Influenced by chapter IV of Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art, I go for unanimity and a ternary nature of truth.

A bright room can be controversially white (or a voltage controversially on), and a shadow controversially black (the voltage controversially off), but the whites (or on's) are uncontroversially not blacks (not off's).

Grain collections that are heaps are uncontroversially not pittances and vice versa, but not all of both are uncontroversially one or the other. Some are controversially somewhere in between. But none are even controversially both. The two fuzzy borders (of "heap" and "pittance") are kept far enough apart.

Obviously this is relative to a system. Sometimes the system catches on, other times a continuous spectrum is preferred.

Obviously too there can't be free expression for Humpty Dumptys.

antonym — bongo fury

We know.

But the point about predicating truth of future utterances now?

utterances can have propositional content whereas paintings cannot. — J

If utterances can have propositional content (whatever that means) then surely pictures can have pictorial content?

Indeed!

There's no mystical connection between utterances and mind-independent, non-spatial, non-temportal abstract objects;. — Michael

Where (on earth) do you find that Quine accepts that kind of mystical connection?

In his supposing some future inscription to exemplify the word "true"?

Or where?

Surely Quine suggests we refer timelessly (non-modally) to the sentence inscribed or uttered in a future region of space-time? And we describe it (rightly by your hypothesis) as true? Is that non-sensical?

And so "there are unwritten true equations" is true in the non-platonic sense that someone could write a true equation that doesn't exist in the present, — Michael

But are you denying that it's already true?

The only tenable attitude toward quantifiers and other notations of modern logic is to construe them always, in all contexts, as timeless. — Quine: Mr Strawson

I don’t know what you mean.

Rain exists or it doesn’t. — Michael

And if it does, then the world (or region) satisfies the sentence in question. If not, not.

Rain isn't truth-apt. — Michael

Is it satisfaction-apt? That was my point.

Yes, a true sentence is about what is the case. But note that truth is a property of the sentence, not a property of the rain. — Michael

Yes but, to be fair... satisfaction of "it's raining" is a property of the weather event, not a property of the sentence.

:joke:

1. Is this a hoax?

2. Is it a real hoax, or a bot-generated one?

3. What or who is nihilsum.com?

The issue is that you attribute all use of LLMs to plagiarism. — Christoffer

Eh?

Never mind.

But show me a case of unacknowledged chat-bot-assisted writing that isn't a perfectly clear case of plagiarism by this definition?
— bongo fury

How does that lead to such a clear conclusion? — Christoffer

Can you, or can't you?

You're talking more about the philosophy of authorship and not specifically plagiarism as a legal phenomena. And it's in court where such definitions will find their final form. — Christoffer

You're waffling. I'm talking about a common sense understanding of plagiarism as warned about in typical forum guidelines.

Someone using it to generate an entire text might not be the author, — Christoffer

You don't say.

Just asking the LLM to do all the work is a clear case, but this is not the best use of LLMs for text generation and not really how it's used by those actually using it as a tool. — Christoffer

Asking anything or anybody for advice on formulating and expressing ideas, or on refining and redrafting a text, is perfectly clearly plagiarism if unacknowledged.

You need to define in what intended use-case of an LLM you attribute to making plagiarism, is operating in. — Christoffer

Apparently my definition leaves you without a counter example, so no I don't.

And also include a comparison to how a humans process available information into their own text and when that person is stepping over into plagiarism. — Christoffer

Not while the cases are clear.

What happens when a human accidentally produces exact copies of sentences from memory, without even knowing that they do so? — Christoffer

That human is mortified, and hopes not to be judged deliberate or negligent in their error.

How does that differ? — Christoffer

Not at all then.

Add to that the improvements of LLMs and the future scenario in which LLMs have become better than humans at not copying training data text directly and always providing citation when referencing direct information. — Christoffer

Only compounding the crime of failing to acknowledge their input.

And if the systems start to operate better than humans at avoiding plagiarism and using these models as assistive tools might even help avoid accidental plagiarism, what then? — Christoffer

Or even in their present condition of (rather drastic) fallibility, let them join in. But properly acknowledged, and properly scrutinized. Is my point.

In the end, the plagiarism will be attributed to the human, not the machine. — Christoffer

Could be either, of course.

Or should we blame the computer of plagiarism for the use of CTRL+C, CTRL+V and not the human inputting that intention? — Christoffer

So there are clear cases? Or not?

Any competent and reflective practitioner of English will define plagiarism as something like: deliberate or negligent misattribution of authorship.

Authorship tends to have unclear cases as well as clear ones. So does deliberateness or negligence with respect to this criterion.

But show me a case of unacknowledged chat-bot-assisted writing that isn't a perfectly clear case of plagiarism by this definition?

Should we have some guidelines on acceptable use of plagiarism on the forum?

Oh, we already do?

since Pa does not display an assertion, — Pierre-Normand

(quote from Kimhi)

I would assume it does, until something stops it. Just by recognising it as a sentence in a language, you allow it to assert itself: to replicate, and produce corollaries.

The question is, do you want to allow it to proliferate unchecked into this or that discourse? Or will you, within such a discourse, impose restrictions on the sentence's self-assertion, and ensure that it appears in public only, if at all, suitably contextualised, and qualified.

Perhaps, most harshly, wearing a negation sign - thereby qualified as untrue.

Or neutered. Contextualised as the disjunction of its assertion and denial (Pa v ~Pa).

Or conditionalised, or hypothesised, or probabilised.

Or chaperoned, by speakers: asserters, who would like to assist, and deniers, who oppose proliferation of the naked sentence.

Speakers on opposite sides might resort to all sorts of (more or less democratic) means to exert influence.

If they resort to logic, though, they must allow full rights of self-assertion to the premises, and then withdraw to watch the game. Which is played out by the self-asserting sentences, unassisted.

I see your point. (But yes the quote is direct.) Ok,

it cannot be the same, because then

"P; if P then A; therefore A"

would be the same as

"If (P and (if P then A)) then A",

and it was precisely Lewis Carroll's discovery (in "What the Tortoise said to Achilles") that it was not.

I'm not falling down it. Maybe I need a push?

Yes, "P; if P then A; therefore A" says that P. (Asserts "P".)

Whereas, "If (P and (if P then A)) then A" doesn't.

(As long as "P" is understood as shorthand for "Peter is..." etc.)

So what? Why deny, in the latter case, that each occurrence of the sub-string "P" (considered as such, apart from its context) still says that P? You could perfectly well admit that it does but still say the whole, larger sentence doesn't.

And if you have a reason, why shouldn't it equally well apply for sense, and disqualify the inner occurrence of the sentence from having the same sense as a free-standing occurrence?

Who dug this rabbit hole? Lewis Carroll, apparently.

In Principles of Mathematics Russell falls into confusion through a desire to say both that, e.g., 'Peter is a Jew' is the same proposition when it occurs in 'If Peter is a Jew, then Andrew is a Jew', and that it is not. It must be the same, because otherwise modus ponens would not be valid; it cannot be the same, because then 'Peter is a Jew; if Peter is a Jew, Andrew is a Jew; therefore Andrew is a Jew' would be the same as 'If both Peter is a Jew and if Peter is a Jew, then Andrew is a Jew, then Andrew is a Jew', and it was precisely Lewis Carroll's discovery (in 'What the Tortoise said to Achilles') that it was not. Frege provides a solution by saying that the sense of the two occurrences of 'Peter is a Jew' (the thought expressed by them) is the same, but that the assertoric force is present in one and lacking in the other. — Michael Dummett: Frege, Philosophy of Language, page 304

(My emphasis.)

I'm not falling down it. Maybe I need a push?

Yes, 'Peter is a Jew; if Peter is a Jew, Andrew is a Jew; therefore Andrew is a Jew' says that Peter is a Jew.

Whereas, 'If both Peter is a Jew and if Peter is a Jew, then Andrew is a Jew, then Andrew is a Jew' doesn't.

So what? Why deny, in the latter case, that the sub-string 'Peter is a Jew' (considered as such, apart from its context) still says so? You could perfectly well admit that it does but still say the whole, larger sentence doesn't.

And if you have a reason, why shouldn't it equally well apply for sense, and disqualify the inner occurrence of the sentence from having the same sense as a free-standing occurrence?

cage — Leontiskos

sandbox — bongo fury

?

Doesn't he mean 'prepended' rather than 'appended'? — TonesInDeepFreeze

appended to = prepended by?

So which sentence is attributing falsity no longer to itself but merely to something other than itself? — RussellA

Can you possibly see how answering this (again) might be considered "feeding the trolls"?

Are you sure? — AmadeusD

Yes. Quine clearly says that the whole outside sentence is what refers to something other than itself, and he clearly doesn't say that the inside sentence is what refers to something other than itself. And any competent reader sees that "this sentence is false" is the inside sentence.

