Archive for February, 2011

No!

Monday, February 21st, 2011

We learn some words only after we learn other words. Take ‘plus’, for instance. You cannot understand the concept of addition without knowing anything about numbers. First you have to learn ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘three’ a.s.o. and only afterwards you can learn to use ‘plus’.

The same with ‘subject’, ‘predicate’, or even ‘word’.

I want to say that ‘no’ is not in the same situation. Logicians understand it as a truth-function, on a pair with ‘plus’. However, you don’t have to know anything about sentences or their truth values to learn to say ‘no’.

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