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word class:noun
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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS
A_Brief_History_of_Everything
Enchiridion_text
Full_Circle
Heart_of_Matter
On_Interpretation
Process_and_Reality
The_Categories
The_Divine_Milieu
The_Republic
The_Seals_of_Wisdom
The_Use_and_Abuse_of_History
The_Wit_and_Wisdom_of_Alfred_North_Whitehead
The_Yoga_Sutras
Toward_the_Future

IN CHAPTERS TITLE

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
000_-_Humans_in_Universe
0.00_-_The_Book_of_Lies_Text
0.05_-_Letters_to_a_Child
01.07_-_Blaise_Pascal_(1623-1662)
02.05_-_Federated_Humanity
02.11_-_New_World-Conditions
02.12_-_The_Ideals_of_Human_Unity
02.14_-_Panacea_of_Isms
05.02_-_Physician,_Heal_Thyself
05.05_-_In_Quest_of_Reality
10.08_-_Consciousness_as_Freedom
1.01_-_MAPS_OF_EXPERIENCE_-_OBJECT_AND_MEANING
1.02_-_MAPS_OF_MEANING_-_THREE_LEVELS_OF_ANALYSIS
1.02_-_Prayer_of_Parashara_to_Vishnu
1.02_-_SOCIAL_HEREDITY_AND_PROGRESS
1.02_-_The_Necessity_of_Magick_for_All
1.02_-_The_Pit
1.02_-_The_Vision_of_the_Past
1.03_-_.REASON._IN_PHILOSOPHY
1.03_-_THE_EARTH_IN_ITS_EARLY_STAGES
1.04_-_HOW_THE_.TRUE_WORLD._ULTIMATELY_BECAME_A_FABLE
1.04_-_KAI_VALYA_PADA
1.04_-_SOME_REFLECTIONS_ON_PROGRESS
1.04_-_THE_APPEARANCE_OF_ANOMALY_-_CHALLENGE_TO_THE_SHARED_MAP
1.04_-_Wherefore_of_World?
1.05_-_2010_and_1956_-_Doomsday?
1.05_-_Christ,_A_Symbol_of_the_Self
1.05_-_Computing_Machines_and_the_Nervous_System
1.05_-_Consciousness
1.05_-_Knowledge_by_Aquaintance_and_Knowledge_by_Description
1.05_-_THE_HOSTILE_BROTHERS_-_ARCHETYPES_OF_RESPONSE_TO_THE_UNKNOWN
1.05_-_The_Universe__The_0_=_2_Equation
1.05_-_Yoga_and_Hypnotism
1.06_-_Being_Human_and_the_Copernican_Principle
1.06_-_The_Sign_of_the_Fishes
1.06_-_Yun_Men's_Every_Day_is_a_Good_Day
1.079_-_The_Snatchers
1.07_-_Hui_Ch'ao_Asks_about_Buddha
1.07_-_On_Our_Knowledge_of_General_Principles
1.07_-_The_Farther_Reaches_of_Human_Nature
1.07_-_The_Three_Schools_of_Magick_2
1.07_-_TRUTH
1.08a_-_The_Ladder
1.08_-_Independence_from_the_Physical
1.09_-_Fundamental_Questions_of_Psycho_therapy
1.09_-_SKIRMISHES_IN_A_WAY_WITH_THE_AGE
1.09_-_Sri_Aurobindo_and_the_Big_Bang
1.1.04_-_Philosophy
1.10_-_On_our_Knowledge_of_Universals
1.10_-_The_Secret_of_the_Veda
1.11_-_FAITH_IN_MAN
1.11_-_On_Intuitive_Knowledge
1.11_-_Woolly_Pomposities_of_the_Pious_Teacher
1.12_-_Independence
1.12_-_Truth_and_Knowledge
1.13_-_The_Kings_of_Rome_and_Alba
1.13_-_Under_the_Auspices_of_the_Gods
1.14_-_The_Limits_of_Philosophical_Knowledge
1.14_-_TURMOIL_OR_GENESIS?
1.17_-_DOES_MANKIND_MOVE_BIOLOGICALLY_UPON_ITSELF?
1.18_-_FAITH
1.21_-_My_Theory_of_Astrology
1.21_-_The_Spiritual_Aim_and_Life
1.23_-_Improvising_a_Temple
1.26_-_Mental_Processes_-_Two_Only_are_Possible
1.27_-_On_holy_solitude_of_body_and_soul.
1.29_-_What_is_Certainty?
1.47_-_Reincarnation
1.49_-_Thelemic_Morality
1.67_-_Faith
1958-01-08_-_Sri_Aurobindos_method_of_exposition_-_The_mind_as_a_public_place_-_Mental_control_-_Sri_Aurobindos_subtle_hand
1.A_-_ANTHROPOLOGY,_THE_SOUL
1f.lovecraft_-_Discarded_Draft_of
1f.lovecraft_-_Medusas_Coil
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Disinterment
1.pbs_-_Peter_Bell_The_Third
1.poe_-_Eureka_-_A_Prose_Poem
1.poe_-_The_Power_Of_Words_Oinos.
1.rb_-_Sordello_-_Book_the_Fifth
1.whitman_-_Apostroph
1.whitman_-_Night_On_The_Prairies
1.whitman_-_Respondez!
1.whitman_-_Says
2.01_-_On_Books
2.02_-_The_Ishavasyopanishad_with_a_commentary_in_English
2.03_-_DEMETER
2.04_-_The_Divine_and_the_Undivine
2.0_-_THE_ANTICHRIST
2.1.02_-_Nature_The_World-Manifestation
2.11_-_The_Boundaries_of_the_Ignorance
2.12_-_The_Realisation_of_Sachchidananda
2.14_-_The_Unpacking_of_God
2.15_-_Reality_and_the_Integral_Knowledge
2.2.03_-_The_Science_of_Consciousness
2.22_-_Rebirth_and_Other_Worlds;_Karma,_the_Soul_and_Immortality
2.23_-_Man_and_the_Evolution
2.28_-_The_Divine_Life
3.00_-_The_Magical_Theory_of_the_Universe
3.01_-_THE_BIRTH_OF_THOUGHT
3.02_-_King_and_Queen
3.02_-_Nature_And_Composition_Of_The_Mind
3.04_-_LUNA
3.09_-_Of_Silence_and_Secrecy
3.18_-_Of_Clairvoyance_and_the_Body_of_Light
3.20_-_Of_the_Eucharist
3.3.1_-_Illness_and_Health
37.07_-_Ushasti_Chakrayana_(Chhandogya_Upanishad)
3.7.1.12_-_Karma_and_Justice
3.7.2.01_-_The_Foundation
3_-_Commentaries_and_Annotated_Translations
4.01_-_The_Presence_of_God_in_the_World
4.02_-_The_Psychology_of_the_Child_Archetype
4.03_-_Prayer_to_the_Ever-greater_Christ
4.05_-_The_Instruments_of_the_Spirit
4.0_-_NOTES_TO_ZARATHUSTRA
4.1.3_-_Imperfections_and_Periods_of_Arrest
5_-_The_Phenomenology_of_the_Spirit_in_Fairytales
Apology
Avatars_of_the_Tortoise
Averroes_Search
Blazing_P2_-_Map_the_Stages_of_Conventional_Consciousness
Blazing_P3_-_Explore_the_Stages_of_Postconventional_Consciousness
BOOK_II._--_PART_I._ANTHROPOGENESIS.
BOOK_II._--_PART_III._ADDENDA._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION
BOOK_I._--_PART_III._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
Book_of_Imaginary_Beings_(text)
BOOK_VI._-_Of_Varros_threefold_division_of_theology,_and_of_the_inability_of_the_gods_to_contri_bute_anything_to_the_happiness_of_the_future_life
BOOK_XIV._-_Of_the_punishment_and_results_of_mans_first_sin,_and_of_the_propagation_of_man_without_lust
BOOK_XXII._-_Of_the_eternal_happiness_of_the_saints,_the_resurrection_of_the_body,_and_the_miracles_of_the_early_Church
BS_1_-_Introduction_to_the_Idea_of_God
Cratylus
ENNEAD_01.03_-_Of_Dialectic,_or_the_Means_of_Raising_the_Soul_to_the_Intelligible_World.
ENNEAD_01.08_-_Of_the_Nature_and_Origin_of_Evils.
ENNEAD_03.08b_-_Of_Nature,_Contemplation_and_Unity.
ENNEAD_03.09_-_Fragments_About_the_Soul,_the_Intelligence,_and_the_Good.
ENNEAD_04.03_-_Psychological_Questions.
ENNEAD_04.05_-_Psychological_Questions_III._-_About_the_Process_of_Vision_and_Hearing.
ENNEAD_05.05_-_That_Intelligible_Entities_Are_Not_External_to_the_Intelligence_of_the_Good.
ENNEAD_05.08_-_Concerning_Intelligible_Beauty.
ENNEAD_06.04_-_The_One_Identical_Essence_is_Everywhere_Entirely_Present.
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_and_Identical_Being_is_Everywhere_Present_In_Its_Entirety.345
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_Identical_Essence_is_Everywhere_Entirely_Present.
Gods_Script
Gorgias
Liber_46_-_The_Key_of_the_Mysteries
Liber_71_-_The_Voice_of_the_Silence_-_The_Two_Paths_-_The_Seven_Portals
Meno
Phaedo
Sophist
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_1
The_Act_of_Creation_text
Theaetetus
The_Dwellings_of_the_Philosophers
The_Logomachy_of_Zos
The_Monadology
The_Riddle_of_this_World
The_Theologians

PRIMARY CLASS

SIMILAR TITLES
proposition

DEFINITIONS

1. THE PROPOSITIONAL CALCULUS formalizes the use of the sentential connectives and, or, not, if . . . then. Various systems of notation are current, of which we here adopt a particular one for purposes of exposition. We use juxtaposition to denote conjunction ("pq" to mean "p and q"), the sign ∨ to denote inclusive disjunction ("p ∨ q" to mean ("p or q or both"), the sign + to denote exclusive disiunction ("p + q" to mean "p or q but not both"), the sign ∼ to denote negation ("∼p" to mean "not p"), the sign ⊃ to denote the conditional ("p ⊃ q" to mean "if p then q," or "not both p and not-q"), the sign ≡ to denote the biconditional ("p ≡ q" to mean "p if and only if q," or "either p and q or not-p and not-q"), and the sign | to denote alternative denial ("p | q" to mean "not both p and q"). -- The word or is ambiguous in ordinary English usage between inclusive disjunction and exclusive disjunction, and distinct notations are accordingly provided for the two meanings of the word, The notations "p ⊃ q" and "p ≡ q" are sometimes read as "p implies q" and "p is equivalent to q" respectively. These readings must, however, be used with caution, since the terms implication and equivalence are often used in a sense which involves some relationship between the logical forms of the propositions (or the sentences) which they connect, whereas the validity of p ⊃ q and of p ≡ q requires no such relationship. The connective ⊃ is also said to stand for "material implication," distinguished from formal implication (§ 3 below) and strict implication (q. v.). Similarly the connective ≡ is said to stand for "material equivalence."

