Re: The Foundation of Linguistic truth is stipulated relations between finite strings

On 2024-09-15 17:09:34 +0000, olcott said:

On 9/15/2024 3:32 AM, Mikko wrote:

On 2024-09-14 14:01:31 +0000, olcott said:
 

On 9/14/2024 3:26 AM, Mikko wrote:

On 2024-09-13 14:38:02 +0000, olcott said:
 

On 9/13/2024 6:52 AM, Mikko wrote:

On 2024-09-04 03:41:58 +0000, olcott said:
 

The Foundation of Linguistic truth is stipulated relations
between finite strings.
 The only way that we know that "cats" <are> "animals"
(in English) is the this is stipulated to be true.
 *This is related to*
Truth-conditional semantics is an approach to semantics of
natural language that sees meaning (or at least the meaning
of assertions) as being the same as, or reducible to, their
truth conditions. This approach to semantics is principally
associated with Donald Davidson, and attempts to carry out
for the semantics of natural language what Tarski's semantic
theory of truth achieves for the semantics of logic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth-conditional_semantics
 *Yet equally applies to formal languages*

 No, it does not. Formal languages are designed for many different
purposes. Whether they have any semantics and the nature of the
semantics of those that have is determined by the purpose of the
language.

 Formal languages are essentially nothing more than
relations between finite strings.

 Basically a formal language is just a set of strings, usually defined
so that it is easy to determine about each string whether it belongs
to that subset. Relations of strings to other strings or anything else
are defined when useful for the purpose of the language.
 

 Yes.
 

Thus, given T, an elementary theorem is an elementary
statement which is true.

 That requires more than just a language. Being an elementary theorem means
that a subset of the language is defined as a set of the elementary theorems

 a subset of the finite strings are stipulated to be elementary theorems.
 

or postulates, usually so that it easy to determine whether a string is a
member of that set, often simply as a list of all elementary theorems.
 

 Yes.
 

https://www.liarparadox.org/Haskell_Curry_45.pdf
 Some of these relations between finite strings are
elementary theorems thus are stipulated to be true.

 No, that conficts with the meanings of those words. Certain realtions
between strings are designated as inference rules, usually defined so
that it is easy to determine whether a given string can be inferred
from given (usually one or two) other strings. Elementary theorems
are strings, not relations between strings.
 

 One elementary theorem of English is the {Cats} <are> {Animals}.

 There are no elementary theorems of English

 There are billions of elementary theorems in English of
this form: finite_string_X <is a> finite_string_Y
I am stopping here at your first huge mistake.

They are not elementary theorems of English. They are English expressions
of claims that that are not language specific.

It is hard to step back and see that "cats" and "animals"
never had any inherent meaning.

Those meanings are older that the words "cat" and "animal" and the
word "animal" existed before there was any English language.

When one realizes that
every other human language does this differently then
this is easier to see. {cats are animals} == 貓是動物

Words are often different in other languages (though e.g. Swedish "cat"
or Maltese "qattus" are not very different). Variations of meanings at
least for this word tend to be smaller than variations within a single
language.
--
Mikko