Questions tagged [propositions]
The propositions tag has no usage guidance.
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When it comes to the coherence theory of truth, is it still always assumed that only assertions/propositions enter into the truth relation?
Sometimes, we do use truth-talk in such a way as makes it seem like we might be attributing truth to things that aren't assertions/descriptions/propositions/w/e. There is, for example, the phrase &...
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Is there any self-contradiction in this statement that "everything is beautiful"?
'Everything is beautiful.'
If you deny the proposition of 1), it is 'something is not beautiful'.
The proposition 'something is not beautiful', which comes from 2), is included in 'everything'.
In ...
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Is there a recognized topic in philosophy regarding the fallaciousness of debating what the ‘correct’ definition of a word is?
Or, what the defining properties of some thing are.
For example, I might say, “Socialism is a government in which such-and-such happens,” and someone else might say, “No, socialism is when a society ...
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Is it defensible to claim that religion is a personal relationship with God and therefore contains no claims?
It is a common line of argumentation against religion that it includes dogmatic claims without evidence and that the resistance to change that is peculiar to religion and stems from its dogmatism ...
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Is atheism a proposition?
Theism proposes the existence of God. Atheism makes no proposition, it is simply the absence of a belief in God. Theism is the proposition. Atheism is the negation. The negation is not a proposition. ...
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How should an argument containing an exceptive proposition be tested?
IX. Exceptive Propositions in 7.3 Translating Categorical Propositions into Standard Form in Copi's Introduction to Logic says:
Because exceptive propositions are not categorical propositions but
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Confused On The Definition Of A Proposition
One definition I encountered was something that is either true or false.
(for example, I ate vegetables yesterday is a proposition).
Another definition I encountered is the meaning of a sentence
(for ...
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What's the difference between analytic and synthetic AND implicit/explicit?
The statement 'a bachelor is an unmarried man' is an implicit and analytic statement.
What is the difference between implicit/explicity and analytic/synthetic? Is there even a difference?
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"This statement is false" is neither true or false... Am I correct?
I have no background in philosophy. So I apologize if this question seems silly.
The reason "This statement is false" is sometimes considered to be a statement that can be evaluated as ...
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A question on the belief operator in Doxastic Logic
Let Bp be the statement "it is believed that p".
Why is ~Bp not equivalent to B~p?
in words it amounts of saying that: "it's not believed that p" equivalent to "it's believed ...
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Is saying "I propose that..." expressing a proposition or not?
i'm trying to find out how to accurately express propositions, but i can't find the right words. If i say something like... "I propose that the detective was bias.", does this make sense as ...
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Truth-functional vs non-truth functional conditionals
I'm struggling to understand truth functionality.
I know that a connective is truth-functional if the truth value of a compound statement formed with that connective is completely determined by the ...
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Universal affirmative propositions and the similarity of individual objects?
I'm trying to understand what counts objects as being members of a class. I'm getting stuck when there are variations for each object of a class but they might still be said to be part of that class.
...
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Why are there so many different opinions of categorical propositions?
I'm reading into categorical propositions and there seems to be lots of different opinions on what they are, and what their existential import is.
Why are there so many different variations? Shouldn't ...
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Intersection of the Gettier problem and knowing-what or knowing-how
From what I can tell, it seems like the Gettier problem comes down to Smith not knowing that the man who has ten coins in his pocket is going to get the job. What about Smith knowing what the ...
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Does Kant implicitly (or maybe even explicitly?) hold to a propositional-operator gloss of aesthetics?
Now sometimes it is said that knowledge is primarily knowledge-that, i.e. some elementary epistemic operator is a propositional operator/"attitude report". Or at least there is an invoked ...
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Is division of propositions by their modality comprehensive?
I call division of any concept comprehensive if the combination of concepts received by such division has a scope congruent (containing exactly the same objects) to the scope of the divided concept.
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What's the difference between statements of wants and statements of should?
I am trying to find out what the relationship is between statements that involve the speakers wants, and statements that involve what the speaker thinks as should.
Here is my example:
Speaker: "...
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What context do quantifiers make valid expressions?
Say I have a formal language such that x is an individual constant and symbolically has a particular value (say 2) a proposition such as x+1=3 already has the value of true, and I cannot define a ...
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Do all true statements express the same proposition?
Do all true statements express the same proposition? I know that, for example, the statements "2=2" and "1+1>1" are distinct sequences of symbols. However, I want to know, do ...
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What does it mean for a proposition to be without cognitive content?
As the title states, am wondering what it means for a proposition to be without cognitive content. It seems to me that somehow all propositions are produced by the mind, and therefore cognition is ...
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Are contradictory propositions in the propositional logic still contradictory in the predicate logic?
There is one seeming issue I happened upon that bothers me to no end.
Take a proposition like “Snow is white”. “Snow is white” and its negation “Snow is not white” are obviously contradictory. However,...
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Propositions as set of possible worlds in FOL
In possible world semantics for propositional calculus, possible worlds are usually taken to be models for propositional formulas (the set of valuations in which a certain formula is true)
In first ...
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What is my fallacy? LSAT Reasoning Question: Titanium Ink
I have a question regarding an LSAT Reasoning question and it drives me crazy
Question is:
Until recently it was thought that ink used before the sixteenth century did not
contain titanium. However, ...
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What is the difference between statement and premise?
What are the differences between a Statement and a Premise?