(2) a proposition about a method of obtaining knowledge: that every hypothesis should be subjected to continual testing; that the only or the best or a reliable method of obtaining knowledge of one or more of the above kinds is to doubt until something indubitable or as nearly indubitable as possible is found; that wherever evidence is indecisive, judgment should be suspended; that knowledge of all or certain kinds at some point rests on unproved postulates or assumptions;

(2) A proposition about origins of ideas, concepts, or universals: that they or at least those of them having existential reference are derived solely or primarily from experience or some significant part of experience.

(2) In ethics: in the narrower traditional sense, intuitionism is the view that certain actions or kinds of action may be known to be right or wrong by a direct intuition of their rightness or wrongness, without any consideration of the value of their consequences. In this sense intuitionism is opposed to utilitarian and teleological ethics, and is most recently represented by the neo-intuitionists at Oxford, H. A. Prichard, E. F. Carritt, W. D. Ross. It is sometimes said to involve the view that the organ of ethical insight is non-rational and even unique. It takes, according to Sidgwick, three forms. Perceptual intuitionism holds that only judgments relating to the rightness or wrongness of particular acts are intuitive. Dogmatic intuitionism holds that some general material propositions relating to the rightness or wrongness of kinds of acts may also be intuited, e.g. that promises ought to be kept. Philosophical intuitionism holds that it is only certain general propositions about what is right or wrong that are intuitive, and that these are few and purely formal. In the wider more recent sense, intuitionism includes all views in which ethics is made to rest on intuitions, particular or general, as to the rightness, obligatoriness, goodness, oi value of actions or objects. Taken in this sense, intuitionism is the dominant point of view in recent British ethics, and is represented in Europe by the phenomenological ethics of M. Scheler and N. Hartmann, having also proponents in America. That is, it covers not only the deontological intuitionism to be found at Oxford, but also the axiological and even teleological or utilitarian intuitionism to be found in J. Martineau, H. Sidgwick, H. Rashdall, G. E. Moore, J. Laird. Among earlier British moralists it is represented by tho Cambridge Platonists, the Moral Sense School, Clarke, Cumberland, Butler, Price, Reid, Whewell, etc.By saying that the basic propositions of ethics (i.e. of the theory of obligation, of the theory of value, or of both) are intuitive, the intuitionists mean at least that they are ultimate and underivative, primitive and uninferable, as well as synthetic, and sometimes also that they are self-evident and a priori. This implies that one or more of the basic notions of ethics (rightness, goodness, etc.) are indefinable, i.e. simple or unanalysable and unique; and that ethics is autonomous. Intuitionists also hold that rightness and goodness are objective and non-natural. Hence their view is sometimes called objectivism or non-naturalism. The views of Moore and Laird are also sometimes referred to as realistic. See Deontological ethics, Axiological ethics, Teleological ethics, Utilitarianism, Objectivism, Realism, Autonomy of ethics, Non-naturalistic ethics. -- W.K.F.

2. In psychology, the act or process of exercising the mind, the faculty of connecting judgments; the power and fact of using reason; the thought-processes of discussion, debate, argumentation or inference; the manifestation of the discursive property of the mind; the actual use of arguments with a view to convince or persuade; the art and method or proving or demonstrating; the orderly development of thought with a view to, or the attainment of a conclusion believed to be valid. -- The origin, nature and value of reasoning are debated questions, with their answers ranging from spiritualism (reasoning as the exercise of a faculty of the soul) to materialism (reasoning as an epiphenomenon depending on the brain), with all the modern schools of psychology ordering themselves between them. A few points of agreement might be mentioned here: reasoning follows judgment and apprehension, whichever of the last two thought-processes comes first in our psychological development; reasoning proceeds according to four main types, namely deductive, inductive, presumptive and deceptive; reasoning assumes a belief in its own validity undisturbed by doubt, and implies various logical habits and methods which may be organized into a logical doctrine; reasoning requires a reference to some ultimate principles to justify its progress 3. In logic, Reasoning is the process of inference, it is the process of passing from certain propositions already known or assumed to be true, to another truth distinct from them but following from them; it is a discourse or argument which infers one proposition from another, or from a group of others having some common elements between them. The inference is necessary in the case of deductive reasoning; and contingent, probable or wrong, in the case of inductive, presumptive or deceptive reasoning respectively. -- There are various types of reasoning, and proper methods for each type. The definition, discussion, development and evaluation of these types and methods form an important branch of logic and its subdivisions. The details of the application of reasoning to the various sciences, form the subject of methodology. All these types are reducible to one or the other of the two fundamental processes or reasoning, namely deduction and induction. It must be added that the logical study of reasoning is normative logic does not analyze it simply in its natural development, but with a view to guide it towards coherence, validity or truth. -- T.G.

(3) A proposition about the nature of meaning, ideas, concepts, or universals: that they (and thus, some contend, knowledge) "consist of" or "are reducible to" references to directly presented data or content of experience; or that signs standing for meanings, ideas, concepts, or universals refer to experienced content only or primarily; or that the meaning of a term consists simply of the sum of its possible consequences in experience; or that if all possible experiential consequences of two propositions are identical, their meanings are identical.

(3) a proposition about values: that morality is entirely a matter of individual preference; or that there are no fixed and eternal values; or that all values are relative to time, place, or other circumstance (these propositions, properly or improperly, have been called scepticism because of their association with certain other propositions here mentioned);

(3) In any proposition of form 'aRb', where R is a propositional function of two variables, a is termed the referent by contrast with the relatum b. (Due to Whitehead and Russell, Principia Mathematica). -- M.B.

(4) A proposition about the limitations of knowledge: that every possible referent either is something with which one has "direct acquaintance" or consists exclusively of entities with which he is acquainted, or that one can have knowledge of only immediate content of experience; or that although one can have knowledge of existents outside one's own or everyone's experience, that knowledge must always be uncertain, since it is reached through experience.

4. OPPOSITION, IMMEDIATE INFERENCE. The four traditional kinds of categorical propositions -- all S is P, no S is P, some S is P, some S is not P -- customarily designated by the letters A, E, I, O respectively -- may conveniently be represented in the functional calculus of first order (§ 3) by the four forms S(x) ⊃x P(x), S(x) ⊃x ∼P(x), S(xr) ∧x P(x), S(x) ∧x ∼P(x), S and P being taken as functional constants. (For brevity, we shall use the notations S, P, S(x) ⊃x P(x), etc., alike for certain formulas and for the propositional functions or propositions expressed by these formulas.)

(5) A proposition about the nature or tests of truth in which proposition some relation or other between experience and truth is taken to be definitive of either the nature of truth or the means of its identification.

(5) an attitude, belief, postulate, assumption, assertion, or tendency favoring any of the above propositions or methods; an attitude of complete or dogmatic disbelief, an attitude involving greater inclination to disbelief than to belief; an attitude involving no greater inclination to belief than to disbelief nor to disbelief than to belief, but favoring dispassionate consideration. Scepticism may be treated as such attitudes, beliefs, etc., as applied to all or only certain particular propositions;

(6) A proposition about the existent or the real or both that experience(s) is (are) the sole existent(s) or reality or both; or the negation of the proposition that nature is a deductive process or is rational through and through; or a proposition that the variable, particular, changing, and contingent are "nearer to the heart of things" than the universal, immutable, and necessary.

(6) a proposition negating the sincerity, rectitude, or existence of motives of human conduct other than selfish or at least negating their significance in human affairs, or a proposition expressing lack of confidence in the worth or hope of success of any one or all of man's enterprises (cynicism), or an attitude, belief, postulate, assumption, assertion, or tendency favoring such propositions, or moroseness, surliness, or pessimism growing out of cynicism or any of the aforesaid attitudes, beliefs, etc. Confusion of cynicism with other conceptions of scepticism may result in great misunderstanding and harm. See Pyrrhonism, agnosticism. -- M.T.K.

(7) A combination of two or more of the above propositions, of approximations to them, of their respective immediate implications, or of their mediate implications when taken together or in conjunction with other premises.

(9) An assertion, belief, hypothesis, assumption, postulation, or attitude favoring any of the above propositions, practices, methods, or methodologies; or an attitude of dependence upon sense rather than intellect, or an insistence upon fact as against fiction, fancy, or interpretation of fact (supposing fact and interpretation separable); or an attitude favorable to application of scientific attitude or method to inquiry, or a temperament close to common sense and practicality; or a "tough-minded" temperament or attitude involving considerable disillusionment and holding facts (q.v.) worthy of utmost intellectual respect; or a tendency to rely on things' being as they appear.

A propositional function F may also be said to be possible. In this case the meaning may be either simply (Ex)F(x); or that (Ex)F(x) is possible in one of the senses just described; or that F(x) is permitted under some particulai system of conventions or code of laws. As an example of the last we may take "It is possible for a woman to be President of the United States." Here F is λx[x is a woman and x is a President of the United States], and the code of laws in question is the Constitution of the United States. -- A.C.

A proposition may also be said to be necessary if it is a consequence of some accepted set of propositions (indicated by the context), even if this accepted set of propositions is not held to be a priori. See Necessity.

Absorption: The name law of absorption is given to either of the two dually related theorems of the propositional calculus, [p ∨ pq] ≡ p,   p[p ∨ q] ≡ p, or either of the two corresponding dually related theorems of the algebra of classes, a ∪ (a ∩ b) = a, a ∩ (a ∪ b) = a. Any valid inference of the propositional calculus which amounts to replacing A ∨ AB by A, or A[A ∨ B] by A, or any valid inference of the algebra of classes which amounts to replacing A ∪ (A ∩ B) by A, or A ∩ (A ∪ B) by A, is called absorption.

According to a view which is widely held by mathematicians, it is characteristic of a mathematical discipline that it begins with a set of undefined elements, properties, functions, and relations, and a set of unproved propositions (called axioms or postulates) involving them; and that from these all other propositions (called theorems) of the discipline are to be derived by the methods of formal logic. On its face, as thus stated, this view would identify mathematics with applied logic. It is usually added, however, that the undefined terms, which appear in the role of names of undefined elements, etc., are not really names of particulars at all but are variables, and that the theorems are to be regarded as proved for any values of these variables which render the postulates true. If then each theorem is replaced by the proposition embodying the implication from the conjunction of the postulates to the theorem in question, we have a reduction of mathematics to pure logic. (For a particular example of a set of postulates for a mathematical discipline see the article Arithmetic, foundations of.)

A contradiction in terms, concepts, or propositions forming an inconsistent triad (Mrs. Ladd-Franklin), a set of three propositions such that if any two are true the third must be false; thus any two will strictly imply the contradictory of the third. An antilogism may be obtained from any strictly valid Aristotelian syllogism by contradicting the conclusion, q.v. Antilogism. -- C.A.B.

A dyadic function f, other than a propositional function, is symmetric if, for all pairs of arguments, x, y, belonging to the range of f, f(x, y) = f(y, x). An n-adic function f is symmetric if, for any set of n arguments belonging to the range of f, the same value of the function is obtained no rmtter how the arguments are permuted among themselves (i.e., if the value of the function is independent of the order of the arguments).

Affirmation of the consequent: The fallacy of affirmation of the consequent is the fallacious inference from B and A ⊃ B to A. The law of affirmation of the consequent is the theorem of the propositional calculus, q ⊃ [p ⊃ q]. -- A. C.

affirmative ::: a. --> Confirmative; ratifying; as, an act affirmative of common law.
That affirms; asserting that the fact is so; declaratory of what exists; answering "yes" to a question; -- opposed to negative; as, an affirmative answer; an affirmative vote.
Positive; dogmatic.
Expressing the agreement of the two terms of a proposition.


