No, 'literally' there is not violating the syntactical role of an adjective. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Adjective is not a syntactic class, it is a morphological class. In fact, 'literally' is not an adjective, it is an adverb, 'literal' would be the adjective. The syntactic class of 'literally', there, is adverbial adjunct, or just adjunct according to Cambridge, as they call nominal adjuncts simply 'modifiers'.

"I was literally dying" is well formed even if untrue. — TonesInDeepFreeze

It might be "well formed" to you under your understanding of what a well-formed phrase is. When people say — not lying or confused — that their cat is black, but they actually have a dog who is white, and they are thinking of their white dog but saying "My cat is black", they are using the words 'cat' and 'black' wrongly.

They are using the words wrongly. It is not a matter of the sentence being true or false because it is not about the truth-value, because what they think they are saying is indeed true — they do have a white dog —, but the words employed are not the correct ones. They are using the wrong words.

So, what is the modality in which that phrase is wrong? It is not in physics, not in javascript, neither is it in morality, it is in grammar, therefore it is grammatically incorrect.

Entertain: If I taught English to a German kid, and they said "my cat is black" thinking what in their language is "mein Hund ist weiss", I would not teach that their sentence is not true because I know their household, perhaps the kid is even lying, but I would teach instead that "mein Hund ist weiss" is in fact "my dog is white", and what they said is instead "meine Katze ist schwarze".

But I am glad that I made my quite relevant point that rules also may be regarded as mathematical objects. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Yes, it was a good explanation.

It appears like you are confusing descriptive rules with prescriptive rules. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I am giving examples of subjective rules and objective rules because those are the keywords you used, not the new two keywords. A subjective rule may be descriptive or prescriptive, an objective rule also may be either — otherwise prescriptive grammar wouldn't exist.

How do we get beyond arbitrariness? — Metaphysician Undercover

Application, just like 2000 years ago. During ancient times, mathematics was an empirical endeavor. Many mathematicians of today in fact take pride in their research being useless — meaning having no application.

Tones is arguing that rules are Platonic objects just like numbers are. If that is the case, then formalism does not escape Platonism, it is a deeper form of Platonism, just like I said. — Metaphysician Undercover

He said they are mathematical objects, not platonic objects.

If that is the case, MU's argument simply dissolves and rules are subject to the same debate of nominalismXplatonism as numbers.

Moore's law, as is the case with almost all these meme "laws" that people learn about from wiki as fun facts, is not a law at all — and never was.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-moores-law-in-action-1971-2019/

This is very close to the way that Aristotle defends the PNC in Metaphysics IV. Much of this is just a question of what we mean by 'logic'. — Leontiskos

Curious that the greatest genius of history agrees with me on virtually every issue. — Lionino

:cool:

"What it does" meaning its syntactical role, yes.

"What it means", no. — TonesInDeepFreeze

"What it means", yes exactly. You say it yourself: "syntactical role".

Rules of syntax:

"Using a word to mean something other than what it means" is not a violation of them.
"Using a word to do something other than what it do" is a violation of them.

Rules of grammar:

"Using a word to mean something other than what it means" is indeed a violation of them.
"Using a word to do something other than what it do" is indeed violation of them.
"Pronouncing a word other than what it is pronounced like" is.
"Removing or adding a random letter to a word" is.

But, for any for any law of thought there may be a system that denies the law, so any law of thought could be denied. — TonesInDeepFreeze

My reply to Leontiskos, which you asked about, is exactly that, except that it is laws of logic that a system may deny, not laws of thought.

If your point is that one is free to choose any system one wants to use, then, of course, one could not dispute that. But also one is free to choose whatever ways of thinking one wants to choose. — TonesInDeepFreeze

One may choose different ways of thinking but every way of thinking that one may choose still has fundamental rules of rationality. Our rationality is not unbounded, we can't imagine a new colour for example.

That something is necessary for rationality (under a given definition of 'rationality') doesn't entail that people may not break "laws of thought". — TonesInDeepFreeze

I can't imagine how it does not entail unless you are working under a very thin definition of rationality.

And it does not dialetheism permit conceiving such things? — TonesInDeepFreeze

I personally don't think dialethism is universally applicable or says anything deep about human rationality. It may be helpful as a gimmick to work around self-reference paradox, but that is about it.

I surmise you mean the latter. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Yes, I missed the question.

I wouldn't take using a word with an incorrect meaning is not a violation of grammar. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Using a word to mean something other than what it does is exactly a violation of grammar.

They simply mispoke while still grammatical. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Rhetorical question: is it possible to misspeak, which is to say to speak wrongly, without committing a grammar mistake? Is grammar not the rules which give us what can be said right or wrong in language? If those are the rules of good speech, how can one speak wrongly without disrespecting grammar?

In everyday discourse, people write "If ___, then" commonly. — TonesInDeepFreeze

My point is that they write it wrongly.

Cutting the chase, the number of conjunctions in a given complete sentence with no assyndetic clauses is (n-1) the number of n clauses. "If — then —" is more clearly wrong because it is not invertible. "Then I will go if you go" is not possible, while "I will go if you go" and "If you go, I will go" are.

