ahuff44 comments on 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong

88 Post author: Yvain 26 October 2014 06:05PM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 30 October 2014 06:57:19AM 5 points [-]

arguably, ‘x = 3’ and ‘x² = 9’ do not have truth values, but ‘if x = 3, then x² = 9’ does.

I would say that "x=3" has a function from values of x to truth values, as does "if x = 3, then x² = 9" (a constant function to the value "true").

Comment author: TobyBartels 30 October 2014 01:59:22PM 2 points [-]

Sure, that's one way to look at it. And a function from values of x to truth values is not itself a truth value. You may say that a constant function from values of x to the value True is not itself a truth value either, but it's much closer (after all, you know which one it would be if it were one), so it's a minor shift to your way of looking at it to get what I said.

Now consider ‘If x² = 9, then x = 3’. A lot of people would naturally want to label that False (at least if they remember about negative numbers). As a function from values of x to truth values, this is not constant (and in fact it assigns True to every real value of x except one), so this is not even the same way of looking at things as in my previous paragraph. But it's common.

So if you want implication between non-truth-values to be a truth value consistently, then this is how I would do it.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 30 October 2014 02:48:17PM 0 points [-]

That depends on the domain of x. That and the universal quantifier over its domain are typically omitted when they are clear from the context.

Comment author: TobyBartels 03 November 2014 06:53:26AM 0 points [-]

Yes, if we're talking only about positive numbers, then ‘If x² = 9, then x = 3’ is true.