Mick wrote:

OlivierK wrote:

Mick wrote:Also: the fellow whom you defend stated that there is no true proposition in the absence of human beings, since propositions are human constructs. I want to show you some implications of that view. Consider the proposition:

1. There is no human being.


On his view, 1 implies that there is no true proposition. Thus:

2. If there is no human being, then there is no true proposition.

But, the consequent of 2 is itself a proposition. Thus, if it is true, then it is false; and hence it cannot be true. If it is false, then there is at least one true proposition. The antecedent is either true or false. If it is true, then the implication is false. Thus, his statement is false. But if the antecedent is false, then the implication is true. However, that would entail that there is no human being, and obviously that is false! Consequently, his view is in hot waters.

Oh for fuck's sake what a train wreck to wake up to.

Mick, a million years ago, the consequence of treating propositions as human constructs (a view for which we have evidence, Mick, but I know you don't care much for evidence) is that 1 doesn't exist. For 1 to even exist, it must be false. Therefore what "follows" from it is unlikely to be problematic. Capiche? Do you remember your truth tables for "If A then B" when A is false, Mick?

Mick wrote:I was speaking about the person whom you defend. He thinks that propositions do not exist in the absence of human beings! Thus, in the absence of human beings, there are no true propositions. I didn't suggest that this fellow -or you-is committed to the idea that there are no propositions.

He's the cat's father.

Mick wrote:Thus, in the absence of human beings, there are no true propositions.

Nor false propositions, Mick. Nor syllogisms.

You've "demonstrated" that if I argue that a million years ago there are no humans and therefore no propositions, that at the time there are no propositions, a certain proposition has an indeterminable truth value. Have a think, again, about maps and territory, Mick, until you work out why this is not a problem.

You're not getting it. I am not designating the "syllogism" in a time or situation wherein humans do not exist, I am simply showing you what classical logic commits you to here and now-it is absurdity! If that is easy for you to swallow, then great. It seems a laughable price to pay to deny my argument.

Here's an exercise for you Mick:

Rewrite your two propositions being explicit about what time you are talking about - each time you use "is"/"is not" add "a million years ago" or "today".

See if you can avoid obvious shit like "If there is no human a million years ago, there is no true proposition today."

VazScep wrote:I was going to let this slide, but I must be in a nitpicky mood:

Cito di Pense wrote:You should sit down with the definition of a commutative ring, just about the first thing you deal with in an abstract algebra course. It's defined by a set of axioms and some basic assumptions such as a = a. Before you know it, you're trying to show how (a + b) + c = a + (b + c) by naming each step in your proof by reference to one of your axioms or some statement you previously proved.

(a + b) + c = a + (b + c) is an axiom of commutative rings.

No that's not a nitpicky mood. Yes, it's an axiom. I should have noted that after all the axioms, we still have to prove stuff like

a + (b + c) = (c + a) + b.

If (a + b) + c = a + (b + c) is an axiom, do we have to cite a rule before saying a + (b + c) = (a + b) + c? I guess I don't really think so, but there might be someone in a really nitpicky mood out there referring to

a = b => b = a

Calilasseia wrote:
Actually, that's a statement of the associative law applicable thereto. The associative law isn't necessarily an axiom in some systems, and indeed, as even an elementary perusal of group theory will tell you, it's possible for the associative law to be obeyed by an operation even if it isn't commutative. There are numerous non-Abelian groups in existence, and for a group, the associative law is an axiom.

But saying

(a + b) + c = a + (b + c)

is an axiom of commutative groups is not being "as wrong as a wrong thing on wrong juice". It's like not being an alligator, but different. It's like being right.

Mick wrote:
So, you agree that there are propositions, since there are statements? Do you agree that propositions are truth-bearers? Once you tell me that, I'd like to know if you believe propositions are physical or not.

I would not accept a definition of a proposition as a true statement even if we defined a conjecture as a statement that had not been proven yet, and a theorem as a statement that has been proven. Perhaps I would say that 'proposition' is too general, otherwise; it sounds a bit tentative to begin with. But you see that it is not synonymous with 'conjecture' or 'theorem'.

If you think of a proposition as some statement you make with the aim of generating a sound argument in support of it, it removes the term 'proposition' from the bounds of formal logic, because a sound argument is just one that has not obviously failed, and unless we identify the slippery ways, for example, that synonyms are used in purportedly 'sound' arguments, we won't be able to say exactly what is wrong with such arguments. If an argument boils down to semantics, then it is wibble.

My earlier point is that proofs get to a certain level of complexity that requires writing. That's a big point about axioms and so on, that they are statements (as of properties) that taken together constitute a definition. But even if writing is not required in some cases, statements always have sources. Just because you don't know who first decided to state some law of logic formally, somebody did. And I agree with those who say that such laws recognise regularities in experience.

