Re: tautology

From: Russell Standish <R.Standish.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 10:05:47 +1000 (EST)

>
> On Fri, 3 Sep 1999, Russell Standish wrote:
> > > > Then maybe I misunderstood you. A tautology is a term with redundant
> > > > parts, ie it is equivalent to some subset of itself. I took your
> > > > statement that "ASSA is a tautology" to mean that ASSA is equivalent
> > > > to SSA (symbolically ASSA <=> SSA). I directly contradict this in my
> > > > first sentence.
> > >
> > > > [JM wrote]
> > > From WordNet (r) 1.6 (wn)
> > > tautology n 1: (in logic) a statement that is necessarily true; "the
> > > statement `he is brave or he is not brave' is a tautology" 2: useless
> > > repetition; "to say that something is `adequate enough' is a tautology"
> > >
> > > I was not aware of meaning 2 of the word, while I have
> > > frequently encountered the word used for meaning 1.
> > >
> > The definition I gave and the one you quoted are equivalent.
>
> I quoted two very different definitions. The one you gave is
> equivalent to #2. The one I meant in my 'zombie wives' post was #1.
>

Sorry, I missed the second definition. It is merely a colloquial
generalisation of definition 1, and is definitely the one I was using.




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Dr. Russell Standish Director
High Performance Computing Support Unit,
University of NSW Phone 9385 6967
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Received on Sun Sep 05 1999 - 17:04:02 PDT

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