If "If you go, then I will go" is syntactically correct, so should be "Before you go, after I go".

That is a reasonable rule of syntax just like every clause with no omitted terms needs at least one verb. I can't tell neither am I interested if English "grammarians" allow or disallow basic rules of synyax. I am not sure what training English "grammarians" receive, if any, as they are still discussing something as banal and pointless as the Oxford comma.

I don't know what point you are making about logic when you rule out "If ___, then ___". — TonesInDeepFreeze

None. I made the comment standalone without tagging anyone and you replied to it.

But it is not that important, I write it wrongly too for the purpose of clarity.

Do you disagree with the point that inference rules may themselves be a mathematical object? — TonesInDeepFreeze

I haven't thought about it deeply, so no. The matter of mathematicalabstract objects naturally goes back to Plato. If numbers and sets and so on are mathematical objects, rules are, in some way, the relationships betwen those numbers. I am not sure and can't imagine how the relationship between universals has been tackled by platonists, if at all, so I can't give a strong judgement on the matter.

For example if we say some rules are objective, and other rules are subjective, what would distinguish the two? — Metaphysician Undercover

The two key words you used. Social rules are (inter-)subjective because, as soon as we die, they are not carried out, the "rules" of physics are carried out independently of an observer.

Why should we agree to some rules and not to others then? — Metaphysician Undercover

For 2000 years at very least, people thought that the LNC was fundamental. Then came dialethism.

we ought to first determine precisely what a rule is — Metaphysician Undercover

we should start with the definition of a rule — Metaphysician Undercover

Dictionary.

Canada, yes!

It's not clear to me what you're claiming. Example? — TonesInDeepFreeze

I am asking him if there is anything wrong with taking logical operators, such as & → ~, to be defined from their truth tables, instead of being mysterious platonic objects that float around in another dimensions.
Like A→B being defined (convention) exactly by what it gives in a truth table according to each value of A and B, and A&B, etc.

Yes, I think that is what Metaphysician Undercover is talking about.

What "semantic contention"? — TonesInDeepFreeze

Leontiskos said laws of logic can't be broken. I said that it is the laws of thought that can't be broken instead. Despite the disagreement in choice of words, I still understand the content of his post.

Why would you claim otherwise? — TonesInDeepFreeze

Because it is not. If you check here, the word 'then' does not show up a single time after the first line: https://www.perfect-english-grammar.com/first-conditional.html
If — then — is only used in math/logic because it is clearer to look at than If —, —.

"I am dying now" said when not dying is ordinary grammatical English, but is a false sentence. — TonesInDeepFreeze

That is why I said "I am literally dying now" instead of "I am dying now". It is an incorrect usage of the word 'literally' if you are not really dying, therefore grammatically incorrect. You could indeed say it is grammatically correct and that the person is just lying or confused, but if you have spent some time with young English speakers, you would know that they are not lying or confused about their health, their usage of the word is often just grammatically incorrect.

What law and system are you referring to? — TonesInDeepFreeze

Dialetheism and the denial of LNC https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dialetheism/#MotiForDial for example
Then there is Many-valued logic which denies the LEM https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-paraconsistent/#ManyValuLogi

(1) I know the ordinary general sense of 'apply'. But this is a particular subject, and I'm wondering whether you have an explication of your use or whether 'apply' should just be taken as undefined by you. (2) I was asking you about your use of 'apply'; I didn't assert my own use of it. I didn't assert what you quoted of me; it was part of a question to you. — TonesInDeepFreeze

I am using it in an ordinary sense. In some paraconsistent logics, the LEM does not apply. Just like inside electronic games the laws of physics don't apply.

You said that there are laws of thought that can't be broken. And you said laws of logic can be broken. What are some laws of thought that can't be broken but are not laws of logic? — TonesInDeepFreeze

The laws of thought are facts of the matter. Whatever they are, without them human rationality is not possible — otherwise they wouldn't be laws. Laws of logic are things we formulate, not facts about our mind — like De Morgan's Law.

You can't conceive it. But that doesn't entail that others cannot conceive it. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Can you conceive something as other than what it is? Can you conceive of an apple without it being an apple? If so, I would recommend olanzapine (jk), but then I will just call it "my laws of thought" and then we are back to the problem of solipsism. Not a big deal anyway.

For mathematical fictionalism (a kind of nominalising program by Hartry Field), there is an implicit fictional operator when we talk truthfully about mathematics. So "2+2=4" is not true, but "according to arithmetic, 2+2=4" is true. A bit like "Zeus is the most powerful god" implicitly contains "Within Greek mythology..." if we want to speak truthfully. It is a strong proposal compared to other nominalists, but obviously it has its share of objections and issues.

Hola. Me gusta este sitio chileno, no sé si lo conoces, es muy bueno para la lengua española y lo he estado usando por años: https://www.dechile.net/
Pero no todos que responden son confiables. De todos, la Helena es la que presenta informaciones más correctas.
Ejemplo: https://etimologias.dechile.net/?esclavo

What is worth discussing is why the layman’s mathematical intuitions favour nonstandard analysis — Michael

The same intuition that stands under Zeno's paradox.

why standard analysis is standard — Michael

Calculus and its wide applications, I would imagine.

Yes, the periods are "missing".

What do you mean by "apply"? — TonesInDeepFreeze

You must be playing by saying that you don't understand what I mean. "The laws of physics don't apply here", the meaning is clear. You yourself use the word without any apparent confusion:

for any law, there are cases in which that law does not apply — TonesInDeepFreeze

This, but one can make up scenarios and/or systems where that law does not apply. That was one of the answers at least to the liar paradox: making a completely different system.

What are some of those laws of thought that can't be broken but are not laws of logic? — TonesInDeepFreeze

I don't think there any, as soon as we can express our thoughts in language we can also express the rules our thoughts follow in language (this language being logic sometimes).

What are the obvious reasons they can't be broken? — TonesInDeepFreeze

For example, I can't conceive of anything as being other than it is, because as soon as I conceive it, it is what it is, and not something else. I cannot imagine something as being otherwise. This reminds of the law of identity, and it just might be.

"If X then Y" is incorrect because you think "If you go, then I will go" is not grammatical? — TonesInDeepFreeze

No, I am saying sentences of the kind "If --, then --" are not grammatically correct. I am not talking about any other kind of correctness.

I don't know what you mean to say there. — TonesInDeepFreeze

"If you go, I will go" is fine.
"If you go, then I will go" is not.

Every time someone says "If ___ then ___" they are incorrect? — TonesInDeepFreeze

Yes, just like when someone says "I am literally dying right now" but they are alive and well.

Consider it is the same sort of issue as the ontological status of numbers — Metaphysician Undercover

Not quite the same.

If we answer yes, there is such a thing as rules, then we may proceed to ask questions like are they objective, and if the answer to this is yes, then we are in Platonism — Metaphysician Undercover

It doesn't work like that for numbers. In any case, one has to ask what kind of rules you are talking about. If any rules at all, the idea that every rule we may come up with is a platonic object is silly, especially when so many rules are absolutely dependant on us being around. If you are talking about rules of logic and mathematics, then wonder why it is only such rules that get a special status. As I said before, if you want to break it down to rules of logic, what is wrong with them being defined as:

and logical terms can be taken as primitives defined from their truth tables — Lionino

? Those are set up by convention.

The capacity for pattern recognition is a prerequisite for philosophy.

he came to realisation that physics has undermined physicalism — Wayfarer

This sort of stuff can't not remind me of Deepak Chopra.

You see, I don't think that this comment says anything. At least, not clearly. — Banno

Agreed. And with certainty on "clearly". Where such a "slogan" has to be explained in other words to mean anything at all, it is better to ditch the slogan and keep the other words, which is the actual, clear explanation of what the slogan meant in the writer's mind.

Even then, the claim that 0.999...<1 in the hyperreals isn't exactly correct either.

I'm sorry, but none of the replies so far seem to evidence any familiarity with number theory or basic set theory... — alan1000

I think it is you who doesn't have any familiarity with high school math:

Briefly, the position appears to be that in the (classical) real number line, 0.999... is the largest real number which is less than 1 — alan1000

For the real numbers, 0.999... is exactly equal to 1.

I take it that you took that info from my post.
But you made it the other way around.

Briefly, the position appears to be that in the (classical) real number line, 0.999... is the largest real number which is less than 1; Cantor's Diagonal Argument certainly seems to support this interpretation, — alan1000

0.999... is equal to 1 here, not lesser than 1.

Abraham Robinson's definition of h revolutionised mathematics in the 1960's. Briefly, he defined the infinitesimal as a number which, for all values of a, is <a and >-a. Thus the infinitesimal may have a range of values, including 0. Within THIS number line, it appears to be undeniable that 0.999... meets the limit of 1, and thus 0.999...=1. — alan1000

Here, 0.999... can indeed be less than 1, because 0.999... is ambiguous.

Do you like to cook it on garlic or lemon butter? — schopenhauer1

These two ingredients are not mutually exclusive at all.

What do you mean by not being able to "break"? — TonesInDeepFreeze

There being cases in which a law does not apply.

What does that mean? — TonesInDeepFreeze

"If you go, then I will go" is not okay grammatically.

After the semantic contention, a syntactic contention:

"If X, then Y" is incorrect.
"If X, Y" or "X, therefore Y", not both.

I don't think there are laws of logic that cannot be broken, but that there are laws of thought that can't be broken (for obvious reasons). Some laws of logic may express those laws of thought. But that is just a semantic contention.

Is having the ability to choose your fate better than not having to choose your fate? — I like sushi

It depends. Freedom of choice isn't always great. Nonetheless, it is generally better to have choices.

Again, better for what? You are not talking about truth, which is what people always use to judge beliefs. So how can one belief be better than the other?

what is the main point of syntax then? — javi2541997

Connecting words.

Does logic make clear what we do with sentencing as Banno suggested? — javi2541997

Sometimes it does for sure. I have seen folks here using proof checkers to show an argument given in English is fallacious.

Well, sentences are built by syntax, so syntax can't be a tool for what we do with those sentences. Like the coupling of the wagons can't be guiding the train.