You have to go all the way to postulating experience as non-physical to underpin your conjectures about where the truths of logic come from. That hides a semantic argument on the definitions of 'physical' or 'properties'. Either that, or you have to go all the way back to saying that order itself is evidence of a deity, but that just assumes your conclusion. If you denote 'properties' as the axiomatic statements that make up your definition, then the significance of 'properties' is clear.

As for whether systems of statements are physical or not (even single statements), it's already been pointed out in this thread that since statements don't get carved in rock by bolts of lightning, we look to physical entities as the sources of statements. I get the feeling sometimes that god popped out of people's capacity to hide their sources.

So, your next move should be to define the physical in terms of a finite set of properties, with the aim of seeing whether your definition of 'physical' is worth two cents by seeing what other statements you can make about the physical using your axioms. If you're lucky, you'll be doing physics in only a few centuries.

Calilasseia wrote:Actually, that's a statement of the associative law applicable thereto.

It's still an axiom of commutative rings.

The associative law isn't necessarily an axiom in some systems, and indeed, as even an elementary perusal of group theory will tell you, it's possible for the associative law to be obeyed by an operation even if it isn't commutative.

Jesus. I've done more than an elementary perusal of group theory, thanks.

I wasn't saying that associativity is only an axiom of commutative rings. I was pointing out to Cito that, as an axiom, it isn't something you're expected to prove.

Mick wrote:

The antecedent is false.

Oops. You're right. Ha. The antecedent is true,

:confused: The antecedent is false.

I think that Mick means that the antecedent is a truth, and therefore the sort of thing that is true or false.

OlivierK wrote:I think that Mick means that the antecedent is a truth, and therefore the sort of thing that is true or false.

On that supposed slip-up of Mick's, I read:

Mick wrote:Truths are propositions, the sort of things that are either true or false.

as saying that truths are propositions, and propositions are things which are true or false.

Do you think god ever makes universes that don't require an ultimate basis for logic?

VazScep wrote:

OlivierK wrote:I think that Mick means that the antecedent is a truth, and therefore the sort of thing that is true or false.

On that supposed slip-up of Mick's, I read:

Mick wrote:Truths are propositions, the sort of things that are either true or false.

as saying that truths are propositions, and propositions are things which are true or false.

Thus we have the proposition, "I am an alligator". It's false in this case (speak for yourself). But is it physical?

TBH, I find it no more remarkable for someone to say "I am not an alligator" than to say "I am an alligator". The question arises concerning why anyone would want to make either statement.

The abject silliness of denying that one is an alligator is ample evidence of the failure of propositions to be 'bearers of truth'.

The one I learned in linguistics is, "He had a feebly growing down on his chin", and trying to parse the sentence as if 'feebly' is a noun, which you do if you voice the sentence with a particular juncture and stress pattern.

If propositions are non-physical, how can those words bifurcate their significance in that way?

VazScep wrote:

OlivierK wrote:I think that Mick means that the antecedent is a truth, and therefore the sort of thing that is true or false.

On that supposed slip-up of Mick's, I read:

Mick wrote:Truths are propositions, the sort of things that are either true or false.

as saying that truths are propositions, and propositions are things which are true or false.

So did I

VazScep wrote:

OlivierK wrote:I think that Mick means that the antecedent is a truth, and therefore the sort of thing that is true or false.

On that supposed slip-up of Mick's, I read:

Mick wrote:Truths are propositions, the sort of things that are either true or false.

as saying that truths are propositions, and propositions are things which are true or false.

Nonetheless it utterly fails as being informative or definitive. It's somewhat pointless to tell the audience that a thing that is true is of the sort of thing that is either true or false.

I find it entirely unsatisfactory (for reasons that seem obvious) to define truth in terms of propositionality and propositionality in terms of truth.

The reason I pursued the line (although it failed as usual since Mick was concerned about history and who said what and I was concerned with logic and whether what he was saying is accurate), was in the hope that it would produce a tighter definition, or some specific context, ideally something like propositional logic - which as I later pointed out comes with a nice, precise recursive definition of both "truth" and "proposition".

In this case we can definitively point out that propositions are physical - they are things you write down, using particular symbols as defined by your choice of calculus. The laws of logic may or may not be propositions in this calculus. For example, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propositio ... ment_forms
The law of non-contradiction is given as a meta-language statement rather than a proposition. ⊢¬(p∧¬p)

Cito di Pense wrote:The one I learned in linguistics is, "He had a feebly growing down on his chin", and trying to parse the sentence as if 'feebly' is a noun, which you do if you voice the sentence with a particular juncture and stress pattern.