Affirmative proposition: In traditional logic, propositions A, I were called affirmative, and E, O, negative (see logic, formal, § 4). It is doubtful whether this distinction can be satisfactorily extended to propositions (or even to sentences) generally. -- A.C.

A formula of the pure functional calculus of first order which contains no free individual variables is said to be satisfiable if it is possible to determine the underlying non-empty domain of individuals and to give meanings to the propositional and functional variables contained -- namely to each propositional variable a meaning as a particular proposition and to each n-adic functional variable a meaning as an n-adic propositional function of individuals (of the domain in question) -- in such a way that (under the accepted meanings of the sentential connectives, the quantifiers, and application of function to argument) the formula becomes true. The meaning of the last word, even for abstract, not excluding infinite, domains, must be presupposed -- a respect in which this definition differs sharply from most others made in this article.

Algebra of logic is the name given to the Nineteenth Century form of the calculi of classes and propositions. It is distinguished from the contemporary forms of these calculi primarily by the absence of formalization as a logistic system (q.v.) The propositional calculus was also at first either absent or not clearly distinguished from the class calculus; the distinction between the two was made by Peirce and afterwards more sharply by Schröder (1891) but the identity of notation was retained.

Allgemeingültig: (Ger. allgemein + gelten, universally valid) A proposition or judgment which is universally valid, or necessary. Such propositions may be either empirical, i.e., dependent upon experience, or a priori, i.e., independent of all experience. In Kant's theoretical philosophy the necessary forms of the sensibility and understanding are declared to have universal validity a priori, because they are the sine qua non, of any and all experience. -- O.F.K.

amphibology ::: n. --> A phrase, discourse, or proposition, susceptible of two interpretations; and hence, of uncertain meaning. It differs from equivocation, which arises from the twofold sense of a single term.

analysis ::: n. --> A resolution of anything, whether an object of the senses or of the intellect, into its constituent or original elements; an examination of the component parts of a subject, each separately, as the words which compose a sentence, the tones of a tune, or the simple propositions which enter into an argument. It is opposed to synthesis.
The separation of a compound substance, by chemical processes, into its constituents, with a view to ascertain either (a) what elements it contains, or (b) how much of each element is present.


An exact definition is of some importance in view of the tendency of some contemporary logicians to replace the use of the term proposition by that of sentence.

Antecedent: In a sentence of the form A ⊃ B ("if A then B"), the constituent sentences A and B are called antecedent and consequent respectively. Or the same terminology may be applied to propositions expressed by these sentences. -- A. C.

Antilogism: If in the syllogism in Barbara the conclusion is replaced by its contradictory there is obtained the following set of three (formulas representing) propositions, M(x) ⊃x P(x), S(x) ⊃x M(x), S(x) ∧x ∼P(x), from any two of which the negation of the third may be inferred. Such an inconsistent triad of propositions is called an antilogism.

apart ::: adv. --> Separately, in regard to space or company; in a state of separation as to place; aside.
In a state of separation, of exclusion, or of distinction, as to purpose, use, or character, or as a matter of thought; separately; independently; as, consider the two propositions apart.
Aside; away.
In two or more parts; asunder; to piece; as, to take a piece of machinery apart.


Apophansis: A Greek word for proposition involving etymologically a reference to its realist onto-logical background (Greek root of phaos, light). In this sense, a proposition expresses the illumination of its subject by its predicate or predicates; or again, It makes explicit the internal luminosity of its subject by positing against it as predicates its essential or accidental constituents. The Aristotelian apophansis or logosapopkantikos denotes the fundamental subject-predicate form, either as an independent propositlonal form or as a syllogistic conclusion, to which all other types of propositions may be reduced by analysis and deduction. It cannot be said that the controversies initiated by modern symbolic logic have destroyed the ontological or operational value of the Aristotelian apophantic form. -- T.G.

a posteriori ::: --> Characterizing that kind of reasoning which derives propositions from the observation of facts, or by generalizations from facts arrives at principles and definitions, or infers causes from effects. This is the reverse of a priori reasoning.
Applied to knowledge which is based upon or derived from facts through induction or experiment; inductive or empirical.


argue ::: v. i. --> To invent and offer reasons to support or overthrow a proposition, opinion, or measure; to use arguments; to reason.
To contend in argument; to dispute; to reason; -- followed by with; as, you may argue with your friend without convincing him. ::: v. t.


argumentation ::: n. --> The act of forming reasons, making inductions, drawing conclusions, and applying them to the case in discussion; the operation of inferring propositions, not known or admitted as true, from facts or principles known, admitted, or proved to be true.
Debate; discussion.


argument ::: n. --> Proof; evidence.
A reason or reasons offered in proof, to induce belief, or convince the mind; reasoning expressed in words; as, an argument about, concerning, or regarding a proposition, for or in favor of it, or against it.
A process of reasoning, or a controversy made up of rational proofs; argumentation; discussion; disputation.
The subject matter of a discourse, writing, or artistic


Argument: See Function. Argumentum a fortiori: An argument from analogy which shows that the proposition advanced is more admissible than one previously conceded by an opponent. -- J.J.R.

Argumentum ex concesso: An inference founded on a proposition which an opponent has already admitted. -- J.J.R.

Aristotle divides the sciences into the theoretical, the practical and the productive, the aim of the first being disinterested knowledge, of the second the guidance of conduct, and of the third the guidance of the arts. The science now called logic, by him known as "analytic", is a discipline preliminary to all the others, since its purpose is to set forth the conditions that must be observed by all thinking which has truth as its aim. Science, in the strict sense of the word, is demonstrated knowledge of the causes of things. Such demonstrated knowledge is obtained by syllogistic deduction from premises in themselves certain. Thus the procedure of science differs from dialectic, which employs probable premises, and from eristic, which aims not at truth but at victory in disputation. The center, therefore, of Aristotle's logic is the syllogism, or that form of reasoning whereby, given two propositions, a third follows necessarily from them. The basis of syllogistic inference is the presence of a term common to both premises (the middle term) so related as subj ect or predicate to each of the other two terms that a conclusion may be drawn regarding the relation of these two terms to one another. Aristotle was the first to formulate the theory of the syllogism, and his minute analysis of its various forms was definitive, so far as the subject-predicate relation is concerned; so that to this part of deductive logic but little has been added since his day. Alongside of deductive reasoning Aristotle recognizes the necessity of induction, or the process whereby premises, particularly first premises, are established. This involves passing from the particulars of sense experience (the things more knowable to us) to the universal and necessary principles involved in sense experience (the things more knowable in themselves). Aristotle attaches most importance, in this search for premises, to the consideration of prevailing beliefs (endoxa) and the examination of the difficulties (aporiai) that have been encountered in the solution of the problem in hand. At some stage in the survey of the field and the theories previously advanced the universal connection sought for is apprehended; and apprehended, Aristotle eventually says, by the intuitive reason, or nous. Thus knowledge ultimately rests upon an indubitable intellectual apprehension; yet for the proper employment of the intuitive reason a wide empirical acquaintance with the subject-matter is indispensable.

Aristotle's Illusion: See Aristotle's Experiment. Arithmetic, foundations of: Arithmetic (i.e., the mathematical theory of the non-negative integers, 0, 1, 2, . . .) may be based on the five following postulates, which are due to Peano (and Dedekind, from whom Peano's ideas were partly derived): N(0) N(x) ⊃x N(S(x)). N(x) ⊃x [N(y) ⊃y [[S(x) = S(y)] ⊃x [x = y]]]. N(x) ⊃x ∼[S(x) = 0]. F(0)[N(x)F(x) ⊃x F(S(x))] ⊃F [N(x) ⊃x F(x)] The undefined terms are here 0, N, S, which may be interpreted as denoting, respectively, the non-negative integer 0, the propositional function to be a non-negative integer, and the function +1 (so that S(x) is x+l). The underlying logic may be taken to be the functional calculus of second order (Logic, formal, § 6), with the addition of notations for descriptions and for functions from individuals to individuals, and the individual constant 0, together with appropriate modifications and additions to the primitive formulas and primitive rules of inference (the axiom of infinity is not needed because the Peano postulates take its place). By adding the five postulates of Peano as primitive formulas to this underlying logic, a logistic system is obtained which is adequate to extant elementary number theory (arithmetic) and to all methods of proof which have found actual employment in elementary number theory (and are normally considered to belong to elementary number theory). But of course, the system, if consistent, is incomplete in the sense of Gödel's theorem (Logic, formal, § 6).

As a corollary of this, every theorem of the pure propositional calculus (§ 1) of the form A ≡ B has a corresponding theorem of the algebra of classes obtained by replacing the principal occurrence of ≡ by =, elsewhere replacing negation, inclusive disjunction, and conjunction respectively by complementation, logical sum, and logical product, and at the same time replacing propositional variables by class variables. Likewise, every theorem A of the pure propositional calculus has a corresponding theorem B = ∨ of the algebra of classes, where B is obtained from A by replacing negation, inclusive disjunction, and conjunction respectively by complementation, logical sum, and logical product, and replacing propositional variables by class variables.

As another corollary of this, or otherwise, we obtain also the following theorem about the propositional calculus: If A ≡ B is a theorem, and D is the result of replacing a particular occurrence of A by B in the formula C, then the inference from C to D is a valid inference. The dual of a formula C of the propositional calculus is obtained by interchanging conjunction and disjunction throughout the formula, i.e., by replacing AB everywhere by A ∨ B, and A ∨ B by AB. Thus, e.g., the dual of the formula ∼[pq ∨ ∼r] is the formula ∼[[p ∨ q] ∼r]. In forming the dual of a formula which is expressed with the aid of the defined connectives, |, ⊃, ≡, +, it is convenient to remember that the effect of interchanging conjunction and (inclusive) disjunction is to replace A|B by ∼A∼B, to replace A ⊃ B by ∼A B; and to interchange ≡ and +.

As corollaries of this we have proofs of the consistency of the propositional calculus (if A is any formula, A and ∼A cannot both be tautologies and hence cannot both be theorems) and of the completeness of the propositional calculus (it can be shown that if any formula not already a theorem, and hence not a tautology, is added to the list of primitive formulas, the calculus becomes inconsistent on the basis of the two rules, substitution and modus ponens).

A sentence of the form A ⊃ B (or a proposition expressed by such a sentence) -- verbally, "if A then B" -- may be called a conditional sentence (or proposition). -- A. C.

A set of propositional functions is inconsistent if there is some propositional function such that their conjunction formally implies (see Logic, formal, § 3) both it and its negation.

As pointed out by Lukasiewicz, these laws of the propositional calculus were known already (in verbal form) to Ockham. The attachment of De Morgan's name to the corresponding laws of the algebra of classes appears to be historically more correct.

As regards exclusive disjunction in the propositional calculus, the caution should be noted that, although p + q is the exclusive disjunction of p and q, and although + obeys an associative law, nevertheless [p + q] + r is not the exclusive disjunction of the three propositions p, q, r -- but is rather, "Either all three or one and one only of p, q, r." -- A.C.

