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From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Aristotle on language
Message-ID: <655@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 13-Sep-85 20:28:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.655
Posted: Fri Sep 13 20:28:25 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 16-Sep-85 21:09:37 EDT
References: <303@frog.UUCP>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 15
Summary: Aristotle was wrong



Unfortunately, words do not mean a single thing, or even a finite list
of things.  They instead have a fuzzy range of meanings.  Thus one can
say "this wall is definitely yellow", and "that wall is definitely not
yellow", while not being able to say for sure whether another wall is
yellow or not.  (Some people would call it green.)  The fact that some
definite statements can be made is enough to enable discourse; it need
not be true that every clear statement can be assigned a truth value.
(I am not even considering self-referential statements; for purposes
of this discussion, they are not "clear statements".)

Read some Nietzche.

Frank Adams                           ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108