PHIL1005 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Object Language, Beagle, Albus Dumbledore

57 views5 pages
20 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
L9.1
Identity
- Some identity claims are trivial and obvious.
o‘Alex is Alex’
- Some identity claims are interesting and non-trivial
Expressing Identity
- Identity claims like ‘Hesperus is Phospherous’ are expressed by h=p
- This means ‘h and p are the same member of the domain.’
- Identity is symmetric so (h = p)  (p = h)
- In this case the identity sign is flanked by proper names
Identity and Variables
- ( x Fx& y Gy) & (x = y) ‘There is at least one F and at least one G and they are the Ǝ Ǝ
same’ x (Fx& Gx)Ǝ‘Something is both F and G’
- x y(xRy) & (x=y) Ǝ Ǝ ‘There is at least one object that Rs itself’
- 
-x xRx ‘There is at least one object that Rs itself.’
At least one
- x Fx  there is a least one FƎ
- But this leaves the number of Fs open
- There could be one or a thousand Fs.
No more than one…
- ‘there is no more than one F’ or ‘there is at most one F’
-x (Fx y (Fy x = y)
- If it is F then it is identical.
- This is compatible with there being no Fs, it can be true even if the following is true
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Unlock document

This preview shows pages 1-2 of the document.
Unlock all 5 pages and 3 million more documents.

Already have an account? Log in
-~ x ƎFx
Exactly one…
- How do we put an upper bound on the number of objects in our statement?
- ‘There is exactly one F’ x (Fx&Ǝy(Fyx=y))
!x (aka E shriek)Ǝ
- Let’s introduce a piece of notation for uniqueness
- !x will mean ‘there is one and only one…’ or ‘there is exactly one…’, ‘there is a Ǝ
unique…’, ‘there is no more than one but at least one..’
- x (Fx&Ǝy(Fyx=y))  !x FxƎ
Identity between kinds
- What about ‘lighting is electrostatic discharge’?
- It is tempting to represent this as ‘l=e’.
- But what kind of designators are ‘I’ and ‘e’?
- They might be disguised predicates, ‘l=e’ might be equivalent to ‘xy(LxEx)’
- Or they could be more analoguous to proper names in that they pick out a set of
objects not necessarily chararcterised by a property
- Interesting topic for further study
Constraining the domain’s cardinality from within the object language
- With these tools, we can start constraining the domain from the object language
(without talking about the domain directly).
-x Fx
- Says that the domain is non-empty (has a non-zero cardinality)
- x Ǝy x=y
- Says that there is exactly one object in the domain (it has a cardinality of exactly
one).
9.2 COUNTING
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Unlock document

This preview shows pages 1-2 of the document.
Unlock all 5 pages and 3 million more documents.

Already have an account? Log in

Document Summary

Some identity claims are trivial and obvious: alex is alex". Identity claims like hesperus is phospherous" are expressed by h=p. This means h and p are the same member of the domain. ". Identity is symmetric so (h = p) (p = h) In this case the identity sign is flanked by proper names. Identity and variables ( x fx& y gy) & (x = y) there is at least one f and at least one g and they are the same" x (fx& gx) Something is both f and g" x y(xry) & (x=y) There is at least one object that rs itself". X xrx there is at least one object that rs itself. ". At least one x fx there is a least one f. But this leaves the number of fs open. There could be one or a thousand fs. There is no more than one f" or there is at most one f".

Get access

Grade+
$40 USD/m
Billed monthly
Grade+
Homework Help
Study Guides
Textbook Solutions
Class Notes
Textbook Notes
Booster Class
10 Verified Answers
Class+
$30 USD/m
Billed monthly
Class+
Homework Help
Study Guides
Textbook Solutions
Class Notes
Textbook Notes
Booster Class
7 Verified Answers

Related Documents

Related Questions