3 ms·
The argument of the paper (which I do not find compelling) seems to be that the sentence "all even primes greater than 2 are divisible by 1001" is 'false' becau
by ajkjk 11y ago
The argument of the paper (which I do not find compelling) seems to be that the sentence "all even primes greater than 2 are divisible by 1001" is 'false' because "the words prime, 2, divisible, and 1001" are undefined.
(In the framework in which those words aren't undefined, then sure, we can talk about whether that sentence is true or false and have an interesting discussion. In formal logic it's definitely true. But that's not the discussion the article is interested in, as far as I can tell.)
To which OP (and I, and I think most people..) would say: we accept that you're being clever by declaring that "outside of mathematics, these words are undefined". But calling a sentence with undefined terms "false" is absurd. Just call it "meaningless" until all the terms are defined.
Then you avoid making statements like "'8+5=13' is false", which at first glance seems absurd, and at second glance seems like "you're saying things that are absurd to raise eyebrows instead of taking the easy alternative of saying things that are reasonable."