Garden path sentences. There are some nice examples you can google.

A taxing problem in computational linguistics is figuring out how to disambiguate parse-trees in natural language. Whatever humans are doing, I doubt it's got much to do with computer parsing, as evidenced by the fact that computers will happily parse deeply nested clauses with distant modifiers that get a thumbs up according to English formal grammar. Humans however, are likely to struggle: e.g. The cheese that the mouse that the cat that the dog barked at chased ate was delicious.

Here's a sentence with an ambiguous parse tree: "Time flies like an arrow (fruit flies like a banana)" And the favourite: "Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." The upper case is significant.

If propositions are non-physical, how can those words bifurcate their significance in that way?

Mick will distinguish an utterance from a proposition. He mentioned types and tokens in the OP. A sentence, even as an abstract string of symbols, whether intended to be spoken or written, at most, is a token and has a proposition as its type. Not all sentences unambiguously point at a proposition, as your example shows. But then, not all sentences are declarative anyway.

Propositions on this view, end up being something at least more abstract then sentences.

Time flies like an arrow could also be a command.
Buffalo from the city of Buffalo which are buffaloed by other buffalo from the city of Buffalo will also buffalo those buffalo which are from the city of Buffalo

Thommo wrote:The reason I pursued the line (although it failed as usual since Mick was concerned about history and who said what and I was concerned with logic and whether what he was saying is accurate), was in the hope that it would produce a tighter definition,

Mathematicians require tight definitions. Philosophers, not so much. The latter are usually happy to make incomplete intuitive claims about some set of concepts, perhaps with a motivating thought experiment. That they don't start with tight definitions is why you don't see much theory building, as you do in mathematics (ethics would be one exception). Instead, we get one-shot arguments like the OP.

I doubt Mick, or any other philosopher, wants to reduce the concept of proposition to the formulas of PL. I often want to do that, but then, I like doing maths while I find this sort of philosophy to be pointless. One-shot arguments for the existence of god do not impress me one little bit. Build theories, do something with them, and then your one-shot argument might get my attention.

Thommo wrote:

VazScep wrote:

OlivierK wrote:I think that Mick means that the antecedent is a truth, and therefore the sort of thing that is true or false.

On that supposed slip-up of Mick's, I read:

Mick wrote:Truths are propositions, the sort of things that are either true or false.

as saying that truths are propositions, and propositions are things which are true or false.

Nonetheless it utterly fails as being informative or definitive. It's somewhat pointless to tell the audience that a thing that is true is of the sort of thing that is either true or false.

Is it normal to talk about false truths, or is it more an artefact of theistic logic? Has Mick been learning about false truths? Are false truths true or false?

I think I need to see a barber about a beard.

VazScep wrote:And the favourite: "Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." The upper case is significant.

Because I went to high school in the Buffalo area, I know how Buffalo got its name, being so far from the Great Plains and the bison also called buffalo. As the story goes, local aboriginals heard the French talking about "beau fleuve" in reference to Niagara Falls, and this is the pronunciation that caught on with the locals, who later spelled it the way they heard it.

You could add another buffalo to the heard:

Buffalo (animal) Buffalo (city) buffalo (animal) buffalo (verb) buffalo (verb) buffalo (animal) Buffalo (city) buffalo (animal) buffalo (verb).

Buffalo (that) Buffalo buffalo buffalo (also) buffalo buffalo (that) Buffalo buffalo buffalo. What a treat!

Another classic:

Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish
and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer
if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and
and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and
and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?

That sounds like a lot of buffalo shi-... I mean, very poetic.

[Edited for subtlety.]

LucidFlight wrote:

Thommo wrote:

VazScep wrote:

OlivierK wrote:I think that Mick means that the antecedent is a truth, and therefore the sort of thing that is true or false.

On that supposed slip-up of Mick's, I read:

Mick wrote:Truths are propositions, the sort of things that are either true or false.

as saying that truths are propositions, and propositions are things which are true or false.

Nonetheless it utterly fails as being informative or definitive. It's somewhat pointless to tell the audience that a thing that is true is of the sort of thing that is either true or false.

Is it normal to talk about false truths, or is it more an artefact of theistic logic? Has Mick been learning about false truths? Are false truths true or false?

Not in my experience, I read the sentence as saying that truths are a particular type of proposition - which is fair enough - but then saying that propositions are true or false "somethings", and that truths are specifically those true or false "somethings" that are true. It's circular. Some people may find it satisfactory, or not worth worrying about, but I'm not so sure, it doesn't inspire me about the content to follow, which is after all supposed to be about logic which really does necessitate a kind of pedantry and tight definition or we tend to end up saying things like "let X be the collection of collections that do not contain themselves" or "this proposition is false".

