my desire to lay out all the necessary pieces for people but not put them all together.