Assertion: Frege introduced the assertion sign, in 1879, as a means of indicating the difference between asserting a proposition as true and merely naming a proposition (e.g., in order to make an assertion about it, that it has such and such consequences, or the like). Thus, with an appropriate expression A, the notation |−A would be used to make the assertion, "The unlike magnetic poles attract one another," while the notation −A would correspond rather to the noun clause, "that the unlike magnetic poles attract one another." Later Frege adopted the usage that propositional expressions (as noun clauses) are proper names of truth values and modified his use of the assertion sign accordingly, employing say A (or −A) to denote the truth value thereof that the unlike magnetic poles attract one another and |−A to express the assertion that this truth value is truth.

Associative law: Any law of the form, x o (y o z) = (x o y) o z, where o is a dyadic operation (function) and x o y is the result of applying the operation to x and y (the value of the function for the arguments x and y). Instead of the sign of equality, there may also appear the sign of the biconditional (in the propositional calculus), or of other relations having properties similar to equality in the discipline in question.

Assumption: A proposition which is taken or posed in order to draw inferences from it; or the act of so taking, posing, or assuming a proposition. The motive for an assumption may be (but need not necessarily be) a belief in the truth, or possible truth, of the proposition assumed; or the motive may be an attempt to refute the proposition by reductio ad absurdum (q.v.). The word assumption has also sometimes been used as a synonym of axiom, or postulate (see the article Mathematics). -- A.C.

assumption ::: n. --> The act of assuming, or taking to or upon one&

Atomism: As contrasted with synechism, the view that there are discrete irreducible elements of finite spatial or temporal span. E.g., the atomic doctrine of Democritus that the real world consists of qualitatively similar atoms of diverse shapes. Lucretius, De Natura Rerurn. See Epicurus. Cf. K. Lasswitz, Gesch. d. Atomismus. As contrasted with the view that certain elements are necessarily connected, or even related at all, the doctrine that some entities are only contingently related or are completely independent. In Russell (Scientific Method in Philosophy), Logical Atomism is the view that relations are external and that some true propositions are without simpler constituents in a given system, such propositions are "basic" with respect to that system. In political philosophy, atomism is syn. of particularism. As contrasted with the view that certain entities are analyzable, the doctrine that some entitles are ultimately simple. E.g., Russell's doctrine that there are certain simple, unanalyzable atomic propositions of which other propositions are constituted by compounding or generalization. -- C.A.B.

Attribute: Commonly, what is proper to a thing (Latm, ad-tribuere, to assign, to ascribe, to bestow). Loosely assimilated to a quality, a property, a characteristic, a peculiarity, a circumstance, a state, a category, a mode or an accident, though there are differences among all these terms. For example, a quality is an inherent property (the qualities of matter), while an attribute refers to the actual properties of a thing only indirectly known (the attributes of God). Another difference between attribute and quality is that the former refers to the characteristics of an infinite being, while the latter is used for the characteristics of a finite being. In metaphysics, an attribute is what is indispensable to a spiritual or material substance; or that which expresses the nature of a thing; or that without which a thing is unthinkable. As such, it implies necessarily a relation to some substance of which it is an aspect or conception. But it cannot be a substance, as it does not exist by itself. The transcendental attributes are those which belong to a being because it is a being: there are three of them, the one, the true and the good, each adding something positive to the idea of being. The word attribute has been and still is used more readily, with various implications, by substantialist systems. In the 17th century, for example, it denoted the actual manifestations of substance. [Thus, Descartes regarded extension and thought as the two ultimate, simple and original attributes of reality, all else being modifications of them. With Spinoza, extension and thought became the only known attributes of Deity, each expressing in a definite manner, though not exclusively, the infinite essence of God as the only substance. The change in the meaning of substance after Hume and Kant is best illustrated by this quotation from Whitehead: "We diverge from Descartes by holding that what he has described as primary attributes of physical bodies, are really the forms of internal relationships between actual occasions and within actual occasions" (Process and Reality, p. 471).] The use of the notion of attribute, however, is still favoured by contemporary thinkers. Thus, John Boodin speaks of the five attributes of reality, namely: Energy (source of activity), Space (extension), Time (change), Consciousness (active awareness), and Form (organization, structure). In theodicy, the term attribute is used for the essential characteristics of God. The divine attributes are the various aspects under which God is viewed, each being treated as a separate perfection. As God is free from composition, we know him only in a mediate and synthetic way thrgugh his attributes. In logic, an attribute is that which is predicated or anything, that which Is affirmed or denied of the subject of a proposition. More specifically, an attribute may be either a category or a predicable; but it cannot be an individual materially. Attributes may be essential or accidental, necessary or contingent. In grammar, an attribute is an adjective, or an adjectival clause, or an equivalent adjunct expressing a characteristic referred to a subject through a verb. Because of this reference, an attribute may also be a substantive, as a class-name, but not a proper name as a rule. An attribute is never a verb, thus differing from a predicate which may consist of a verb often having some object or qualifying words. In natural history, what is permanent and essential in a species, an individual or in its parts. In psychology, it denotes the way (such as intensity, duration or quality) in which sensations, feelings or images can differ from one another. In art, an attribute is a material or a conventional symbol, distinction or decoration.

Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430.   St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents.   Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided.   Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients.   S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings").   This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism).   (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment.   Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect.   Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good."   In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love.   In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909).   Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint.   The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value.   (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey).   (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience.   (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria.   (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers:   subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists);   logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality);   metaphysical objectivism (values   --or norms or ideals   --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.

axiom ::: a. --> A self-evident and necessary truth, or a proposition whose truth is so evident as first sight that no reasoning or demonstration can make it plainer; a proposition which it is necessary to take for granted; as, "The whole is greater than a part;" "A thing can not, at the same time, be and not be."
An established principle in some art or science, which, though not a necessary truth, is universally received; as, the axioms of political economy.


barbara ::: n. --> The first word in certain mnemonic lines which represent the various forms of the syllogism. It indicates a syllogism whose three propositions are universal affirmatives.

baroko ::: n. --> A form or mode of syllogism of which the first proposition is a universal affirmative, and the other two are particular negative.

Belief: Acquiescence in the existence of objects (e.g. external things, other minds, God, etc.) or assent to the truth of propositions (e.g. scientific, moral, aesthetic, or metaphysical statements). The belief in objects is frequently immediate and non-inferential; the belief in propositions usually rests on reflection and inference.

belief ::: n. --> Assent to a proposition or affirmation, or the acceptance of a fact, opinion, or assertion as real or true, without immediate personal knowledge; reliance upon word or testimony; partial or full assurance without positive knowledge or absolute certainty; persuasion; conviction; confidence; as, belief of a witness; the belief of our senses.
A persuasion of the truths of religion; faith.
The thing believed; the object of belief.


Bennett and Baylis, Formal Logic, New York. 1937: 6. THEORY OF TYPES. In the functional calculus of first order, variables which appear as arguments of propositional functions or which are bound by quantifiers must be variables which are restricted to a certain limited range, the kinds of propositions about propositional functions which cannot be expressed in the calculus. The uncritical attempt to remove this restriction, by introducing variables of unlimited range (the range covering both non-functions and functions of whatever kind) and modifying accordingly the definition of a formula and the lists of primitive formulas and primitive rules of inference, leads to a system which is formally inconsistent through the possibility of deriving in it certain of the logical paradoxes (q. v.). The functional calculus of first order may, however, be extended in another way, which involves separating propositional functions into a certain array of categories (the hierarchy of types), excluding. propositional functions which do not fall into one of these categories, and -- besides propositional and individual variables -- admitting only variables having a particular one of these categories as range.

Bennett and Baylis, Formal Logic, New York, 1939. 5. CATEGORICAL SYLLOGISM is the name given to certain forms of valid inference (of the functional calculus of first order) which involve as premisses two (formulas representing) categorical propositions, having a term in common -- the middle term. Using S, M, P as minor term, middle term, and major term, respectively, we give the traditional classification into figures and moods. In each case we give the major premiss first, the minor premiss immediately after it, and the conclusion last; in some cases we give a third (existential) premiss which is suppressed in the traditional account. Because of the admission of singular propositions under the heads A, E, two different forms of valid inference appear in some cases under the same figure and mood -- these singular forms are separately listed.

(b) In logic: Disparate terms have been variously defined by logicians: Boethius defined disparate terms as those which are diverse yet not contradictory. See Prantl, Geschichte der Logik, I, 686. Leibniz considered two concepts disparate "if neither of the terms contains the other" that is to say if they are not in the relation of genus and species. (Couturat, Letbntz, Inedits, pp. 53, 62.) --L.W. Disparity: See Disparate. Disputatio: (Scholastic) Out of the quaestiones disputatae developed gradually a rigid form of scholastic disputation. The defensor theseos proposed his thesis and explained or proved it in syllogistic form. The opponentes argued against the thesis and its demonstration by repeating first the proposition and the syllogism proving it, then either by denying the validity of one or the other premises (nego maiorem, minorem) or by making distinctions restricting the proposition (distinguo maiorem, minorem). In the disputations of students under the direction of a magister the latter used to summarize the disputation and to "determine the question". -- R.A.

bocardo ::: n. --> A form of syllogism of which the first and third propositions are particular negatives, and the middle term a universal affirmative.
A prison; -- originally the name of the old north gate in Oxford, which was used as a prison.


propositional ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or in the nature of, a proposition; considered as a proposition; as, a propositional sense.

propositional calculus {propositional logic}

propositional logic "logic" (or "propositional calculus") A system of {symbolic logic} using symbols to stand for whole {propositions} and {logical connectives}. Propositional logic only considers whether a proposition is true or false. In contrast to {predicate logic}, it does not consider the internal structure of propositions. (2002-05-21)

proposition "logic" A statement in {propositional logic} which may be either true or false. Each proposition is typically represented by a letter in a {formula} such as "p =" q", meaning proposition p implies proposition q. (2006-03-14)

proposition ::: n. --> The act of setting or placing before; the act of offering.
That which is proposed; that which is offered, as for consideration, acceptance, or adoption; a proposal; as, the enemy made propositions of peace; his proposition was not accepted.
A statement of religious doctrine; an article of faith; creed; as, the propositions of Wyclif and Huss.
A complete sentence, or part of a sentence consisting


Brentano, Franz: (1838-1917) Who had originally been a Roman Catholic priest may be described as an unorthodox neo-scholastic. According to him the only three forms of psychic activity, representation, judgment and "phenomena of love and hate", are just three modes of "intentionality", i.e., of referring to an object intended. Judgments may be self-evident and thereby characterized as true and in an analogous way love and hate may be characterized as "right". It is on these characterizations that a dogmatic theory of truth and value may be based. In any mental experience the content is merely a "physical phenomenon" (real or imaginary) intended to be referred to, what is psychic is merely the "act" of representing, judging (viz. affirming or denying) and valuing (i.e. loving or hating). Since such "acts" are evidently immaterial, the soul by which they are performed may be proved to be a purely spiritual and imperishable substance and from these and other considerations the existence, spirituality, as also the infinite wisdom, goodness and justice of God may also be demonstrated. It is most of all by his classification of psychic phenomena, his psychology of "acts" and "intentions" and by his doctrine concerning self-evident truths and values that Brentano, who considered himself an Aristotelian, exercised a profound influence on subsequent German philosophers: not only on those who accepted his entire system (such as A. Marty and C. Stumpf) but also those who were somewhat more independent and original and whom he influenced either directly (as A. Meinong and E. Husserl) or indirectly (as M. Scheler and Nik. Hartmann). Main works: Psychologie des Aristoteles, 1867; Vom Dasein Gottes, 1868; Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, 1874; Vom Ursprung sittliches Erkenntnis, 1884; Ueber die Zukunft der Philosophie, 1893; Die vier Phasen der Philos., 1895. -- H.Go. Broad, C.D.: (1887) As a realistic critical thinker Broad takes over from the sciences the methods that are fruitful there, classifies the various propositions used in all the sciences, and defines basic scientific concepts. In going beyond science, he seeks to reach a total view of the world by bringing in the facts and principles of aesthetic, religious, ethical and political experience. In trying to work out a much more general method which attacks the problem of the connection between mathematical concepts and sense-data better than the method of analysis in situ, he gives a simple exposition of the method of extensive abstraction, which applies the mutual relations of objects, first recognized in pure mathematics, to physics. Moreover, a great deal can be learned from Broad on the relation of the principle of relativity to measurement.

