[lit-ideas] Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs (Is: Sexual Perversions in Myth)


"I  will say that it is true
       that  snow is white because
       snow  _is_ white"
                            Tarski.
 
 
R. Paul writes in reply to D.  McEvoy:
 
"Just as Tarski's notion that 'P' is true,  iff P, leaves it to the 
truth-seeker to use his or her own favorite way of determining whether P, so S 
leaves 
it open as to how 'p' is  established."
 
Although Polish (and Polish-writing) Alfred Tarski was the  idol of the 
German-speaking _Wiener Kriese_. And it is in German that his  'Semantic 
Conception 
of Truth' is best known.
 
One of his examples, and this to please Walter O. who  speaks German, was:

"Schnee ist Weiss"
 
----
 
Nobody even _tried_ to refute him. I had to re-read my  Sextus Empiricus 
(Loeb) to find Tarski's T-predicate was  _wrong_:

Sextus writes:

"Anaxagoras countered  the [ultimately Tarskian] notion
that snow is white with the argument, 
 
    'Snow is frozen  water,
     and water is  black;
     therefore snow  also is black"
 
[Anaxagoras to leuken eina ten khiona  antetithei hoti he khion hudor esti 
pepegos, to de hudor esti melan, kai he  khion ara melaina estin.]
 
 
"Anaxagoras countered the notion"
Anaxagoras atetithei
 
"that snow is white"
khiona eina  leuken
 
with the argument, 
hoti
 
'Snow is frozen  water,
khion esti pepegos hudor
 
and water is black;
de to hudor esti melan
 
therefore snow also is black"
ara he khion kai estin  melaina"
 
[Anaxagoras to leuken eina ten khiona  antetithei hoti he khion hudor esti 
pepegos, to de hudor esti melan, kai he  khion ara melaina estin.]
 
 
 
 



**************************************Check out AOL's list of 2007's hottest 
products.
(http://money.aol.com/special/hot-products-2007?NCID=aoltop00030000000001)

Other related posts: