I, even I, would celebrate, in rhymes inept the great...

Norwood, Frederick Hudson · 17 Oct 2014, 13:23 · from 2014-October.txt.gz

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From: NORWOODR at mail.etsu.edu (Norwood, Frederick Hudson)
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:23:17 +0000
Subject: (urth) I, even I, would celebrate, in rhymes inept the great...
In-Reply-To: <5440AF56.4020005 at clueland.com>
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	<543F4C03.6040006 at clueland.com>
	<0DA454A32913114C9CC19BB781FB907D013391 at ETSUMB2.etsu.edu>
	<5440AF56.4020005 at clueland.com>
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Modus ponens is unprovable.  You have to start somewhere.  Is it possible that modus ponens is false?  Of course it is possible.  I may be a madman, and modus ponens may not say what I think it says.  I may be the only creature in the universe, and modus ponens may really mean, "Thou art God."  But these objections can be raised in any discussion whatsoever, and after a while most people stop raising them.  If I am sane, and if modus ponens says what I think it says, then it seems to me bedrock on which to build.  Further, if there are cases where A implies B, A is true, and B is false, then that ends the discussion, because every statement is both true and false, and in that case there is no point in saying anything at all.

Rick Norwood

-----Original Message-----
From: Urth [mailto:urth-bounces at lists.urth.net] On Behalf Of Jeffery Wilson clueland.com
Sent: Friday, October 17, 2014 1:56 AM
To: The Urth Mailing List
Subject: Re: (urth) I, even I, would celebrate, in rhymes inept the great...

On 10/16/2014 7:07 AM, Norwood, Frederick Hudson wrote:
> Jeffery Wilson:  I do say A is A.  That's called the reflexive property of equality.  And, yes, I've read the Lewis Carroll bit.  Even wrote a poem about it.

If you already know that the modus ponens is unprovable, and are familiar with reflexive equality which is axiomatic, why are you bothering to hold up modus ponens as an example of an absolute truth?

--
Jeff Wilson - < jwilson at clueland.com >
A&M Texarkana Computational Intelligence Lab < http://www.tamut.edu/cil > _______________________________________________
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