So your comments aren't helping you or @RussellA to understand the passage.

Oh dear. The cos and sin question was my attempt to help someone grok Quine's (perfectly standard) usage of "inside sentence" vs "outside sentence". Nothing more.

Quine was presumably referring to the stratification of types originally proposed by Russell, — sime

Yes. That may be relevant to clarification of his drift.

Yes, he's saying there may be a hierarchy of references. That may be relevant to clarification of his drift. — bongo fury

But that drift has nothing to do with cos and sin, and definitely has to do with the relation of inner to outer sentence.

I'm not quite sure what kind of objection [to the liar sentence] is being sustained? If any. And who had raised it, and where? — bongo fury

@sime Grateful for advice on that, but you would need to be more specific, at least.

Does he mean "this sentence is false", or does he mean ""this sentence is false" is false" — RussellA

Are you really unable to find my answer to this question in my previous post?

What would it mean for the sentence ""this sentence is false" is false" to be no longer attributing falsity to itself? — RussellA

It would mean for it to instead be attributing falsity to a smaller sentence inside of it.

Please note this isn't some exegetical choice of mine. It's what (I feel sure) Quine expects any competent reader to understand from what he's written.

I interpret Quine as saying that in the expression "this sentence is false" is false, the outside sentence is "this sentence is false". — RussellA

I admitted to being unsure about the drift of that Quine passage, but you don't seem even to speak the language.

I'm being rude, but your tone is to lecture (e.g. with lecture headings), so I can't help it.

In " "this sentence is false" is false", "this sentence is false" is the inside sentence and is placed inside the enclosing expression form: "______ is false" or "x is false" or "( ) is false", where "______" or "x" or "( )" indicates where the inside expression is to be placed.

Quine talks about "the whole outside sentence" by which he either means the enclosing expression form (or matrix, or predicate, or open sentence, according to dialect) or the whole, as in, inside and outside, both. The composite of both. I would say "the closed sentence" but I have a feeling Quine wouldn't - because there's no quantification. I'll take correction or clarification on that from @TonesInDeepFreeze and others.

But I can't imagine that anyone who speaks the language (or some dialect) of modern analytic philosophy could read the passage and think that by "outside sentence" is meant the expression placed in the place otherwise held by "______" or "x" or "( )".

Yes, he's saying there may be a hierarchy of references. That may be relevant to clarification of his drift. On which I welcome advice. From speakers of the language.

Suppose y = sin(cos(x)). Which (sin or cos) would you say is inside, and which outside?

There's no paradox because, as Quine says, "this sentence is false" is referring to something other than itself. — RussellA

No. Quine doesn't say that, and he doesn't say anyone else has said that.

To be fair, here's Quine:

In an effort to clear up this antinomy it has been protested that the phrase `This sentence', so used, refers to nothing. [Trolls explode with glee.] This is claimed on the ground that you cannot get rid of the phrase by supplying a sentence that is referred to. For what sentence does the phrase refer to? The sentence 'This sentence is false'. If, accordingly, we supplant the phrase `This sentence' by a quotation of the sentence referred to, we get: ``This sentence is false' is false'. But the whole outside sentence here attributes falsity no longer to itself but merely to something other than itself, thereby engendering no paradox. — Quine, The Ways of Paradox

But... the inside sentence still so engenders? Because, indeed,

what sentence does the phrase refer to? The sentence 'This sentence is false'.

So I'm not quite sure what kind of objection is being sustained? If any. And who had raised it, and where?

Is that a joke? — TonesInDeepFreeze

Yes. Asserting irreflexivity of reference (in general, or in cases like "this sentence has... etc") seems as confused and cranky as asserting irreflexivity of shaving.

Was my point.

Barbers cannot shave themselves.

I maintain that barbers are people who shave people who are in the world.

If they must be shaved, the barbers must visit other barbers. Shaving involves a correspondence between an ideal of cleanliness and the state of affairs on an actual face. Therefore, if a barber tries to shave himself, there is an inherent contradiction.

=========================================

I hope this is clear?

Only if you think A→B does not stand for Not A without B. — Lionino

The "without" reading of A→B does need brackets when written:

Not (A without B)

i.e. ¬(A & ¬B)

I think they are there implicitly in "not A without B" as spoken. So the spoken phrase does clarify the logic of →.

But perhaps they are needed explicitly when the phrase is written. I mean,

(not A) without B

seems a willful misunderstanding. And gives (¬A) & (¬B).

But brackets will prevent that particular misunderstanding.