Brentano (Psychologie, 1874) takes an existential proposition (Existentialsatz) to be one that directly affirms or denies existence, and shows that each of the four traditional kinds of categorical propositions is reducible (i.e., equivalent) to an existential proposition in this sense; thus, e.g., "all men are mortal" becomes "immortal men do not exist." This definition of an existential proposition and the reduction of categorical propositions to existential appears also in Keynes's Formal Logic, 4th edn. (1906). -- A.C.

(b) That which is asserted in an act of judgment, often called a belief or a proposition. That which is judged may merely be contemplated or considered instead of being affirmed or denied. Opinions differ as to the ontological status of propositions. Some regard them as mental, some as neutral, some as verbal. -- C.A.B.

B. The Probability-Relation. Considering the general grounds of probability, it is pertinent to analyze the proper characteristics of this concept and the valid conditions of its use in inferential processes. Probability presents itself as a special relation between the premisses and the conclusion of an argument, namely when the premisses are true but not completely sufficient to condition the truth of the conclusion. A probable inference must however be logical, even though its result is not certain, for its premisses must be a true sign of its conclusion. The probability-relation may take three aspects: it is inductive, probable or presumptive. In strict induction, there is an essential connection between the facts expressed in the premisses and in the conclusion, which almost forces a factual result from the circumstances of the predication. This type of probability-relation is prominent in induction proper and in statistics. In strict probability, there is a logical connection between the premisses and the conclusion which does not entail a definite factual value for the latter. This type of probability-relation is prominent in mathematical probability and circumstantial evidence. In strict presumption, there is a similarity of characteristics between the fact expressed in the conclusion and the real event if it does or did exist. This type of probability-relation is prominent in analogy and testimony. A presumptive conclusion should be accepted provisionally, and it should have definite consequences capable of being tested. The results of an inductive inference and of a probable inference may often be brought closer together when covering the same field, as the relations involved are fundamental enough for the purpose. This may be done by a qualitative analysis of their implications, or by a quantitative comparison of their elements, as it is done for example in the methods of correlation. But a presumptive inference cannot be reduced to either of the other two forms without losing its identity, because the connection between its elements is of an indefinite character. It may be said that inductive and probable inferences have an intrinsic reasonableness, while presumptive inferences have an extrinsic reasonableness. The former involve determinism within certain limits, while the latter display indeterminacy more prominently. That is why very poor, misleading or wrong conclusions are obtained when mathematical methods are applied to moral acts, judiciary decisions or indirect testimony The activity of the human will has an intricate complexity and variability not easily subjected to calculation. Hence the degree of probability of a presumptive inference can be estimated only by the character and circumstances of its suggested explanation. In moral cases, the discussion and application of the probability-relation leads to the consideration of the doctrines of Probabilism and Probabiliorism which are qualitative. The probability-relation as such has the following general implications which are compatible with its three different aspects, and which may serve as general inferential principle: Any generalization must be probable upon propositions entailing its exemplification in particular cases; Any generalization or system of generalizations forming a theory, must be probable upon propositions following from it by implication; The probability of a given proposition on the basis of other propositions constituting its evidence, is the degree of logical conclusiveness of this evidence with respect to the given proposition; The empirical probability (p = S/E) of a statement S increases as verifications accrue to the evidence E, provided the evidence is taken as a whole; and Numerical probabilities may be assigned to facts or statements only when the evidence includes statistical data or other numerical information which can be treated by the methods of mathematical probability. C. Mathematical Probability. The mathematical theory of probability, which is also called the theory of chances or the theory of relative possibilities, is concerned with the application of mathematical methods to the determination of the likelihood of any event, when there are not sufficient data to determine with certainty its occurrence or failure. As Laplace remarked, it is nothing more than common sense reduced to calculation. But its range goes far beyond that of common sense for it has not only conditioned the growth of various branches of mathematics, such as the theory of errors, the calculus of variations and mathematical statistics, but it has also made possible the establishment of a number of theories in the natural and social sciences, by its actual applications to concrete problems. A distinction is usually made between direct and inverse probability. The determination of a direct or a priori probability involves an inference from given situations or sets of possibilities numerically characterized, to future events related with them. By definition, the direct probability of the occurrence of any particular form of an event, is the ratio of the number of ways in which that form might occur, to the whole number of ways in which the event may occur, all these forms being equiprobable or equally likely. The basic principles referring to a priori probabilities are derived from the analysis of the various logical alternatives involved in any hypothetical questions such as the following: (a) To determine whether a cause, whose exact nature is or is not known, will prove operative or not in certain circumstances; (b) To determine how often an event happens or fails. The comparison of the number of occurrences with that of the failures of an event, considered in simple or complex circumstances, affords a baisis for several cases of probable inference. Thus, theorems may be established to deal with the probability of success and the probability of failure of an event, with the probability of the joint occurrence of several events, with the probability of the alternative occurrence of several events, with the different conditions of frequency of occurrence of an event; with mathematical expectation, and with similar questions. The determination of an a posteriori or inverse probability involves an inference from given situations or events, to past conditions or causes which rnay have contributed to their occurrence. By definition, an inverse probability is the numerical value assigned to each one of a number of possible causes of an actual event that has already occurred; or more generally, it is the numerical value assigned to hypotheses which attempt to explain actual events or circumstances. If an event has occurred as a result of any one of n several causes, the probability that C was the actual cause is Pp/E (Pnpn), when P is the probability that the event could be produced by C if present, and p the probability that C was present before the occurrence of that event. Inverse probability is based on general and special assumptions which cannot always be properly stated, and as there are many different sets of such assumptions, there cannot be a coercive reason for making a definite choice. In particular, the condition of the equiprobability of causes is seldom if ever fulfilled. The distinction between the two kinds of probability, which has led to some confusion in interpreting their grounds and their relations, can be technically ignored now as a result of the adoption of a statistical basis for measuring probabilities. In particular, it is the statistical treatment of correlation which led to the study of probabilities of concurrent phenomena irrespective of their direction in time. This distinction may be retained, howe\er, for the purpose of a general exposition of the subject. Thus, a number of probability theorems are obtained by using various cases of direct and inverse probability involving permutations and combinations, the binomial theorem, the theory of series, and the methods of integration. In turn, these theurems can be applied to concrete cases of the various sciences.

By an extension of this, a proposition expressible in the functional calculus of first order may be called existential if the prenex normal form has a prefix containing an existential quantifier (see Logic, formal, § 3).

categorical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a category.
Not hypothetical or relative; admitting no conditions or exceptions; declarative; absolute; positive; express; as, a categorical proposition, or answer.


Categorical (Judgment): (Gr. kategorikos, affirmative, predicative) Aristotle: Affirmative explicit; direct. Commentators on Aristotle emphasized the opposition between categorical and conditional propositions, although Aristotle did not stress this connotation of the term. -- G.R.M.

Category: (Gr. kategoria) In Aristotle's logic (1) the predicate of a proposition; (2) one of the ultimate modes of being that may be asserted in predication, viz.: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, passion. -- G.R.M.

Certitude: Consists in the firmness, by which the mind adheres to any proposition, whereas evidence, besides the firmness of adhesion, implies also the quietude (or satisfaction) of the intellect in the thing known either because from a comparison. If the terms we immediately know the relation between a subject and predicate, or because, immediately, with the help of deduction we perceive an adequate reason for a thing. Hence for certitude to exist in the mind, it is sufficient that the cause from which it arises be of such a nature as to exclude all fear of the opposite, whereas for evidence, it is required that the intellect fully grasp that which it knows. -- H.G.

Class concept: A monadic propositional function, thought of as determining a class (q.v.). -- A.C.

Class: or set, or aggregate (in most connections the words are used synonymously) can best be described by saying that classes are associated with monadic propositional functions (in intension -- i.e., properties) in such a way that two propositional functions determine the same class if and only if they are formally equivalent. A class thus differs from a propositional function in extension only in that it is not usual to employ the notation of application of function to argument in the case of classes (see the article Propositional function). Instead, if a class a is determined by a propositional function A, we say that x is a member of a (in symbols x∈a) if and only if A(x).

Closely related to (2), and applicable to logistic systems containing the pure propositional calculus (see Logic, formal, § 1) or an appropriate part of it, is the notion of consistency in the sense of E. L. Post, according to which a system is consistent if a formula composed of a single propositional variable (say the formula p) is not a theorem. -- A.C.

Closely related to the process of functional abstraction is the process of forming a class by abstraction from a suitable formula A relative to a particular variable, say x. The formula A must be such that (under the given system of interpretation for the notations appearing in A) λx[A] denotes a propositional function. Then x∋(A) (Peano), or xˆ (A) (Russell), denotes the class, determined by this propositional function. Frege's ε (A) also belongs here, when the function corresponding to A (relatively to the variable ε) is a propositional function.

Cognition: (Lat. cognoscere, to know) Knowledge in its widest sense including: non-propositional apprehension (perception, memory, introspection, etc.) as well as propositions or judgments expressive of such apprehension. Cognition, along with conation and affection, are the three basic aspects or functions of consciousness. See Consiousness, Epistemology. -- L.W.

Coherence Theory of Truth: Theory of knowledge which maintains that truth is a property primarily applicable to any extensive body of consistent propositions, and derivatively applicable to any one proposition in such a system by virtue of its part in the system. -- A.C.B.

colligate ::: v. t. --> To tie or bind together.
To bring together by colligation; to sum up in a single proposition. ::: a. --> Bound together.


colligation ::: n. --> A binding together.
That process by which a number of isolated facts are brought under one conception, or summed up in a general proposition, as when Kepler discovered that the various observed positions of the planet Mars were points in an ellipse.


Commutative law is any law of the form x o y = y o x, or with the biconditional, etc., replacing equality -- compare Associative law. Commutative laws of addition and multiplication hold in arithmetic, also in the theory of real numbers, etc. In the propositional calculus there are commutative laws of conjunction, both kinds of disjunction, the biconditional, alternative denial and its dual; also corresponding laws in the algebra of classes. -- A.C.

