On 12 Jun 2013, at 14:15, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 12:35 PM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
On 12 Jun 2013, at 11:20, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 11:17 AM, Bruno Marchal
<marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 11 Jun 2013, at 23:18, John Mikes wrote:
Laughing stock: how can so many excellently educted and smart(est)
scientists SERIOUSLY debate on farces like flying pink elephants?
Those are test cases, extreme case, to argue more easily on the
question
of
existence, which is not obvious.
Of course we are not discussing on the existence of flying
elephants at
all.
Maybe on a smaller planet with less gravity or a denser atmosphere
flying elephants would be a viable evolutionary niche?
You will not help John!
I know, couldn't resist :)
But the problem with your answer, is: what do you mean by
"elephant". On
that smaller planet elephant might be called "bird".
Well, maybe something that triggers the classification of "elephant"
on a majority of human brains? Something that looks like this:
http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg237/unbelivablybored/Montagebilledecopy.jpg
FAKE!
:)
By the way I would classify this as an eagle (suffering from
elephantiasis).
Bruno
Can a dinosaur fly? Yes, they are called bird, but they are
descendent of
dinosaurs. But here some genomic can be invoked for establishing
some
identity or parental relation.
With enough "IF" you can deduce what you want. If some dictator
renamed the
bird as "elephant", then surely elephant can fly.
Bruno
Telmo.
Bruno
JM
On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 12:28 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net>
wrote:
On 6/11/2013 12:51 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 10 Jun 2013, at 20:04, meekerdb wrote:
On 6/10/2013 10:52 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 10 Jun 2013, at 18:25, meekerdb wrote:
On 6/10/2013 12:19 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 2:40 PM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be
>
wrote:
On 09 Jun 2013, at 11:20, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 9:23 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be
>
wrote:
On 08 Jun 2013, at 17:55, meekerdb wrote:
On 6/8/2013 1:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 08 Jun 2013, at 05:15, meekerdb wrote:
On 6/7/2013 4:00 PM, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Yes, if there was a text of this it would be nice... I
found
this:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fictionalism-
mathematics/
A fictionalist account holds that some things are
fictional,
i.e.
don't
exist even though their complete description is self-
consistent.
Everythingists apparently reject this idea. Platonists
seem to
equate
'true' with 'exists'. If you believe 17 is prime you must
believe
17
exists. I think this is wrong. If you believe that a
flying
pink
elephant
is pink, must you believe a flying pink elephant exists?
Flying pink elephants are pink and not pink. That's why
flying
pink
elephant
can't exist.
A pink elephant is pink by construction.
Exact. But the flying pink elephant are also not pink.
By logic.
Or show
me
a flying pink elephant living on this planet which isn't
not
pink.
Bruno, how are flying pink elephants any different from
things
that
I
remember but am not experiencing this very moment?
I add explanation. Here you describe two 1p events. They are
similar,
although I guess you don't have precise memory of having
actually
seen a
Flying Pink Elephant in your life, except in cartoon or
dreams.
For example, I've
been to Brussels but I'm not there right now. Brussels is
an
abstraction in my mind, but I believe it's the capital of
Belgium.
That's part of the Brussels abstraction, in the same
sense that
being
pink is part of the flying pink elephant abstraction. No?
I do not dispute that fact. Pink elephant are pink.
But the pink elephant on this planet happens also to be
brown
rampant worms.
And I'm afraid that is only a classical logician's joke.
(x = Flying Pink Elephant) -> (x = Brown Rampant Worms) is
true on
this
planet because (x = Flying Pink Elephant) is false for all
x, on
this planet
(I think),
But (x = Flying Pink Elephant) is false for all x, is an
empirical
proposition.
I agree.
Not one you can prove from arithmetic or logic. But the
point was
that true propositions, like "Flying pink elephants are
pink" don't
imply
the existence of anything; just like "17 is prime" doesn't
imply the
existence of 17.
But how do you formalize "flying pink elephant are pink" ?
I am simpled minded, so I formalized it in a first order
logical
formula:
if x is an elephant which is pink and which is flying then x
is pink.
This does not entail Ex( x = an elephant which is pink and
which is
flying)
For the same reason that:
"if x is a prime number, which is even, and bigger that 3"
then x is
bigger than 3"
does not entail Ex(x = even prime number bigger than 3).
Actually it does. Let y="x is a prime number which is even
and bigger
than three". Then, if y anything; in classical logic everything
follows
from a contradiction. But we were talking about the metalogical
relation of
true/false and fictional/real. I don't think two are
parallel. It's
true
that 17 is prime - but it doesn't follow that 17 is real.
It's true
that
Sherlock Holmes lived on Baker Street, but it doesn't follow
that he
existed.
The difference comes from the fact that in arithmetic e can
prove Ex(x
=
17), but we cannot prove in your "theory" that Ex(= Sherlock
Holmes).
But "E" in those two propositions don't have the same meaning.
In the
first it means that the axioms of arithmetic imply there is an
x=17. In
the
second it means there was person who had all or most of the
characteristics
described in Conan Doyle's stories.
Of course something described by a contradiction can't exist.
But a
contradiction is dependent on an axiomatic system. So a pink
elephant
doesn't exist, but "There is a pink elephant." is not a
contradiction;
it's
just a falsehood and it's not the case that everything follows
from a
falsehood.
It is the case that everything follows from a falsehood. (0=1)
does
implies everything.
In classical logic. But logic is just supposed to formalize good
reasoning. "There is a pink elephant." may mean no more than
"That
looks
like an elephant painted pink." It's not an axiom of a formal
system.
I
deliberately included "flying" because it makes the
identification as
"elephant" problematic. If we found an animal that looks like an
elephant
painted pink, we'd certainly call it a "pink elephant". But if
we found
an
animal that looked like an elephant with wings that could fly,
we'd only
call it a "flying elephant" metaphorically.
Brent
f -> q is a tautology. It is equivalent with ~f V p. that is
with t V
q.
"p -> everything" in all words where p is false, even if there
are
worlds
were p is true.
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