Dictionary of Arguments


Philosophical and Scientific Issues in Dispute
 
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The author or concept searched is found in the following 2 entries.
Disputed term/author/ism Author
Entry
Reference
Imperatives Geach I 275f
Command/Moral/Logic/Geach: a statement-line cannot be in an if-clause. - "If you want ..." these are real imperatives, only grammatically a hypothetical sentence. - The wish itself has nothing to do with the truth conditions. - But an utterance does not get empty qua imperative, simply because it cannot be fulfilled.
I 282
Imperative/Logic/Geach: difficult problems: "Tu x or tu y!" Cannot be interpreted as "I command x or I command y" - analog to assertions: l- p v q cannot be interpreted as l-p or l-q. Solution/Hare/Geach: distinction neustic/tropic/Hare (> Hare, R.M.: >phrasticon, >neusticon).
E.g. tropic: is identical in "Tu x or tu y" and "You will do x or you will do y".
Phrasticon: "Your future doing of either x or y"
Neusticon: "Please!" or yes". (assertorically).
Disjunction/Geach: it belongs to the tropic.
Neustic: is added to the tropic as a whole, not to one or the other disjoint.
---
Zoglauer I 23
Def Tropic/Hare: descriptive component of a standard sentence Def Neustic/Hare: prescriptive component of a standard sentence.

Gea I
P.T. Geach
Logic Matters Oxford 1972


Zo I
Th. Zoglauer
Einführung in die formale Logik für Philosophen Göttingen 2002
Practical Inference Kenny Geach I 285
Practical Inference/Kenny: (A. KIenny 1966(1)). Thesis: Theoretical and practical inference are radically different. Geach: What they have in common is a certain asymmetry between premises and conclusions.
>Premises, >Conclusions.
1. A lot of premises provide a single conclusion and cannot be achieved with any of these premises.
2. On the other hand, a set of conclusions follows from a single premise only if each individual conclusion follows from it on its own.
Carnap and Kneale have sought technical solutions to this asymmetry. GeachVs: one should leave the asymmetry.
Cf. >Asymmetries.
It remains in Kenny's approach. If a set of conclusions would always be deducible together, but not individual conclusions...(s) then the set itself could not follow.

Practical Inference/Kenny/Geach: I present it in the style of Kenny:
From a set of commands

Fq, Fr, Fs... one can conclude the conclusion Ft,

provided that the phrastic of the conclusion entails the phrastic of a premise and that it is consistent with the phrastic of all other premises. I. e.
>Phrastic.

t ent q and the conjunction

Kt, Kr, Ks... is consistent.

Spelling: ent: entails, p ent q = p contains q, q follows q from p, entailment
Kpq: Conjunction p u q
Cpq Conditional p > q

>Entailment.
It is about how a wish is consistent with other wishes.
This immediately means that no practical conclusion can be drawn from an inconsistent set of commands. When

Kq, Kr, Ks... is an inconsistent conjunction and t ent q, then
Kt, Kr, Ks... is inconsistent and then Ft is not valid deducible from the set FqFrFs....

>Commands, >Imperatives.
Further difference to theoretical inference: practical inference can be cancelled. (>added premises).
Geach I 287
Definition Synthetic theorem/Peripathetics/Geach: the principle that if a conclusion t follows from its set of premises P, and if P plus t delivers the conclusion v, then the premises provide P v. Only if the synthetic theorem applies, we get a chain of inferences. That is what we need in theory and practice.
Kenny's theory secures the synthetic theorem.

Practical Conclusion/Kenny/Geach: it is necessary for a correct conclusion Ft from a set of premises that (the phrasticon t ent the phrasticon v) from one of these fiats (commands) is compatible with the phrastics of all other fiats from the set.
We can omit the word "or" if we formulate it in this way:
t ent v, KtKpKqKr.... is a consistent conjunction if and only if
KtKvKpKr.... is consistent.
Proof: with the validity criterion in this practical form:

We have to show that from
(1) Ft is deducible from Fp, Fq, Fr...
and
(2) Fv is deducible from Ft, Fp, Fq, Fr...
from that follows that
(3) Fv is derived from Fp, Fq, Fr.....
(1) holds if and only if t ent (one of the phrastic p, q, r...)
I 288
and if the conjunction KtKpKqKr.... is consistent. Without losing the general public, it can be said that t ent p.
Now (2) will hold if and only if v ent (one of the phrastic t, p, q, r...) and the if conjunction KvKtKpKpKqKr... is consistent.

But if v ent t, because t ent p (through (1)), then v ent p.
And no matter if v ent t or v ent (one of the phrastics of p, q, r...), v is always ent one of (p, q, r...).
Now if KvKtKpKqKr... is a consistent conjunction, then also KvKpKqKr is ...
Then v ent (one of p, q, r...) and KvKpKqKr... a consistent conjunction. (3) Q.E.D. holds.
Premises/Added/Deleted/Inference/Conclusion/Concluding/Inference/Geach: although the modus ponens becomes invalid by added premises, a conclusion from the modus ponens will remain valid if it does not become invalid by an added premise.
Because we do not get any conclusions from inconsistent practical premises.
But if p and Cpq are consistent, it is also p and q. So Kpq will be consistent. And q ent cpq. But then Fq is a correct conclusion of Fp and FCpq!
Practical Inference/Kenny/Geach: surprising result: in practical closing, the FKpq command is not deductively equivalent to the pair Ep, Eq.
But this is not really paradoxical: the equivalence would lead to an absurd result, because for the same reason the set Fp, Fq, Fr... would be deductively equivalent to FKpKqKr...
But this latter order could only be fulfilled if it were guaranteed that all our wishes could be fulfilled at the same time.
We therefore need further closing rules for practical closure.
>Desires, >Will, >Deontic logic.

