Logic -- Juvenile literature; Logic, Symbolic and mathematical
Of course any other Things would have done just as well as Cakes.
We might make Propositions about "a Universe of Lizards", or even
"a Universe of Hornets". (Wouldn't THAT be a charming Universe to
live in?)
So far, then, we have learned that
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means "some x and y," i.e. "some new are nice."
I think you will see without further explanation, that
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means "some x are y'," i.e. "some new are not-nice."
Now let us put a GREY counter into No. 5, and ask ourselves the
meaning of
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This tells us that the x y-compartment is EMPTY, which we may express
by "no x are y", or, "no new Cakes are nice". This is the second
of the three Propositions at the head of this Section.
In the same way,
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would mean "no x are y'," or, "no new Cakes are not-nice."
What would you make of this, I wonder?
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I hope you will not have much trouble in making out that this
represents a DOUBLE Proposition: namely, "some x are y, AND some
are y'," i.e. "some new are nice, and some are not-nice."
The following is a little harder, perhaps:
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This means "no x are y, AND none are y'," i.e. "no new are nice,
AND none are not-nice": which leads to the rather curious result
that "no new exist," i.e. "no Cakes are new." This is because
"nice" and "not-nice" make what we call an 'EXHAUSTIVE' division
of the class "new Cakes": i.e. between them, they EXHAUST the whole
class, so that all the new Cakes, that exist, must be found in one
or the other of them.
And now suppose you had to represent, with counters the contradictory
to "no Cakes are new", which would be "some Cakes are new", or,
putting letters for words, "some Cakes are x", how would you do
it?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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