Re: An argument against modus ponens

george wrote:
On Sep 21, 4:36 pm, John Jones <jonescard...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Why should a sentence have a truth value? No sentences have truth
values except in natural language conditions.

Well, GUESS WHAT: WE'RE IN "natural language conditions".
WE'RE SPEAKING natural language (though some of that natural language
is,
we hope, ABOUT formal languages). So HERE, the sentences we are
asserting
DO have truth-values (most of them are even true, though not most of
yours).

Most sentences in FORMAL languages do not INHERENTLY have any
PARTICULAR
truth-value, but the WAY WE USE these sentences is USUALLY in a
CONTEXT that
ATTRIBUTES truth-values to them: THAT IS WHY THEY ARE CALLED
"sentences"!
The strings we CALL sentences are called THAT, BECAUSE we INTEND to
attribute truth-values to them! Strings that are NOT intended to be
associated with
truth-values have OTHER NAMES!

But that doesn't work. You can't assign 'truth-values' to a meaningless string. Not least because there are no distinctions between strings.

And you also can't say 'that was a sentence' - because a sentence is a
particular sentence. There is no general form of a sentence from which
we can postulate 'that is a sentence'.

THERE IS SO TOO, DUMBASS.
It is incomplete, we don't have it completely exactly formalized in
every natural

There's that old problem of the nature of the 'it'.

language, but we certainly have it well-enough-formalized to handle
anything

There's that 'it' again. It's an old problem you know.

coming up in THIS discussion -- THAT IS WHY people CAN GET DEGREES
in LINGUISTICS! READ SOME FUCKING *CHOMSKY*, DUMBASS!

Chomsky thought that we communicate through grunts. Well, that's what his family said about him anyway.
.