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Ideas for '', 'The Great Event' and 'Briefings on Existence'

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2 ideas

19. Language / F. Communication / 3. Denial
We must either assert or deny any single predicate of any single subject [Badiou]
     Full Idea: There can be nothing intermediate to an assertion and a denial. We must either assert or deny any single predicate of any single subject.
     From: Alain Badiou (Briefings on Existence [1998], 1011b24)
     A reaction: The first sentence seems to be bivalence, and the second sentence excluded middle.
We learn 'not' along with affirmation, by learning to either affirm or deny a sentence [Rumfitt]
     Full Idea: The standard view is that affirming not-A is more complex than affirming the atomic sentence A itself, with the latter determining its sense. But we could learn 'not' directly, by learning at once how to either affirm A or reject A.
     From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], IV)
     A reaction: [compressed] This seems fairly anti-Fregean in spirit, because it looks at the psychology of how we learn 'not' as a way of clarifying what we mean by it, rather than just looking at its logical behaviour (and thus giving it a secondary role).