From: Aatu Koskensilta on
stevendaryl3016(a)yahoo.com (Daryl McCullough) writes:

> If we understand the logical form of this syllogism, we know
> that it is valid, even if we have no idea what "mortal" means,
> or what "men" are, or who Socrates is. In particular, we don't
> need to know whether there *are* any men.

I seem to recall universal statements have existential import in
Aristotle's logic.

--
Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.koskensilta(a)uta.fi)

"Wovon man nicht sprechan kann, dar�ber muss man schweigen"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
From: Aatu Koskensilta on
Nam Nguyen <namducnguyen(a)shaw.ca> writes:

> (Be careful here: you might run into conflict with Aatu's belief that
> logic is just a branch of mathematics, or that logic provability can
> be guided [or even "dictated"] by the mathematics of the naturals,
> iirc).

There's nothing controversial in the observation that mathematical logic
is a branch of mathematics. The view that "logic provability" can be
"guided" or "dictated" by the "mathematics of the naturals" that you
ascribe to me I can't make anything of.

--
Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.koskensilta(a)uta.fi)

"Wovon man nicht sprechan kann, dar�ber muss man schweigen"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
From: Aatu Koskensilta on
Nam Nguyen <namducnguyen(a)shaw.ca> writes:

> Sigh. I don't know why people just don't understand simple things!

I too often wonder about that.

--
Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.koskensilta(a)uta.fi)

"Wovon man nicht sprechan kann, dar�ber muss man schweigen"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
From: Aatu Koskensilta on
Nam Nguyen <namducnguyen(a)shaw.ca> writes:

> Suppose someone says to you "Marshall you're not couch potato", would
> you think they "mean" you aren't a couch or aren't a potato?

Uh, come again?

--
Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.koskensilta(a)uta.fi)

"Wovon man nicht sprechan kann, dar�ber muss man schweigen"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
From: Aatu Koskensilta on
Marshall <marshall.spight(a)gmail.com> writes:

> There's a minor typo here: you said "authors" when in fact he just
> quotes endlessly from the one book by the one guy.

Well, it is a swell book. Quoting from page 160:

We have already seen that the use of quantifiers in explicit
definitions leads outside of the class of recursive relations. We are
going to study the relations which may be obtained by applying
quantifiers to recursive relations. In this section, we consider only
quantifiers on number variables; quantifiers on function variables will
be considered later.

--
Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.koskensilta(a)uta.fi)

"Wovon man nicht sprechan kann, dar�ber muss man schweigen"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus