Goldbach
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Sent: 15 May 2015 01:57
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Subject: [lit-ideas] Omnis
In a message dated 5/14/2015 4:27:34 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx writes:
All questions answered. All problems solved. A[ll] doubts decided.
Mmm. This is interesting for the algebra of logic -- which is the title of a
book by Lewis Carroll, a.k.a. Charles Ludwidge Dodgson.
Dodgson (he pronounced his surname "Dodo", and Alice Hargreaves found this
amusing) thought that one problem with English is that
"all questions are answered".
"all problems are solved"
"all doubts are decided"
can be ambiguous. For is PLURARITY really essential? It wasn't for the old
Romans (or ancient Romans if you must).
In his "System of Logic", that Dodo knew by heart, Mill did not even care to
translate them:
"Omne corpus est substantia, Omne animal est corpus, Omnis homo est corpus,
Omnis homo est animal, Omnis homo est rationalis, and so forth."
This possibly interested Popper. His falsificationism is a logical stratagem
intended to refute verificationism and inductivism. Yet, when Popper resorted
(if that's the word) to English, he found the same problem of
plurality:
Reichenbach had said:
"All ravens are black"
This would have 'raven' in singular in Ancient Roman.
One instance of a white raven refutes Reichenbach. The keywords here are
PLURARITY and lack of it.
Back to Geary: "All questions answered. All problems solved. A[ll]
doubts decided."
In Ancient Roman, the implicature of plurarity would be absent, and a better
translation would run: "Every question has been answered. Every problem has
been solved. Every doubt has been decided."
Cheers,
Speranza
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