{"id":10523,"date":"2011-07-21T16:29:03","date_gmt":"2011-07-21T16:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/07\/21\/inferences-involving-singular-propositions\/"},"modified":"2011-07-21T16:29:03","modified_gmt":"2011-07-21T16:29:03","slug":"inferences-involving-singular-propositions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/07\/21\/inferences-involving-singular-propositions\/","title":{"rendered":"Inferences Involving Singular Propositions"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Modern Predicate Logic (MPL), logical quantity comes in three 'flavors,' universal, particular, and singular. Thus 'All bloggers are self-absorbed' and 'No bloggers are self-absorbed' are universal; 'Some bloggers are self-absorbed' and 'Some bloggers are not self-absorbed' are particular; 'Bernie is self-absorbed' and 'Bernie is not self-absorbed' are singular. Traditional Formal Logic (TFL), however, does not admit a separate category of singular propositions.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, just to draw out commenter Edward the Nominalist and Co., how would a defender of TFL account for the validity of the following obviously valid argument:<\/span><\/p>\n

   1. Mars is red<\/span>
   2. Mars is a planet<\/span>
   —–<\/span>
   3. Some planet is red.<\/span><\/p>\n

A supporter of MPL could construct a derivation as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n

   4. Mars is a planet & Mars is red. (From 1, 2 by Conjunction)<\/span>
   5. There is an x such that: x is a planet & x is red. (From 4 by<\/span>
        Existential Generalization)<\/span>
   3. Some planet is red. (From 5 by translation back into ordinary<\/span>
       language)<\/span><\/p>\n

No sweat for the MPL boys, but how do you TFL-ers do it? (Of course I am aware that it can be done. The point of this post is mainly  didactic.)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Modern Predicate Logic (MPL), logical quantity comes in three 'flavors,' universal, particular, and singular. Thus 'All bloggers are self-absorbed' and 'No bloggers are self-absorbed' are universal; 'Some bloggers are self-absorbed' and 'Some bloggers are not self-absorbed' are particular; 'Bernie is self-absorbed' and 'Bernie is not self-absorbed' are singular. Traditional Formal Logic (TFL), however, does … Continue reading “Inferences Involving Singular Propositions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-logica-docens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}