1. A. Kenny (1966). "Practical Inference" in: Analysis 26,3. 1966.

Kenn I
A. Kenny
A New History of Western Philosophy


Gea I
P.T. Geach
Logic Matters Oxford 1972

The author or concept searched is found in the following controversies.
Disputed term/author/ism Author Vs Author
Entry
Reference
Hare, R.M. Prior Vs Hare, R.M. I 65
Command/Prior: giving a command is different from the command and the imperative sentence is yet something else (because a command can be expressed differently). And yet another thing is what the command is about. (For example, about the window that is to be closed).
Ontology/Command: should we then say that the equipment of the universe contains something else, "objective commands", apart from command expressions and windows, imperative sentences?
Objective Command/Prior: two things can be said about this:
a) that someone explains it, i.e. they are the object of commanding, they constitute what is being commanded
b) that they are not forming or binding
c) that they are obeyed. (Ad c) see below)
I 66
Command/Relation/Brackets/Prior: ad a) the common notion that a command is a relation between a commanding person and something that is commanded can be eliminated through proper brackets. Instead of "X commands us/to close the door"
""X commands us to"/"close door".
Here, "commands us to" is not a two-digit predicate, but rather an operator that forms a sentence from a name on the one hand, and from an imperative sentence on the other.
Facts/Ramsey: "There are facts": logical form: "for some p, ". (Special character)
Standards/Prior: analog we could write if there are any standards at all "for some ".
Problem: as far as this is at all comprehensible, it would be a command and not a sentence! Namely the most general command: "Do something."
And so general that even doing nothing would be a case of doing something. (?).
But that does not yet destroy the analogy.
Unlike facts: here it would be impossible that there was any fact, because at least this finding would correspond to a fact, it would then be a fact that there are no facts and that would be a fact, i.e. there must be at least one fact.
I 68
Command/Prior: analog, the command to do something is binding, if any command is binding, even the command to do nothing! It follows that doing nothing could not be binding (in the broad sense of "doing").
But while the command to do something is a necessary command in the sense that it is a command which is binding, if any command is binding, it is therefore also a trivial command like necessary truths as when it rains, it rains or the truth that there is truth. This is trivial.
That is certainly not what people think who insist on "absolute moral standards".
Command/Existence/Indicative/Imperative/Objectivity/Prior: Problem: E.g. "There are commands that have never been expressed and will never be expressed."
Analog: indicative sentence: "There are facts (true propositions) that were never asserted and will never be asserted.
Ramsey: "For some p, p, although it was never asserted and never will be."
analog: imperative sentence: "For some a ("do a"), even though a was never commanded, not will be".
Contradiction: This command has the particularity of being unspecifianble!
Indicative sentence: E.g. "537 + 86251 = 86788 has never been asserted": This does not diminish the truth or plausibility of the sentence.
Is that also true for the (binding) command?
I 69
E.g. "The command to close the door, was binding before anyone expressed it" or "You should have closed the door before someone told you"
according to common translation principles that would have to be translated as:
""I closed the door before..."
i.e. it is a command to already have done something. (Absurd).
Commands should always refer to the future.
((s) Christian commandments are maxims, not commands.)
Prior: but: "you should have closed the door before someone told you does not sound so absurd at all! And it does not means that you now have an obligation with regard to the past.
Nevertheless, it is not clear how the past tense should be introduced in a command.
Problem: the past tense was precisely supposed to affect the commands here, and not the content.

Reducing the objectivity of commands on the objectivity of propositions
Command/Requirement/Objectivity/Existence/Prior: A similar problem exists with requirements (non-binding commands).
Falsity/Ramsey: "There are falsities": logical form: "for some p, it is not the case that p".
Analog: can you say "For some a, not a"?
E.g. "Not (close the door)". Is this simply the command to leave the door open?
But that would not be equivalent to the fact that the command to close the door was not binding, but that the opposite, to leave the door open, is binding.
I.e. it would not be a translation of "There are requirements". But rather of "There are binding prohibitions".
Prior: this is again about commanding and not about the content.
I 70
It looks as if we needed something like Hare's neusticon and phrasticon. PriorVsHare: but I see no reason why the phrasticon could not simply be replaced by indicative sentences.
Notation/McKinsey Hofstadter: "!p" ("shriek"): "Let it be the case that p". Or "See to it that p". "Bring forth p".
Prohibition/Negation/Command/Prior: there are two possibilities here:
a) "!not p": see to it that p does not happen"
b) "not (!p)" as: "you need not worry about it".
Past/Command: if the exclamation mark (shriek) can be modified like this by negation, then perhaps also by past operators? E.g. "Previously: !p". You should ensured p.
Such forms could be called "imperatives" rather than commands.
But this is a radical change to our original program.
Our variables are now just those of the old propositions, and the formulas look very different.
E.g. "Do something" can have two forms:
a) "for some p see to it that p"
b) See to it that (for some p, p).
And these two are probably not equivalent!
I 71
Furthermore, none of these is a parallel of the assertion "For some p, p". I.e. "There are facts" so that it is no longer plausible now, to identify this form with "There are standards". With this seems the hope for "objective commands" to have fallen into disrepute.
The objective part of the command is our old friend, the proposition.
If we want to be realists in ethics, only the old way remains.
Introducing "It should be the case that __" as an operator for forming indicative sentences.

Pri I
A. Prior
Objects of thought Oxford 1971

Pri II
Arthur N. Prior
Papers on Time and Tense 2nd Edition Oxford 2003