Unscientific prologue: Eric's message did not appear in my rpaul@xxxxxxxx mailbox this morning. I even checked the unemptied trash folder but it wasn't there (where I thought I might have WAY unintentionally put it) either. So what gives? Can Eric select those to whom his mail sent to the list will go? And if so, why me? I searched all the messages I've saved from Eric: there are 807; not as many, I grant, as from John Landon, but still...
Isn't the "sometimes" rather implied, in that nothing is in a perpetual or static state/ All humans must eat; this is a human, it eats, does not imply that it is eating every second of the time. Or that if the creature in question is not eating at the moment it is therefore not human. Or does it?
This may not be quite the argument you want. I mean, like, All humans must eat. Smith is human. So, Smith must eat. is a different argument from All humans must eat. Smith is human. So, Smith will eat (or 'Smith eats,' etc)for Smith, noting the enthymematic nature of the first premise ('All humans must eat if...') and completing it with 'if thy want to stay alive,' e.g., may perfectly well choose not to, and yet remain human.
Julie says
There's got to be a symbolic logic answer out there -- where's Speranza?
Symbolism will seldom solve anything, that is, putting words into symbols seldom will. (Most 'translations' of even simple words, like 'some,' which logicians stipulate to mean 'at least one,' will strike the ordinary person as forced.)
Sometimes putting things into symbolic form does clear things up, but it takes a while. It wasn't until Frege that the ambiguity of 'Every road leads somewhere,' could be disambiguated clearly so that one could read a string of logical spinach and see whether it meant one thing, 'Every road leads somewhere, viz., Rome,' or 'Every road leads somewhere or other.'
See Geach on the boy-girl fallacy. Eric offers examples of a some short-comings in 'logic.'
All cats purrThis is a cat
How do logicians deal with the durational aspects of an attribute? Cats do not purr all the time, so aren't qualifiers necessary? e.g. All cats purr sometimes This is a cat This cat purrs sometimes
In the notorious syllogism All men are mortal Smith is a man So, Smith is mortalthe meaning of 'mortal' does not seem to allow for his being episodically mortal. He's either on the bus or off the bus.
In Men walk Smith is a man So, Smith walksit's not suggested that Smith walks continually (this is surely a point of grammar, not logic): when one tells a child that bird's fly, one is (usually) explaining how birds get around, pointing out the difference between humans and birds, etc., and it's a smart-ass child who asks, 'Then why are those crows hopping on the ground?'
A further example from Eric
Male kittens become male cats gradually Un-neutered male cats spray This is a male kitten which will not be neutered Eventually this kitten will become a cat and spray
I would put this a bit differently?after noting that 'gradually' and 'eventually' aren't synonymous?and by replacing 'gradually,' in the first line with 'eventually.' And then I would say, that it looks OK to me, but wonder why 'spray' isn't treated as was 'eats' above.
Language first, logic second. Or third. Robert Paul ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
