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Some comments on two-valued logic

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Notes

  1. “The Notion of ‘Tautology,’”Philosophical Studies, 5: 75–78 (1954).

  2. Alonzo Church has characterized such systems as “non-normal in the sense of Carnap.” “Non-Normal Truth-Tables for the Propositional Calculues,”Boletin de la Sociedad Matematica Mexicana, 10: 41–52 (1953).

  3. J. B. Rosser and A. R. Turquette,Many-Valued Logics (Amsterdam, 1952), pp. 45–48.

  4. Cf. N. Rescher, “A Note on a Species of Definition,” forthcoming inTheoria.

  5. Actually, I must confess that my imagination balks at applying this assertation to such a sentence as “Napoleon's birthday antedated his defect at Waterloo.”

  6. This question, of course, has other forms, as for example: Is a given formalized language sufficiently rich to serve as an adequate terminology for a given domain. This form of the question is discussed in my “The Identity of Indiscernibles: A Reinterpretation,” forthcoming inJournal of Philosophy.

  7. By the “logic” of an expression of a given language, I mean the system of rules, conventions, and customs that govern its use in that language.

  8. The thesis (T) may apply even within systems of logic rejecting some of the traditional “laws of logic.” An example is the system presented in Garrett Birkhoff and John von Neumann, “The Logic of Quantum Mechanics,”Annals of Mathematics, 37: 823-43 (1936).

  9. “Logic without Ontology,” p. 210 ofReadings in Philosophical Analysis, edited by H. Feigl and W. Sellars (New York, 1949).

  10. Storer suggests (p. 78) that the usefulness of a given linguistic framework to describe reality depends, not upon a “whim of the world,” but rather upon a “whim of mankind.” I myself do not see how these two aspects can fruitfully be considered in separation. Surely the appropriateness of the Latin exclamation “Ecce felis atral” to direct attention to a black cat depends, and depends equally, upon the meaning of ater in Latin and upon the actual color of the beast.

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Rescher, N. Some comments on two-valued logic. Philos Stud 6, 54–58 (1955). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02333191

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