Completeness: A logistic system (q.v.) may be called complete if there is no formula of the system which is not a theorem and which can be added to the list of primitive formulas (no other change being made) without rendering the system inconsistent, in one of the senses of consistency (q.v.). The pure propositional calculus -- as explained under logic, formal, § 1 -- is complete in this sense.

Composition is the form of valid inference of the propositional calculus from A ⊃ B and A ⊃ C to A ⊃ BC. The law of composition is the theorem of the propositional calculus: [p ⊃ q][p ⊃ r] ⊃ [p ⊃ qr].

Conceivability: The quality or condition of taking into and holding an idea in mind. It has come to mean any affection of the mind or any apprehension, imagining or opinion of the mind. It is a necessary though not sufficient criterion for the truth of said idea or affection, etc. -- C.K.D Concept: In logic syn. either with propositioned function (q.v.) generally or with monadic propositional function. The terminology associated with the word function is not, however, usually employed in connection with the word concept; and the latter word may serve to avoid ambiguities which have arisen from loose or variant usages of the word function (q.v.); or it may reflect a difference in point of view. -- A.C.

conclusion ::: n. --> The last part of anything; close; termination; end.
Final decision; determination; result.
Any inference or result of reasoning.
The inferred proposition of a syllogism; the necessary consequence of the conditions asserted in two related propositions called premises. See Syllogism.
Drawing of inferences.
An experiment, or something from which a conclusion may


Condition: (Lat. conditio, agreement, condition) 1. The if-clause in an implicative proposition. 2. Cause (q.v.). 3. Necessary cause (q.v.) as opposed to sufficient cause. -- A.C.B.

consequence ::: n. --> That which follows something on which it depends; that which is produced by a cause; a result.
A proposition collected from the agreement of other previous propositions; any conclusion which results from reason or argument; inference.
Chain of causes and effects; consecution.
Importance with respect to what comes after; power to influence or produce an effect; value; moment; rank; distinction.


consequent ::: a. --> Following as a result, inference, or natural effect.
Following by necessary inference or rational deduction; as, a proposition consequent to other propositions. ::: n. --> That which follows, or results from, a cause; a result or natural effect.


Contradiction, law of, is given by traditional logicians as "A is B and A is not B cannot both be true." It is usually taken to be the theorem of the propositional calculus, ∼[p∼p]. In use, however, the name often seems to refer to the syntactical principle or precept which may be formulated as follows: A logical discipline containing (an applied) propositional calculus, or a set of hypotheses or postulates to be added to such a discipline, shall not lead to two theorems or consequences of the forms A and ∼A. The law is explicitly stated in a syntactical form, e.g. by Ledger Wood in his The Analysis of Knowledge (1940). -- A.C.

contradictory ::: a. --> Affirming the contrary; implying a denial of what has been asserted; also, mutually contradicting; inconsistent.
Opposing or opposed; repugnant. ::: n. --> A proposition or thing which denies or opposes another; contrariety.


contraries ::: n. --> Propositions which directly and destructively contradict each other, but of which the falsehood of one does not establish the truth of the other. ::: pl. --> of Contrary

contrary ::: a. --> Opposite; in an opposite direction; in opposition; adverse; as, contrary winds.
Opposed; contradictory; repugnant; inconsistent.
Given to opposition; perverse; forward; wayward; as, a contrary disposition; a contrary child.
Affirming the opposite; so opposed as to destroy each other; as, contrary propositions.


Conventionalism: Any doctrine according to which a priori truth, or the truth of propositions of logic, or the truth of propositions (or of sentences) demonstrable by purely logical means, is a matter of linguistic or postulational convention (and thus not absolute in character). H. Poincare (q.v.) regarded the choice of axioms as conventional (cf. Science et hypothese, p. 67). -- A.C.

Convention: (Lat. conveniens, suitable) Any proposition whose truth is determined not by fact but by social agreement or usage. In Democritus, "Sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, color is color by convention (nomoi)." (Diels, Frag. d. Vorsokratiker B. 125) The Sophists (q.v.) regarded all laws and ethical principles as conventions. -- A.C.B.

converse "logic" The truth of a {proposition} of the form A =" B and its converse B =" A are shown in the following truth table: A B | A =" B B =" A ------+---------------- f f | t t f t | t f t f | f t t t | t t (2002-07-12)

Conversion per accidens of a proposition A. i.e., of S(x) ⊃x P(x), yields P(x) ∧x S(x).

convertend ::: n. --> Any proposition which is subject to the process of conversion; -- so called in its relation to itself as converted, after which process it is termed the converse. See Converse, n. (Logic).

Copula: The traditional analysis of a proposition into subject and predicate involves a third part, the copula (is, are, is not, are not), binding the subject and predicate together into an assertion either of affirmation or of denial. It is now, however, commonly held that several wholly different meanings of the verb to be should be distinguished in this connection, including at least the following: predication of a monadic propositional function of its argument (the sun is hot, 7 is a prime number, mankind is numerous); formal implication (gold is heavy, a horse is a quadruped, mankind is sinful); identity (China is Cathay, that is the sun, I am the State); formal equivalence (lightning is an electric discharge between parts of a cloud and the earth). -- A.C.

corollary ::: n. --> That which is given beyond what is actually due, as a garland of flowers in addition to wages; surplus; something added or superfluous.

Something which follows from the demonstration of a proposition; an additional inference or deduction from a demonstrated proposition; a consequence.


Correspondence Theory of Truth: The theory that the truth of propositions is determined by the existence of some one-one correspondence between the terms of the propsition and the elements of some fact. Supporters of this view differ as to the nature of the determinate relation by which the alleged correspondence is constituted.

Critique of Pure Reason: (Ger. Kritik der reinen Vernunft) The first of three Critiques written by Immanuel Kant (1781) in which he undertook a critical examination of pure reason, its nature and limits, with a view to exhibiting a criterion for judging the validity of propositions of metaphysics. The first Critique was followed by the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and the Critique of Judgment (1790). See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.

debate ::: 1. A discussion involving opposing points; an argument. 2. A formal contest in which the affirmative and negative sides of a proposition are advocated by opposing speakers.

Deduction theorem: In a logistic system (q. v.) containing propositional calculus (pure or applied) or a suitable part of the propositional calculus, it is often desirable to have the property that if the inference from A to B is a valid inference then A ⊃ B is a theorem, or, more generally, that if the inference from A1, A2, . . . , An ⊃ B is valid then the inference from A1, A2, . . . , An ⊃ B is valid. The syntactical theorem, asserting of a given logistic system that it has this property, is called the deduction theorem for that system. (Certain cautions are necessary in defining the notion of valid inference where free variables are present; cf. Logic, formal, §§ 1, 3.) -- A.C.

De Interpretatione: (Gr. peri hermeneias) The second treatise in the Aristotelian Organon, dealing with the logical analysis of judgments and propositions. See Artstotelianism. -- G.R.M.

Demonstration: (Lat. de + monstrare, to show) Proof of a proposition by disclosure of the deductive processes by which it can be inferred. -- A.C.B.

De Morgan's laws: Are the two dually related theorems of the propositional calculus, ∼[p ∨ q] ≡ [∼p ∼q], ∼[pq] ≡ [∼p v ∼q], or the two corresponding dually related theorems of the algebra of classes, −(a ∪ b) = −a ∩ −b, −(a ∩ b) = −a ∪ −b. In the propositional calculus these laws (together with the law of double negation) make it possible to define conjunction in terms of negation and (inclusive) disjunction, or, alternatively, disjunction in terms of negation and conjunction. Similarly in the algebra of classes logical product may be defined in terms of logical sum and complementation, or logical sum in terms of logical product and complementation.

Denial of the antecedent: The fallacy of denial of the antecedent is the fallacious inference from ∼A and A ⊃ B to ∼B. The law of denial of the antecedent is the theorem of the propositional calculus, ∼p ⊃ [p ⊃ q]. -- A. C.

Descriptions: Where a formula A containing a free variable -- say, for example, x -- means a true proposition (is true) for one and only one value of x, the notation (iota;x)A is used to mean thit value of x. The approximately equivalent English phraseology is "the x such that A" -- or simply 'the F," where F denotes the concept (monadic propositional function) obtained from A by abstraction (q. v.) with respect to x. This notation, or its sense in the sense of Frege, is called a description.

Designated values: See Propositional calculus, many-valued. Designatum: The designatum of a word, symbol, or expression is that which it designates (q. v.). -- A.C.

desitive ::: a. --> Final; serving to complete; conclusive. ::: n. --> A proposition relating to or expressing an end or conclusion.

D. Interpretations of Probability. The methods and results of mathematical probability (and of probability in general) are the subject of much controversy as regards their interpretation and value. Among the various theories proposed, we shall consider the following Probability as a measure of belief, probability as the relative frequency of events, probability as the truth-frequency of types of argument, probability as a primitive notion, probability as an operational concept, probability as a limit of frequencies, and probability as a physical magnitude determined by axioms. I. Probability as a Measure of Belief: According to this theory, probability is the measure or relative degree of rational credence to be attached to facts or statements on the strength of valid motives. This type of probability is sometimes difficult to estimate, as it may be qualitative as well as quantitative. When considered in its mathematical aspects, the measure of probable inference depends on the preponderance or failure of operative causes or observed occurrences of the case under investigation. This conception involves axioms leading to the classic rule of Laplace, namely: The measure of probability of any one of mutually exclusive and apriori equiprobable possibilities, is the ratio of the number of favorable possibilities to the total number of possibilities. In probability operations, this rule is taken as the definition of direct probability for those cases where it is applicable. The main objections against this interpretation are: that probability is largely subjective, or at least independent of direct experience; that equiprobability is taken as an apriori notion, although the ways of asserting it are empirical; that the conditions of valid equiprobability are not stated definitely; that equiprobability is difficult to determine actually in all cases; that it is difficult to attach an adequate probability to a complex event from the mere knowledge of the probabilities of its component parts, and that the notion of probability is not general, as it does not cover such cases as the inductive derivation of probabilities from statistical data. II. Probability as a Relative Frequency. This interpretation is based on the nature of events, and not on any subjective considerations. It deals with the rate with which an event will occur in a class of events. Hence, it considers probability as the ratio of frequency of true results to true conditions, and it gives as its measure the relative frequency leading from true conditions to true results. What is meant when a set of calculations predict that an experiment will yield a result A with probability P, is that the relative frequency of A is expected to approximate the number P in a long series of such experiments. This conception seems to be more concerned with empirical probabilities, because the calculations assumed are mostly based on statistical data or material assumptions suggested by past experiments. It is valuable in so far as it satisfies the practical necessity of considering probability aggregates in such problems. The main objections against this interpretation are: that it does not seem capable of expressing satisfactorily what is meant by the probability of an event being true; that its conclusions are more or less probable, owing to the difficulty of defining a proper standard for comparing ratios; that neither its rational nor its statistical evidence is made clear; that the degree of relevance of that evidence is not properly determined, on account of the theoretical indefinite ness of both the true numerical value of the probability and of the evidence assumed, and that it is operational in form only, but not in fact, because it involves the infinite without proper limitations. III. Probability as Truth-Frequency of Types of Arguments: In this interpretation, which is due mainly to Peirce and Venn, probability is shifted from the events to the propositions about them; instead of considering types and classes of events, it considers types and classes of propositions. Probability is thus the ability to give an objective reading to the relative tiuth of propositions dealing with singular events. This ability can be used successfully in interpreting definite and indefinite numerical probabilities, by taking statistical evaluations and making appropriate verbal changes in their formulation. Once assessed, the relative truth of the propositions considered can be communicated to facts expressed by these propositions. But neither the propositions nor the facts as such have a probability in themselves. With these assumptions, a proposition has a degree of probability, only if it is considered as a member of a class of propositions; and that degree is expressed by the proportion of true propositions to the total number of propositions in the class. Hence, probability is the ratio of true propositions to all the propositions of the class examined, if the class is finite, or to all the propositions of the same type in the long run, if the class is infinite. In the first case, fair sampling may cover the restrictions of a finite class; in the second case, the use of infinite series offers a practical limitation for the evidence considered. But in both cases, probability varies with the class or type chosen, and probability-inferences are limited by convention to those cases where numerical values can be assigned to the ratios considered. It will be observed that this interpretation of probability is similar to the relative frequency theory. The difference between these two theories is more formal than material in both cases the probability refers ultimately to kinds of evidence based on objective matter of fact. Hence the Truth-Frequency theory is open to the sime objections as the Relative-Frequency theory, with proper adjustments. An additional difficulty of this theory is that the pragmatic interpretation of truth it involves, has yet to be proved, and the situation is anything but improved by assimilating truth with probability.

discrete ::: a. --> Separate; distinct; disjunct.

