Posted: May 17, 2012 10:16 pm
amkerman wrote:There are two key types of legal expressions: terms, which intuitively represent objects, and formulas, which intuitively express predicates that can be true or false
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_(first-order_logic)#section_2
And you are trying to claim that "god" and "square circle" are not terms, but formulas?...
My goodness.
What's remotely strange about that? "x is a circle" and "x is a square" are defined by formulas, it's fairly obvious that the conjunction of those would be a formula denoting a square circle (in fact this is true even if they are defined by terms, so it would still be a correct objection).
God is a bit more hazardous, but god surely isn't a constant, variable or function so if we can discuss him at all, he has to be represented by a formula (further if I suffer from him being an empty referent due to his nonexistence that serves fairly well to undercut your entire position as well). I won't dwell on this as your argument is every bit as contingent on the ability for "god" to be meaningfully defined as any other argument is.
Perhaps if you disagree you'd care to define the domain you're discussing which has terms of "god" and "square circle" in it. Obviously the domain I was referring to for the square circle portion of the claim would be the set of ordered pairs of points denoting the real plane, as is standard in plane geometry where squares and circles are defined.