I wrote (quoting Webster's):>>6. Logic: an expression in which the predicate affirms or denies something about the subject<<
Shane Mage writes: >The point is that this is a discussion about "Dialectics/Philosophy of Mathematics/Realism." The only one of those uses of the word "proposition" relevant to the topic is that specified in the above definition.< forgive me that I don't see pen-l discussions as _a priori_ limited to a specific realm of human knowledge or discourse and don't see the above definition as implying that this kind of "proposition" exists independent of consciousness. I guess we should agree to disagree on the latter, especially since Michael Perelman suggests that the discussion has hit diminishing returns, if not negative returns. > It is also inconsistent to say that "propositions" cannot exist without states of mind but that "truth" can, because, as pointed out, "In their usual sense, 'truth' and 'falsity' are characteristics of *propositions*, and of nothing else."< I originally put the word "truth" in quotation marks because I didn't like the word in that context. A better word would be "reality." Reality exists independent of our consciousness of it and our propositions about it (or so I assert, following the dictionary definition of proposition). Since this issue is metaphysical -- something that really can't be settled, as far as I can tell, as noted in my parenthetical remark above and similar ones in previous missives in this thread -- I'll leave it there. But I do want to add that it may be that not all definitions are conventional. The "speed of light" isn't conventional (as far as I know), though our measures of it are. Jim Devine.