Disjunctive; containing a disjunctive or discretive clause; as, "I resign my life, but not my honor," is a discrete proposition.
Separate; not coalescent; -- said of things usually coalescent. ::: v. t.


Disjunction: See Logic, formal, § 1. Disjunctive: A sentence of either of the forms A ∨ B, A + B (or a proposition expressed by such a sentence) -- see Logic, formal, § 1 -- may be called a disjunctive sentence (or proposition). -- A. C.

disjunctive ::: a. --> Tending to disjoin; separating; disjoining.
Pertaining to disjunct tetrachords. ::: n. --> A disjunctive conjunction.
A disjunctive proposition.


disjuncttion ::: n. --> The act of disjoining; disunion; separation; a parting; as, the disjunction of soul and body.
A disjunctive proposition.


disputable ::: v. i. --> Capable of being disputed; liable to be called in question, controverted, or contested; or doubtful certainty or propriety; controvertible; as, disputable opinions, propositions, points, or questions.
Disputatious; contentious.


disputation ::: v. i. --> The act of disputing; a reasoning or argumentation in opposition to something, or on opposite sides; controversy in words; verbal contest respecting the truth of some fact, opinion, proposition, or argument.
A rhetorical exercise in which parties reason in opposition to each other on some question proposed.


Distribution (of terms): In the four traditional Aristotelian propositional forms, the subjects of universal propositions and the predicates of negative propositions are distributed, the other terms are undistributed. -- C.A.B.

Distributive law is a name given to a number of laws of the same or similar form appearing in various disciplines -- compare associative law. A distributive law of multiplication over addition appears in arithmetic: x X (y + z) = (x X y) + (x X z). This distributive law holds also in the theory of real numbers, and in many other mathematical disciplines involving two operations called multiplication and addition. In the propositional calculus there are four distributive laws (two dually related pairs): p[p ∨ r] ≡ [pq ∨ pr]. [p ∨ qr] ≡ [p ∨ q][p ∨ r]. p[p + r] ≡ [pq + pr]. [p ∨ [q ≡ r] ≡ [p ∨ q] ≡ [p ∨ r]]. Also four corresponding laws in the algebra of classes. -- A.C.

Dogma: The Greek term signified a public ordinance of decree, also an opinion. A present meaning: an established, or generally admitted, philosophic opinion explicitly formulated, in a depreciative sense; one accepted on authority without the support of demonstration or experience. Kant calls a directly synthetical proposition grounded on concepts a dogma which he distinguishes from a mathema, which is a similar proposition effected by a construction of concepts. In the history of Christianity dogmas have come to mean definition of revealed truths proposed by the supreme authority of the Church as articles of faith which must be accepted by all its members. -- J.J.R.

Double negation, law of: The theorem of the propositional calculus, &sim:∼p ≡ p.

Doubt: (Fr. doute, from Lat. dubito, to be uncertain) Partial disbelief. The denial of a proposition offered or formerly held as true. The withdrawal of belief. In psychology: suspended judgment; the state of hesitation between contradictory propositions. Philosophical doubt has been distinguished as definitive or provisional. Definitive doubt is scepticism (which see). Provisional doubt is the rule proposed by the Cartesian method (q.v.) of voluntary suspension of judgment in order to reach a more dependible conclusion. Opposite of certainty. -- J.K.F.

doubt ::: v. i. --> To waver in opinion or judgment; to be in uncertainty as to belief respecting anything; to hesitate in belief; to be undecided as to the truth of the negative or the affirmative proposition; to b e undetermined.
To suspect; to fear; to be apprehensive.
A fluctuation of mind arising from defect of knowledge or evidence; uncertainty of judgment or mind; unsettled state of opinion concerning the reality of an event, or the truth of an assertion, etc.;


Duality: See Logic, formal, §§ 1, 3, 7, 8. Ductio per contradictoriam propositionem sive per impossible: (Lat.) A logical argument in which the truth of a proposition is established by showing that its contradictory is untrue or impossible; an application of the principle of excluded middle. -- V.J.B.

Either sort of enquiry involves an investigation into the meaning of ethical statements, their truth and falsity, their objectivity and subjectivity, and the possibility of systematizing them under one or more first principles. In neither case is ethics concerned with our conduct or our ethical judgments simply as a matter of historical or anthropological record. It is, however, often said that the first kind of enquiry is not ethics but psychology. In both cases it may be said that the aim of ethics, as a part of philosophy, is theory not practice, cognition not action, even though it be added at once that its theory is for the sake of practice and its cognition a cognition of how to live. But some mornlists who take the second approach do deny that ethics is a cognitive discipline or science, namely those who hold that ethical first principles are resolutions or preferences, not propositions which may be true or false, e.g., Nietzsche, Santayana, Russell.

Elenchus: (Gr. elenchos) A syllogism establishing the contradictory of a proposition attacked; a refutation. (Aristotle.) -- G.R.M.

E. L. Post, Introduction to a general theory of elementary propositions, American Journal of Mathematics, vol. 43 (1921), pp. 163-181.

Empiricism: (1) A proposition about the sources of knowledge: that the sole source of knowledge is experience, or that either no knowledge at all or no knowledge with existential reference is possible independently of experience. Experience (q.v.) may be understood as either all conscious content, data of the senses only, or other designated content. Such empiricism may take the form of denial that any knowledge or at least knowledge about existents can be obtained a priori (q.v.), that is, denial that there are universal and necessary truths, denial that there is knowledge which holds regardless of past, present, or future experience; denial that there is instinctive, innate, or inborn knowledge; denial that the test of truth is clarity to natural reason or self-evidence, denial that one can gain certain knowledge by finding something the opposite of which is inconceivable; denial thit there are any necessary presuppositions of all knowledge or of anything known certainly, denial that any truths can be established by the fact that to deny them implies their reaffirmation; or denial that conventional or aibitrary definitions or assumptions yield knowledge.

enounce ::: v. t. --> To announce; to declare; to state, as a proposition or argument.
To utter; to articulate.


enthymeme ::: n. --> An argument consisting of only two propositions, an antecedent and consequent deduced from it; a syllogism with one premise omitted; as, We are dependent; therefore we should be humble. Here the major proposition is suppressed. The complete syllogism would be, Dependent creatures should be humble; we are dependent creatures; therefore we should be humble.

enunciation ::: n. --> The act of enunciating, announcing, proclaiming, or making known; open attestation; declaration; as, the enunciation of an important truth.
Mode of utterance or pronunciation, especially as regards fullness and distinctness or articulation; as, to speak with a clear or impressive enunciation.
That which is enunciated or announced; words in which a proposition is expressed; an announcement; a formal declaration; a


Epagoge: (Gr. epagoge) In Aristotle's logic the process of establishing a general proposition by induction (seeing the univers.il in the particular). -- C.R.M.

episyllogism ::: n. --> A syllogism which assumes as one of its premises a proposition which was the conclusion of a preceding syllogism, called, in relation to this, the prosyllogism.

Equality: See Logic, formal, §§ 3, 6, 9. Equipollence: A relation of equivalence between two propositions or propositional forms or symbols for these.

equipollency ::: n. --> Equality of power, force, signification, or application.
Sameness of signification of two or more propositions which differ in language.


Error: (Lat. error, from errare, to wander) Distorted or non-veridical apprehension, for example illusory perception and memory. See Veridical. The term, although sometimes used as a synonym of falsity, is properly applied to acts of apprehension like perception and memory and not to propositions and judgments. -- L.W.

Evidence: (Lat. e+videre, to see) Any supposed fact which is considered as supporting the truth of a given proposition. -- A.C.B.

examine ::: v. t. --> To test by any appropriate method; to inspect carefully with a view to discover the real character or state of; to subject to inquiry or inspection of particulars for the purpose of obtaining a fuller insight into the subject of examination, as a material substance, a fact, a reason, a cause, the truth of a statement; to inquire or search into; to explore; as, to examine a mineral; to examine a ship to know whether she is seaworthy; to examine a proposition, theory, or question.

exceptive ::: a. --> That excepts; including an exception; as, an exceptive proposition.

Excluded middle, law of, or tertium non datur, is given by traditional logicians as "A is B or A is not B." This is usually identified with the theorem of the propositional calculus, p ∨ ∼p to which the same name is given. The general validity of the law is denied by the school of mathematical intuitiontsm (q. v.). -- A.C.

Existential proposition: Traditionally, a proposition which directly asserts the existence of its subject, as, e.g., Descartes's "ergo sum" or the Christian's "Good exists." Expressed in symbolic notation, such a proposition has a form like (Ex)M.

Experimentalism: Since Dewey holds that "experimentation enters into the determination of every warranted proposition" (Logic, p. 461), he tends to view the process of inquiry as experimentation. Causal propositions, for example, become prospective, heuristic, teleological; not retrospective, revelatory or ontological. Laws are predictions of future occurrences provided certain operations are carried out. Experimentalism, however, is sometimes interpreted in the wider Baconian sense as an admonition to submit ideas to tests, whatever these may be. If this is done, pseudo-problems (such as common epistemological questions) either evaporate or are quickly resolved.

Exponible: Employed as a noun and as an adjective, applied to an obscure proposition which needs an exposition or explanation owing to a hidden composition. Kant applied it to propositions including an affirmation and a concealed negation, which an exposition makes apparent. -- J.J.R.

