Re: atomic

"paul c" <toledobythesea_at_ooyah.ac> wrote in message news:ayrWi.166663$1y4.150325_at_pd7urf2no...
> Maybe that second "contradiction" is just psychological and there is
> always another possible predicate that washes it away, such as "Person P
> has the children {C}". But that second tuple still seems superfluous.

A set of values without an explicit predicate is just noise. It isn't even capable of being said to be contradictory without one. So you always need the predicate. If you have a proposition you need to assert and no predicate that it fits, you need to introduce one.

Introducing a new predicate doesn't "wash" anything away. You make it sound like you would collect values and hope that someday you will find out what they mean. But really you work the other way round, starting with the definition of a predicate that allows you always to assert the propositions you are interested in, in the form of tuples.

Two indentical-looking tuples can mean entirely different things. I can think of any number of meanings for {Roy, 47}. Maybe it's my name and age. Or my name and the number of illegitimate children I have. Or maybe it's my father's name and his house number. Who knows, until I tell you?

Roy Received on Thu Nov 01 2007 - 23:48:22 CET