[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 06:36:40AM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> In my earlier posting I had proposed, but not defended, the following
> (standard) assignment of existential import: A+E+I-O-. Jorge
> counter-proposed A-E+I-O+, but this would break Aristotelian logic, and
> reduce the very real distinction between it and modern logic to a nullity.
> (Reminder: + means that if S, the subject term, is vacuous, the function
> is always false, whereas - means there is no such generalization available.)
Why do we want to use an outdated logic? We already have features
of modern logic which Aristotle didn't have (bu'a, lambda stuff,
whatnot). Should we give those up too?
Aristotle used XOR for "or" also---I don't see you saying we should
be doing that.
> It is of the essence of the AEIO functions that they obey the laws
> of the Aristotelian square: A and O are contradictory, E and I are
> contradictory, A and I are contrary (can't be both true), E and O are
> subcontrary (can't be both false), A implies E, I implies O, and A and
> E can have their subject and predicate terms interchanged. These things
> are only true with the existential-import rules as I stated them.
Yes, but those things are useless. Modern logicians have a much
simpler "square", and it hasn't hurt them any.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/square/
[...]
> Fortunately, by applying modern logic with its unrestricted quantified
> variables, where there are no subject terms, Jorge can get everything
> he wants. The following paraphrases work perfectly:
>
> A-: ro da zo'u ganai da S gi da P
> E+: su'o da zo'u ge da S gi da P
> I-: ro da zo'u ganai da S ginai da P
> O+: su'o da zo'u ge da S ginai da P
But we don't want to have to write that. I want to be able to say things
like
ro pavyseljirna cu blabi
and have it be exactly the same as
ro da zo'u ga da na pavyseljina gi da blabi
and
ro da poi pavyseljirna zo'u da blabi
"ro pavyseljirna cu blabi" should just be a shorter version of the
same thing.
> The paraphrases break down only if the universe as a whole is vacuous,
> which I consider to be an unimportant corner case.
[...]
Yeah, that case is nonimportant---I didn't know back when we were
discussing this last. But in a system of modern logic, it can be
proven as a theorem that the universe is nonempty (or at least it
can in Quine's). And it can also be shown intuitivly: we have a
set of all things, which is a thing, and a set of nothings, which
is another thing---so we can't have an empty universe.
In fact, the universe must have an infinite number of things.
--
Jordan DeLong - fracture@hidden.email
lu zo'o loi censa bakni cu terzba le zaltapla poi xagrai li'u
sei la mark. tuen. cusku
Attachment:
binJnQxRGHxOE.bin
Description: application/ygp-stripped