On Mon, 6 Sep 1999, Russell Standish wrote:
> > 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.
Generalization? That's BS. They are totally different.
Example of def. 1: A or not A
Example of def. 2: A and A
- - - - - - -
Jacques Mallah (jqm1584.domain.name.hidden)
Graduate Student / Many Worlder / Devil's Advocate
"I know what no one else knows" - 'Runaway Train', Soul Asylum
My URL:
http://pages.nyu.edu/~jqm1584/
Received on Mon Sep 06 1999 - 13:32:51 PDT