more on this theme | more from this thinker
Full Idea
Sommers took the 'predicable' terms of any language to come in logically charged pairs. Examples might be red/nonred, massive/massless, tied/untied, in the house/not in the house. The idea that terms can be negated was essential for such pairing.
Gist of Idea
'Predicable' terms come in charged pairs, with one the negation of the other
Source
report of Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005]) by George Engelbretsen - Trees, Terms and Truth 2
Book Ref
'The Old New Logic', ed/tr. Oderberg,David S. [MIT 2005], p.26
A Reaction
If, as Rumfitt says, we learn affirmation and negation as a single linguistic operation, this would fit well with it, though Rumfitt doubtless (as a fan of classical logic) prefers to negation sentences.
Related Ideas
Idea 18903 Sommers promotes the old idea that negation basically refers to terms [Sommers, by Engelbretsen]
Idea 18906 Negating a predicate term and denying its unnegated version are quite different [Engelbretsen]
| 18904 | 'Predicable' terms come in charged pairs, with one the negation of the other [Sommers, by Engelbretsen] |
| 18903 | Sommers promotes the old idea that negation basically refers to terms [Sommers, by Engelbretsen] |
| 18893 | Translating into quantificational idiom offers no clues as to how ordinary thinkers reason [Sommers] |
| 18894 | Predicates form a hierarchy, from the most general, down to names at the bottom [Sommers] |
| 18901 | Truthmakers are facts 'of' a domain, not something 'in' the domain [Sommers] |
| 18895 | Logic which maps ordinary reasoning must be transparent, and free of variables [Sommers] |
| 18900 | Unfortunately for realists, modern logic cannot say that some fact exists [Sommers] |
| 18898 | In standard logic, names are the only way to refer [Sommers] |
| 18897 | Predicate logic has to spell out that its identity relation '=' is an equivalent relation [Sommers] |