Re: Objects and Relations

On Jan 31, 12:24 pm, "Keith H Duggar" <dug..._at_alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> David BL wrote:
> > Keith H Duggar wrote:
> > > To me you seem quite intelligent; so don't act
> > > stupid. Take a chill pill and stop using words like
> > > "onus". Do that and you can probably learn much here and
> > > some of us (certainly including me) may also learn much
> > > from the process.
>
> > What usage of "onus" are you referring to?
>
> Umm ...
>
> "You don't seem to appreciate the fact that the onus of
> proof often depends on the nature of the claim rather
> that who is making it."
>
> The general tone of that sentence (and your posts) mesh with
> "onus" into a precocious whole.

Unfortunately I have already developed a bad case of cynicism. In my first post to this newsgroup I was taken back with the aggressive nature of posters like Bob.

My objective is certainly not to insult anyone. That quote above was making a point, associated with the asymmetry in ease of proving universally quantified statements compared to merely finding a counter example.

Consider the statement "Formal system X is consistent". Can this be proven true? Not generally! It is more of an unproven conjecture. In that sense the onus is instead to show that X is inconsistent. How is this use of "onus" precocious?

[snip] Received on Wed Jan 31 2007 - 05:03:46 CET