Re: "Friendly Premises"


H. J. Sander Bruggink wrote:
> George Dance wrote:
> > H. J. Sander Bruggink wrote:
> >
> >>George Dance wrote:
> >>
> >>>I am pointing out that, if Mr. Shobe is correct that the
> >>>concepts of 'self-proving procedure' and 'proof' refer to the same
> >>>things, then asserting (as you did) "There is no concept of
> >>>'self-proving procedure' in logic" is equivalent to asserting "There is
> >>>no concept of 'proof' in logic."
> >>
> >>Let's do a little word game:
> >>
> >> I am pointing that, if the words 'bloem' and 'flower'
> >> refer to the same things, then asserting "there is no
> >> word 'bloem' in English" is equivalent to asserting
> >> "there is no word 'flower' in English."
> >>
> >>Do you agree with this? :-)
> >
> > Well, [no], but we weren't talking about words but concepts.
[edited as per my posted correction]
>
> The problem in your argument is the referring to; what is being referred
> to by what it not important. I changed "concept" into "word" because
> concepts do not refer to anything, but words do.

More precisely, (a) concepts "refer to" objects, (b) words "symbolize"
concepts, and ergo (c) words "stand for" objects:
http://originresearch.com/sd/sd4.cfm

I realize that we're on sci.logic, not alt.philosophy; but I'd like you
to understand that those distinctions aren't merely pedantic:

1) Just before I sat down to write this, I made myself some coffee. To
do so, I had to find coffee, filters, machine, water tap, cup, and
spoon. How could I have done any of that - identified any of those
objects - except by using concepts which referred to them? Not by
words, as the entire process was non-verbal.

2) Say you're reading an English book and come across the sentence,
"Some tulips are pink." You know that's synthetically true, because
you know the Dutch equivalent is synthetically true; you don't have to
suspend belief until you can go out and observe some tulips. Why do
you know that the two sentences are equivalent? Because they're
talking about the same things - <tulips> and <pink>.

What kind of things are <tulips> and <pink>? They can't be merely the
physical objects, pink tulips; for (I'll stipulate) at the time you
were reading, there were no such objects in the room for you to
observe. And what if the sentence you'd read had been: "Some unicorns
are gold." You'd know that one was false (in both English and Dutch
equivalents), but not by reference to certain objects - there are no
such objects as unicorns for you to observe, period.

3) Finally, consider a case in which humans simply could not
conceptualize; they could still make sounds and write strings of
characters, but none of those sounds or characters symbolized any
concepts (there being none). In that case, what objects could the
sounds and strings possibly stand for or 'refer to'?

> > The fact
> > that an English-speaker doesn't use the word 'bloem' does not show that
> > English-speakers have no such concept. In fact they do, even though
> > they use a different word ('flower') for it.
>
> True. But that doesn't mean that anyone will understand you when you say
> "bloem" in an English-speaking country (except, perhaps, for a few Dutch
> tourists :-).

Actually, I suspect that most of us would: as a reflection of our
mongrel heritage, we the word "bloom" as well as "flower" in our
language (and most of us understand that both words symbolize the same
concept, and therefore stand for the same objects).

Some would not, of course: that very issue arose in response to your
earlier post, with one person arguing that 'bloem' symbolized the
concept <flower>, and the other that 'bloem' was nonsense that
symbolized nothing. Obviously one was right and the other wrong; which
couldn't be the case if there were no concepts that referred to
objects.

The distinction between 'concepts' and 'words' is not only non-pedantic
(as I hope I've shown; I was trying for brevity, so may have sacrificed
some clarity), but also (contrary to what you hint above) important to
the discussion. If in fact the claim in question had dealt with words
rather than concepts - if the claimant had said only, "There's no such
term as 'self-proving procedure' in logic" -
then we probably wouldn't even be having a discussion.

> groente

G'day to you (as we say in Canada).

.

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