I wonder if they are same or not? Any counterexample where a statement is not a premise?
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Can one only believe in perceptions?
In the following example provided by SEOP, Kai is said to believe a proposition:
for example, when Kai reads that astronomers no longer classify Pluto as a planet, he acquires a new belief (in this ...
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Is "thoughts exist" a synthetic a priori statement?
I'm working off of Kant's conception of analytic/synthetic and a prior/a posteriori judgements.
The definition of "thoughts" does not subsume their existence. That is, it is logically ...
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When is a wish not a proposition?
Consider these sentences:
S1. Would that Los Angeles were not that far away.
S2. I really wish Los Angeles were nearer to New York.
S3. I wish that Los Angeles were not that far away.
S4. It is going ...
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what is meaning of accessibility of possible worlds?
I have a question about the notion of possibility in modal logic.
There are systems and worlds with this notion.
They say that a world w1 is accessible to an other world w2 if and only if for any true ...
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Can the word "probably" be used in a proposition? (logic)
I'm interested in applying logic to day-to-day reasoning. The problem is that formal logic seems really restrictive to limit inductive arguments to be only universal ("all swans are white"). Few ...
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Analyticity and a priority
(1) Every bachelor is unmarried.
I know this is one of the most famous examples (intensionally) denoting analytic and a priori propositions. No problems yet.
(2) Every apple is a fruit.
This one ...
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A set of three statements, of which only two at a time can be true: is there a specific term for this type of combination game?
Here's two examples of what I'm talking about
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An ideal citizen would be smart, ethical and politically engaged.
However, what usually happens in reality is this:
If they're smart ...
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Can one have propositional knowledge without knowing the corresponding proposition?
The concept of propositional knowledge -- knowledge that one has through holding a justified belief in a proposition that states a fact -- is a foundational one in epistemology (for example, it is ...
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Confused about the answers to two logic problems
True or False? If monkeys can fly, then 1 + 1 = 3.
What is logically equivalent to all x (p(x) + ~q(x))?
For the first one I think it is False.
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How to make the statement "If A or B then C" More Rigorous?
Suppose that I say the following,
If A or B then C
It is clear what happens if only A is true, if only B is true, or if neither A nor B are true.
However, what happens if both A & B are true? ...
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How did Aristotelian logic view this?
I am very interested in the logical aspect of Aristotelian philosophy, especially how it was used by al Farabi and Ibn Sina in explaining understanding and breaking this complicated process down ...
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partial fictionalism about propositions
One theory of propositions is that they're "useful fictions." However, this faces the formidable objection that fictionalism makes it hard to explain how something fictional can tell us about the ...
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If logical propositions aren't tautologies (a la Wittgenstein), then what could they be?
This is a historical question about philosophical views. I believe I understand the claim made by Wittgenstein and others that logical propositions are tautologies. I'd like to know what other views ...
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Is the principle of non-contradiction self-evident?
The principle of non-contradiction is that contradictory propositions cannot both be true, e. g. the two propositions "A is B" and "A is not B" are mutually exclusive.
However, whenever something is ...
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How does a truth tree provide positive and negative effect tests for implication?
I'm trying to prove that the truth-tree method can be used to give a positive effect test for implication, and a negative effect test for non-implication. I've been given the fact that The truth-tree ...
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Why don't two equivalent propositions contribute to the same semantics?
We often have 2 propositions that have the same truth table, in that they are true and false given the same conditions.
Nevertheless, we still feel as though there different semantics (i.e meaning..),...
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On Truth and Lying
If A, consciously, reports false data to B, and B (or anyone else) has no way to verify, then no one can make the statement, "A lied". So, there exists no such person with respect to whom A lied.
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Existential import: in logic, do propositions default to true or false when objects in them do not exist?
In this hypothetical:
Firefighters always tell the truth, while politicians always tell lies.
Suppose three people, who are either a mix of firefighters and politicians, all politicians, or all ...
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Why is questioning everything around us so important?
I've heard something disturbing from my friend. He said he's grateful to his father because his father taught him to question everything that was around us.
Why is this so important?
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Understanding multiple values in a single cell of a truth table (P v ~Q) as (1 1 0 1) when P and Q are 1
This might seem basic to most here but I am struggling with a truth table for a disjunct. As I am looking at it further, I actually think the issue I am struggling with how to interpret truth values ...
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Into what category does following view place me in moral philosophy?
At first, I believe the statements like "Pete is wrong" and "Mike acts in a bad way" have some cognitive value. At first glance, this puts me to ethical cognitivism.
But at the same time I think the ...
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The nature of elementary propositions in the Tractatus
So all complex objects in the world are, at the most fundamental level, made up of simple un-analysable objects which are denoted by 'names'.
Combinations of simple objects constitute 'states of ...
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Making 'sense' of Wittgenstein's senselessness / nonsense distinction in the Tractatus
For this question I'm just considering Wittgenstein's theory at the time of the Tractatus.
As far as I know, for Wittgenstein:
Meaning - The object denoted by a word (i.e. referent).
Sense - The ...
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Confusion about an implication's contrapositive
I just begin learning propositional logic and find a little bit confused when trying to translate the contrapositive of an implication back to the English language.
For example, I have an ...
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Russell on Negative Facts
Okay. I am reading Russell's paper "On Propositions: What They are and How They Mean". Since the truth or falsehood of a belief depends upon a fact to which the belief "refers", and propositions are ...
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