- #1
Dembadon
Gold Member
- 659
- 89
There was a short philosophical debate in my logic course today regarding attributive adjectives and the issues they present in predicate calculus. The professor brought things back on track before it got carried away, but I would like to get some help understanding a few issues I have that arose from the discussion.
Our professor referenced a book he read while in graduate school, but I forget the name of the author (I think his name started with a B). I will ask him and post it later if anyone needs/wants to see it.
Given the following statement:
There are fake diamonds.
My professor said that we are not allowed to infer the following:
There are diamonds.
My 1st issue: I don't see how one can claim that diamonds are fake without first having seen real diamonds. In other words, if fake is an imitation of another thing, how can you have an imitation of something that doesn't exist?
A fellow student used the following example to attempt to explain why the inference in my example is incorrect by saying, "Stating that fake unicorns exist doesn't mean that unicorns exist." This brought up my second issue: If unicorns are fake to begin with, then what the heck is a "fake unicorn"?
Our professor referenced a book he read while in graduate school, but I forget the name of the author (I think his name started with a B). I will ask him and post it later if anyone needs/wants to see it.
Given the following statement:
There are fake diamonds.
My professor said that we are not allowed to infer the following:
There are diamonds.
My 1st issue: I don't see how one can claim that diamonds are fake without first having seen real diamonds. In other words, if fake is an imitation of another thing, how can you have an imitation of something that doesn't exist?
A fellow student used the following example to attempt to explain why the inference in my example is incorrect by saying, "Stating that fake unicorns exist doesn't mean that unicorns exist." This brought up my second issue: If unicorns are fake to begin with, then what the heck is a "fake unicorn"?