[lit-ideas] "S is P" -- elementary?

From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 10:58:05 EDT

In a message dated 4/18/2004 10:43:27 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> The fact that Mike Geary can make light of Donal's thinking here by
> comparing it to Clinton's "It depends on what you mean by 'is'" is
evidence
> enough that one has left EP-land
Yeah, 
-- and goes to unclog a sink.

Anyway, 'yeah' 'yeah' 'no' 'no' 'no be so sure'. The copula was, is, and will 
always be important. Consider

       "the cat is on the mat"

-- As I noted in my previous post, 'the cat' is possibly too complex to be 
elementary. I proposed,

       "Felix is on the mat"

without realising that there's still a 'the' left in 'the mat', which would 
be solved by _nominating_ the mat:

      "Felix is on Charles"

Ditto for

    "Andreas's dot is blue"

-- where 'the dot' is complex, suggesting a more elementary version would be:

    "Andreas's Jim is blue"

--- but replacing descriptions by names is not the end of the complexity. We 
still have the copula.

The scholastics formalised everything as

    "The S is P"

-- or more simply,

    "S is P"

-- "Socrates is pentagonal."

In _modern_ logic, 'is' -- the particle Clinton thought 'polysemous' -- 
doesn't even get a representation in _logical form_. 'Socrates is pentagonal' 
becoming,

    PENTAGONAL(Socrates)

Clinton was surely right that _in English_, it all _depends on_ the meaning 
of 'is', but I submit, not in the logical atomism that Russell and Wittgenstein 
were interested in? (Geary may say that giving 'is' a _zero_ meaning is 
_still_ giving it a _meaning_).

Cheers,

JL

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[lit-ideas] "S is P" -- elementary?

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