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Memo, are you using Scholastic/Aristotlean or existential logic?

Cognitive dissonance is a frequent result of "comprehensiveness".

Fr. Serge

Hi,



Scholastic, which is more comprehensive, because it assumes a non-empty universe.

Existential logic rejects contrary and subcontrary propositions because their "rules" do not hold if the universe (or field) of the proposition is an empty set.

I call that cheating. If the cardinality of your universe is not self-evident, you simply state your assumtions (i.e. If there is a God, then...) and play the grown-up version of the game.

Coming up with things like "you are both wrong, because unicorns do not exist" sounds to me like an adolescent excuse to get out of an argument that was not going your way.

Shalom,
Memo

I figured as much. Each type has its own uses.

The two types being those who argue from the nonexistence of unicorns, and . . .



I stumbled across a great quote from, iirc, Chesterson to the effect that fairy tales don't teach children that dragons are real; they already know that. Fairy tales teach them that dragons can be slain . . .

Traditional logic assumes your "field" exists and has at least one "member".

Modern logic assumes nothing of the such and therefore cannot assign deterministic truth values to particular propositions.

In Traditional logic, the propostion: "Some unicorns do not have horns" and "All unicorns have horns" are contradictory and therefore mutually exclusive and therefore, one has to be true and the other one false.

Now, which one is which? If "Some unicorns do not have horns" is true, I could say "ok, show me at least one without horns". If "All unicorns have horns" is true, I could say "ok, where are they?", in both cases, the truth of the proposition cannot be verified.

At least that is what Modern logic supporters argue.

"All unicorns have horns" is true, at least in terms of Traditional logic, because the way to disprove a universal proposition is by counter-example, that is, by finding a member of the field for which the proposition is not true, so until you can show me a unicorn without horns, "all unicorns have horns" remains true.

Makes little sense, considering unicorns do not exist, but still, out of zero existing unicorns, "all zero" have horns (this language would not hold mathematical water, of course, but the math of the number zero is too abstract for our languages).

Shalom,
Memo

Remember the exhortation to "Beware of philosophy and vain deceit".

Fr. Serge

Amen.

But do "all cows eat grass"?

Only in the spaces of the bass clef.

Clever

I suppose all music teachers have told beginning piano students that all cows eat grass is the way to remember the bass clef space names, A,C,E,G. I have also heard one teacher say all cars eat gas. Whatever works.

Or whatever saves face!

Ah, face, the spaces in the treble clef.

Have confidence. After all, every good boy . . .