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Vagrant Predicate
Vagrant predicates are logical constructions that exhibit an inherent limit to conceptual knowledge. Such predicates can be used in general descriptions but are self-contradictory when applied to particulars. For instance, there are numbers which have never been mentioned but no example can be given as this would contradict its definition. Vagrant predicates have been proposed and studied by Nicholas Rescher. F is a vagrant predicate iff (\existsu)Fu is true while nevertheless Fu0 is false for each and every specifically identified u0. When infinity is thought of as a number greater than any given, a similar idea is conceived. However vagrancy needs not to be monotonous and occurs also within bounds. Rescher has used vagrant predicates to solve the vagueness In linguistics and philosophy, a vague predicate is one which gives rise to borderline cases. For example, the English adjective "tall" is vague since it is not clearly true or false for someone of middling height. By contr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicholas Rescher
Nicholas Rescher (; ; born 15 July 1928) is a German-American philosopher, polymath, and author, who has been a professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh since 1961. He is chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science and was formerly chairman of the philosophy department. Rescher has served as president for the American Catholic Philosophical Association, Leibniz Society of North America, American Metaphysical Society, American Philosophical Association, and Charles S. Peirce Society. He is the founder of ''American Philosophical Quarterly'', '' History of Philosophy Quarterly'', and ''Public Affairs Quarterly''. Early life and education Nicholas Rescher was born in Hagen in the Westphalia region of Germany. In his autobiography he traces his descent to Nehemias Rescher (1735-1801), a founder of the Hochberg-Remseck Jewish community in Swabian Germany. He relocated to the United States when he was 10 and obtained a degree in mathematics at Queens College, New Y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infinity
Infinity is that which is boundless, endless, or larger than any natural number. It is often denoted by the infinity symbol . Since the time of the ancient Greeks, the philosophical nature of infinity was the subject of many discussions among philosophers. In the 17th century, with the introduction of the infinity symbol and the infinitesimal calculus, mathematicians began to work with infinite series and what some mathematicians (including l'Hôpital and Bernoulli) regarded as infinitely small quantities, but infinity continued to be associated with endless processes. As mathematicians struggled with the foundation of calculus, it remained unclear whether infinity could be considered as a number or magnitude and, if so, how this could be done. At the end of the 19th century, Georg Cantor enlarged the mathematical study of infinity by studying infinite sets and infinite numbers, showing that they can be of various sizes. For example, if a line is viewed as the set of all o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vagueness
In linguistics and philosophy, a vague predicate is one which gives rise to borderline cases. For example, the English adjective "tall" is vague since it is not clearly true or false for someone of middling height. By contrast, the word "prime" is not vague since every number is definitively either prime or not. Vagueness is commonly diagnosed by a predicate's ability to give rise to the Sorites paradox. Vagueness is separate from ambiguity, in which an expression has multiple denotations. For instance the word "bank" is ambiguous since it can refer either to a river bank or to a financial institution, but there are no borderline cases between both interpretations. Vagueness is a major topic of research in philosophical logic, where it serves as a potential challenge to classical logic. Work in formal semantics has sought to provide a compositional semantics for vague expressions in natural language. Work in philosophy of language has addressed implications of vagueness for th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
