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[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Please use this topic to discuss Transcript: Ontology, which is at the end of part 2 of the July book of the month Many Worlds?: Everett, Quantum Theory, & Reality edited by Saunders, Barrett, Kent, Wallace. We are discussing this book chapter-by-chapter, including a discussion for the introduction and the two transcripts. Please do not post in this topic until you have finished part 2.

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What do you think of this transcript?

I very much enjoyed reading this transcript. It flowed a lot more naturally than the others. I think it is placed well in the book as well to help recap in a specially engaging way on all the various intricate arguments given by different people with different views. The discussion seems to me to have been edited to make each person's statements flow more like a prepared speech, but it's still nice to get a little break from the formality of the book, represented perhaps most of all by the line "science ain't metaphysics".

While I share more views in common with Hawthorne in general, I thought Wallace made an agreeable, noteworthy point in response to Hawthorne:

That's one concern I have about your closest-satisfier story about what makes extended bodies the closest candidates. I'm slightly worried it's based on the idea that they're more intuitive candidates. I'm not sure that's the right kind of reason to use in this kind of account.

Certainly we cannot decide correctly between interpretations based merely by which one feels right intuitively!

Anyway, I also really appreciate how respectful each of these people are in the conversation of each other. Even where they argue strongly for their own views, they do it with more than just mere civility but what seems to be a sincere modesty and profound respect, which is one thing to find in a layman whose modesty is obviously warranted but is especially praiseworthy in these experts.

Anyway, what do you think?