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Ideas for '', 'Reply to Professor Marcus' and 'On Interpretation'

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2 ideas

19. Language / F. Communication / 3. Denial
It doesn't have to be the case that in opposed views one is true and the other false [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: It is not necessary that of every affirmation and opposite negation one should be true and the other false. For what holds for things that are does not hold for things that are not but may possibly be or not be.
     From: Aristotle (On Interpretation [c.330 BCE], 19a39)
     A reaction: Thus even if Bivalence holds, and the only truth-values are T and F, it doesn't follow that Excluded Middle holds, which says that every proposition must have one of those two values.
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).