Yes, the red and white system at least. Unfortunate that it shades in where I was shading out. But it shows how logic uses "not" as a reversal of shading, sending anything in row 2 to row 4 (and vice versa, and also reversing shading within row 3). Whereas ordinary language, while it might do that, might equally well signal a retreat to the very top, leaving all options on the table.

Or (@Leontiskos) it might do something else more elaborate which deserves analysis. Rabbit holes galore, of course. :grin:

If — bongo fury

If.

If

So it's intuitive that

¬(A→B) means A without B. — bongo fury

doesn't follow from

it's intuitive that

A→B means not(A without B). — bongo fury

then it would seem that we don't intuit negation in this case as a photographic negative of the Venn diagram, which is what logic would deliver. In which, i.e., all previous no-go (shaded) areas are declared open for business, and all previous open regions are shaded out. Rather, the intuition is that a (in this case the) previous no-go area is opened up. But nothing closed off. We wish to withdraw or deny an assertion without thereby committing to its negative. Deny it is the case there won't be a sea battle, without claiming there will.

So, not really negation. Not cancelling out the first. Not restoring not(A without B) to A without B.

¬(A→B) appears to suggest, intuitively: maybe A without B, maybe not. No commitment. No information. Tautology. No shading in the Venn diagram. (Whose 4 non-overlapping areas correspond to A & B, A & ¬B, ¬A & B, ¬A & ¬B.)

Leaving it open.

But ¬(A→B), ¬B |= A is invalid. — Banno

Oops.

It's not rocket science.

We use a word to mention a thing.

We use a word in quote marks to mention the word.

I think people can (almost) be forgiven for misunderstanding use and mention in this way. "Mention" in ordinary usage (!) strongly fits with "by the way" or "in passing" ... "Mentioned in dispatches" (... ones that referred more obviously to more central characters.)

And perhaps it's natural to think that any use of a word toward its main function, i.e. towards referring beyond its linguistic context, to actual cats and mats etc, should be understood also to refer in a smaller way, in passing, to the word itself and its linguistic context. And that this subsidiary reference (to syntactic features) might be what the distinction is acknowledging as "mention".

Whereas the distinction as I understand it is the other way round. It insists that we use a word (employ syntax) for the semantic purpose of mentioning, referring to, an object, subjecting it to this or that scrutiny or description. (Or, in less common usage of the same technical distinction, we use a sentence in order to mention a state of affairs.)

Which is slightly at odds with the usual connotation. When you say "scoundrel" do you mean to refer to the man in the dock? Fine. Do you mean to mention the man in the dock? In what oblique connection?? (In ordinary usage of "mention", I mean.)

No excuses. It's a technical distinction, and not rocket science. Just saying.

yet ¬(A→B) and ¬B entail A. — Lionino

To be fair, so does ¬(A→B).

If A does not imply B and [regardless of whether] B is false, can we really infer that A is true? — Lionino

Yes, because it means A without B. Isn't it intuitive that A without B entails A? And isn't it intuitive that A→B means not A without B, i.e. ¬(A ∧ ¬B), so that ¬(A→B) means A without B, and therefore A ∧ ¬B and therefore A?

¬(A→B) means A without B
B is true
Therefore A is true

Does that make intuitive sense to you? — Lionino

Yep. Even if you add the irrelevant and contradictory P2, which is going to make everything true anyway.

What about the following example?
Rain without wetness
Wetness
Therefore rain. — Lionino

Rain without wetness
Wetness
Therefore rain.

Yes. So?

here is the trouble: if ¬(A→B) is true and A is false, B is true. — Lionino

To be fair, if ¬(A→B) is true and A is false, anything is true.

Because, if ¬(A→B) is true, A is true.

Which isn't counter-intuitive, because it's intuitive that

A→B means not(A without B).

So it's intuitive that

¬(A→B) means A without B.

E.g. "An equation being quadratic implies it has real solutions" means not(the equation is quadratic without the equation has real solutions)

So "An equation being quadratic does not imply it has real solutions" means the equation is quadratic without the equation has real solutions.

to posit nested sets — Count Timothy von Icarus

Wouldn't that suggest they are crisp, and a hierarchical tree by set inclusion? But you mean fuzzy and laterally overlapping?

"Clouds" more appropriate?

Unless A is already a contradiction, e.g. defined as C ∧ ~C. Then, regardless of whether A is affirmed or denied, both (A entails B) and (A entails notB) are true. And neither one contradicts the other.