Under the kind of mathematical/formal view I am drawn towards, it's quite easy to understand where "this proposition is false" fails, but under a linguistic breakdown, where the "proposition" is not the statement but it's underlying "meaning"? How can we even be sure there is an underlying meaning? By assuming there is a distinct entity underlying it, are we not already granting the premise that there are non-physical existents, something unlikely to be accepted by large parts of the audience the argument is aimed at?

If we continue down the line we end up with something of a regression all the way back to Plato and his forms, and find ourselves uttering things like "you will not find a law of logic on a piece of paper" or "you will not find a proposition on a piece of paper" or "you will not find a sentence on a piece of paper" or "you will not find a word on a piece of paper". For although you may think I have written the word "Plato" in this post, in fact it's merely an instantiation of the ideal Plato, an ideal formed from all uses of the word Plato ever (and something more perhaps).

OlivierK wrote:

Mick wrote:

OlivierK wrote:

Mick wrote:Also: the fellow whom you defend stated that there is no true proposition in the absence of human beings, since propositions are human constructs. I want to show you some implications of that view. Consider the proposition:

1. There is no human being.


On his view, 1 implies that there is no true proposition. Thus:

2. If there is no human being, then there is no true proposition.

But, the consequent of 2 is itself a proposition. Thus, if it is true, then it is false; and hence it cannot be true. If it is false, then there is at least one true proposition. The antecedent is either true or false. If it is true, then the implication is false. Thus, his statement is false. But if the antecedent is false, then the implication is true. However, that would entail that there is no human being, and obviously that is false! Consequently, his view is in hot waters.

Oh for fuck's sake what a train wreck to wake up to.

Mick, a million years ago, the consequence of treating propositions as human constructs (a view for which we have evidence, Mick, but I know you don't care much for evidence) is that 1 doesn't exist. For 1 to even exist, it must be false. Therefore what "follows" from it is unlikely to be problematic. Capiche? Do you remember your truth tables for "If A then B" when A is false, Mick?

Mick wrote:I was speaking about the person whom you defend. He thinks that propositions do not exist in the absence of human beings! Thus, in the absence of human beings, there are no true propositions. I didn't suggest that this fellow -or you-is committed to the idea that there are no propositions.

He's the cat's father.

Mick wrote:Thus, in the absence of human beings, there are no true propositions.

Nor false propositions, Mick. Nor syllogisms.

You've "demonstrated" that if I argue that a million years ago there are no humans and therefore no propositions, that at the time there are no propositions, a certain proposition has an indeterminable truth value. Have a think, again, about maps and territory, Mick, until you work out why this is not a problem.

You're not getting it. I am not designating the "syllogism" in a time or situation wherein humans do not exist, I am simply showing you what classical logic commits you to here and now-it is absurdity! If that is easy for you to swallow, then great. It seems a laughable price to pay to deny my argument.

Here's an exercise for you Mick:

Rewrite your two propositions being explicit about what time you are talking about - each time you use "is"/"is not" add "a million years ago" or "today".

See if you can avoid obvious shit like "If there is no human a million years ago, there is no true proposition today."

C'mon Mick, it's only a two line task, surely you can tear yourself away from your "Embarrassing Fail" thread for five minutes.

OlivierK wrote:

OlivierK wrote:

Mick wrote:

OlivierK wrote:
Oh for fuck's sake what a train wreck to wake up to.

Mick, a million years ago, the consequence of treating propositions as human constructs (a view for which we have evidence, Mick, but I know you don't care much for evidence) is that 1 doesn't exist. For 1 to even exist, it must be false. Therefore what "follows" from it is unlikely to be problematic. Capiche? Do you remember your truth tables for "If A then B" when A is false, Mick?


He's the cat's father.


Nor false propositions, Mick. Nor syllogisms.

You've "demonstrated" that if I argue that a million years ago there are no humans and therefore no propositions, that at the time there are no propositions, a certain proposition has an indeterminable truth value. Have a think, again, about maps and territory, Mick, until you work out why this is not a problem.

You're not getting it. I am not designating the "syllogism" in a time or situation wherein humans do not exist, I am simply showing you what classical logic commits you to here and now-it is absurdity! If that is easy for you to swallow, then great. It seems a laughable price to pay to deny my argument.

Here's an exercise for you Mick:

Rewrite your two propositions being explicit about what time you are talking about - each time you use "is"/"is not" add "a million years ago" or "today".

See if you can avoid obvious shit like "If there is no human a million years ago, there is no true proposition today."

C'mon Mick, it's only a two line task, surely you can tear yourself away from your "Embarrassing Fail" thread for five minutes.

But he likes failing embarassingly so much!