Exportation is the form of valid inference of the propositional calculus from AB ⊃ C to A⊃ [B ⊃ C]. The law of exportation is the theorem of the propositional calculus: [pq ⊃ r] ⊃ [p ⊃ [q ⊃ r]].

faith ::: n. --> Belief; the assent of the mind to the truth of what is declared by another, resting solely and implicitly on his authority and veracity; reliance on testimony.
The assent of the mind to the statement or proposition of another, on the ground of the manifest truth of what he utters; firm and earnest belief, on probable evidence of any kind, especially in regard to important moral truth.
The belief in the historic truthfulness of the Scripture


F. B. Fitch, The consistency of the ramified Principia, The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 3 (1938), pp. 140-149. Ramsey, Frank Plumpton: (1903-1930) In the light of Wittgenstein's work, he proposed several modifications in the Principia Mathematica treatment of functions. These, he urged, made possible the omission of the Axiom of Reducibility, a simplification of the Theory of Types and an improved definition of identity. In stimulating philosophical papers he denied any ultimate distinction between particulars and universals, defended a Wittgensteinian interpretation of general propositions, proposed a subjective theory of probability and a pragmatic view of induction, and offered a theory of theories and a theory of the nature of causal propositions. Most of his work is included in The Foundations of Mathematics, London, Kegan Paul, 1931. -- C.A.B.

feasibility study "systems analysis" Part of the {systems develpment life cycle} which aims to determine whether it is sensible to develop some system. The most popular model of feasibility study is "TELOS", standing for Technical, Economic, Legal, Operational, Schedule. Technical Feasibility: does the technology exist to implement the proposed system? Is it a practical proposition? Economic Feasibility: is the system cost-effective? Do benefits outweigh costs? Legal Feasibility: is there any conflict between the proposed system and legal requirements, e.g. the {Data Protection Act}? Operational Feasibility: are the current work practices and procedures adequate to support the new system? Schedule Feasibility: can the system be developed in time? After the feasibility study, the {requirements analysis} should be carried out. (2006-07-11)

Finally we mention a variant form of the functional calculus of first order, the functional calculus of first order with equality, in which the list of functional constants includes the dyadic functional constant =, denoting equality or identity of individuals. The notation [X] = [Y] is introduced as an abbreviation for [=] (X, Y), and primitive formulas are added as follows to the list already given: if X is any individual variable, X = X is a primitive formula; if X and Y are any individual variables, and B results from the substitution of Y for a particular free occurrence of X in A, which is not in a sub-formula of A of the form (Y)[C], then [X = Y] ⊃ [A ⊃ B] is a primitive formula. We speak of the pure functional calculus of first order with equality when the lists of propositional variables and functional variables are complete and the only functional constant is =; we speak of a simple applied functional calculus of first order with equality when the lists of propositional variables and functional variables are empty.

first-order logic "language, logic" The language describing the truth of mathematical {formulas}. Formulas describe properties of terms and have a truth value. The following are atomic formulas: True False p(t1,..tn) where t1,..,tn are terms and p is a predicate. If F1, F2 and F3 are formulas and v is a variable then the following are compound formulas: F1 ^ F2 conjunction - true if both F1 and F2 are true, F1 V F2 disjunction - true if either or both are true, F1 =" F2 implication - true if F1 is false or F2 is true, F1 is the antecedent, F2 is the consequent (sometimes written with a thin arrow), F1 "= F2 true if F1 is true or F2 is false, F1 == F2 true if F1 and F2 are both true or both false (normally written with a three line equivalence symbol) ~F1 negation - true if f1 is false (normally written as a dash '-' with a shorter vertical line hanging from its right hand end). For all v . F universal quantification - true if F is true for all values of v (normally written with an inverted A). Exists v . F existential quantification - true if there exists some value of v for which F is true. (Normally written with a reversed E). The operators ^ V =" "= == ~ are called connectives. "For all" and "Exists" are {quantifiers} whose {scope} is F. A term is a mathematical expression involving numbers, operators, functions and variables. The "order" of a logic specifies what entities "For all" and "Exists" may quantify over. First-order logic can only quantify over sets of {atomic} {propositions}. (E.g. For all p . p =" p). Second-order logic can quantify over functions on propositions, and higher-order logic can quantify over any type of entity. The sets over which quantifiers operate are usually implicit but can be deduced from well-formedness constraints. In first-order logic quantifiers always range over ALL the elements of the domain of discourse. By contrast, second-order logic allows one to quantify over subsets. ["The Realm of First-Order Logic", Jon Barwise, Handbook of Mathematical Logic (Barwise, ed., North Holland, NYC, 1977)]. (2005-12-27)

For convenience of statement, we confine attention to the pure functional calculus of first order. The first step in the extension consists in introducing quantifiers such as (F1), (EF1), (F2), (EF3), etc., binding n-adic functional variables. Corresponding changes are made in the definition of a formula and in the lists of primitive formulas and primitive rules of inference, allowing for these new kinds of bound variables. The resulting system is the functional calculus of second order. Then the next step consists in introducing new kinds of functional variables; namely for every finite ordered set k, l, m, . . . , p of i non-negative integers (i = 1, 2, 3, . . .) an infinite list of functional variables Fklm . . .p, Gklm . . .p, . . . , each of which denotes ambiguously any i-adic propositional function for which the first argument may be any (k-1)-adic propositional function of individuals, the second argument any (l-1)-adic propositional function of individuals, etc. (if one of the integers k, l, m, . . . , p is 1 the corresponding argument is a proposition -- if 0, an individual). Then quantifiers are introduced binding these new kinds of functional variables; and so on. The process of alternately introducing new kinds of functional variables (denoting propositional functions which take as arguments propositional functions of kinds for which variables have already been introduced) and quantifiers binding the new kinds of functional variables, with appropriate extension at each stage of the definition of a formula and the lists of primitive formulas and primitive rules of inference, may be continued to infinity. This leads to what we may call the functional calculus of order omega, embodying the (so-called simple) theory of types.

Frege, (Friedrich Ludwig) Gottlob, 1848-1925, German mathematician and logician. Professor of mathematics at the University of Jena, 1879-1918. Largely unknown to, or misunderstood by, his contemporaries, he is now regarded by many as "beyond question the greatest logician of the Nineteenth Century" (quotation from Tarski). He must be regarded -- after Boole (q. v.) -- as the second founder of symbolic logic, the essential steps in the passage from the algebra of logic to the logistic method (see the article Logistic system) having been taken in his Begriffsschrift of 1879. In this work there appear tor the first time the propositional calculus in substantially its modern form, the notion of propositional function, the use of quantifiers, the explicit statement of primitive rules of inference, the notion of an hereditary property and the logical analysis of proof by mathematical induction or recursion (q. v.). This last is perhaps the most important element in the definition of an inductive cardinal number (q.v.) and provided the basis for Frege's derivation of arithmetic from logic in his Grundlagen der Anthmetik (1884) and Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, vol. 1 (1893), and vol. 2 (1903). The first volume of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik is the culmination of Frege's work, and we find here many important further ideas. In particular, there is a careful distinction between using a formula to express something else and naming a formula in order to make a syntactical statement about it, quotation marks being used in order to distinguish the name of a formula from the formula itself. In an appendix to the second volume of Grundgesetze , Frege acknowledges the presence of an inconsistency in his system through what is now known as the Russel paradox (see Paradoxes , logical), as had been called to his attention by Russell when the book was nearly through the press. -- A.C.

Frege held it to be desirable in a formalized logistic system that every formula should have not only a sense but also a denotation -- as can be arranged by arbitrary semantical conventions where necessary. When this is done, Frege's sense of a sentence nearly coincides with proposition (in sense (b) of the article of that title herein). -- Alonzo Church

Frequently an (interpreted) logistic system (q.v.) is so constructed that the theorems may contain free variables. The interpretation of such a theorem is that, for any set of values, of the variables which occur as free variables, the indicated proposition is true. I.e., in the interpretation the free variables are treated as if bound by universal quantifiers (q.v.) initially placed.

From the principle of the antilogism, together with obversion, simple conversion of E and I, and the fact that in the pairs, A and O, E and I, each proposition of the pair is equivalent to the negation of the other, all of the traditional valid moods of the syllogism may be derived except those which require a third (existential) premiss (see logic, formal, §§4, 5). With the further aid of subalternation the remaining valid moods may be derived.

fully ::: adv. --> In a full manner or degree; completely; entirely; without lack or defect; adequately; satisfactorily; as, to be fully persuaded of the truth of a proposition.

Functional Theory of Mind: See Functional Psychology. Functionalism: See Functional Psychology. Functor: In the terminology of Carnap, a functor is a sign for a (non-propositional) function (q. v.). The word is thus synonymous with (non-proposittonal) function symbol. -- A.C.

Functional variables and functional constants are together called functional symbols (the adjective functional being here understood to refer to propositional functions). Functional symbols are called n-adic if they are either functional variables with subscript n or functional constants denoting n-adic propositional functions of individuals. The formulas of the functional calculus of first order (relative to the given lists of symbols (1), (2), (3), (4)) are all the expressions determined by the eight following rules: all the propositional variables are formulas; if F is a monadic functional symbol and X is an individual variable, [F](X) is a formula; if F is an n-adic functional symbol and X1, X2, . . . , Xn are individual variables (which may or may not be all different), [F](X1, X2, . . . , Xn) is a formula; if A is a formula, ∼[A] is a formula; if A nnd B are formulas, [A][B] is a formula; if A and B are formulas, [A] ∨ [B] is a formula; if A is a formula and X is an individual variable, (X)[A] is a formula; if A is a formula and X is an individual variable, (EX)[A] is a formula. In practice, we omit superfluous brackets and braces (but not parentheses) in writing formulas, nnd we omit subscripts on functional variables in cases where the subscript is sufficiently indicated by the form of the formula in which the functional variable appears. The sentential connectives |, ⊃, ≡, +, are introduced as abbreviations in the same way as in § 1 for the propositional calculus. We make further the following definitions, which are also to be construed as abbreviations, the arrow being read "stands for": [A] ⊃x [B] → (X)[[A] ⊃ [B]]. [A] ≡x [B] → (X)[[A] ≡ [B]]. [A] ∧x [B] → (EX)[[A][B]]. (Here A and B are any formulas, and X is any individual variable. Brackets may be omitted when superfluous.) If F and G denote monadic propositional functions, we say that F(X) ⊃x G(X) expresses formal implication of the function G by the function F, and F(X) ≡x G(X) expresses formal equivalence of the two functions (the adjective formal is perhaps not well chosen here but has become established in use).

F(x), the result of application of the (monadic, propositional or other) function F to the argument x -- the value of the function F for the argument x -- ftF of x." Sometimes the parentheses are omitted, so that the notation is Fx. -- See the articles function, and propostttonal function.

Generalization: (Lat. genus, class, kind) 1. Process of arriving at a general notion or concept from individual instances. 2. Any general notion or concept. 3. A proposition stating an order or relation of events which holds without exception; universal proposition. -- A.C.B.

Given the relation (dyadic propositional function) ε, the relations of equality and class inclusion may be introduced by the following definitions: ZεY → ε(Z, Y). Z=Y → ZεX ⊃x YεX. Z⊂Y → XεZ ⊃x XεY. Here X, Y, and Z are to be taken as individual variables ("individual" in the technical sense of § 3), and X is to be determined according to an explicit rule so as to be different from Y and Z.

Hauber's law: Given a set of conditional sentences A1 ⊃ B1, A2 ⊃ B2, . . . , An ⊃ Bn, we may infer each of the conditional sentences B1 ⊃ A1, B2 ⊃ A2, . . . , Bn ⊃ An, provided we know that A1, A2, . . . , An are exhaustive and B1, B2, . . . , Bn are mutually exclusive -- i.e., provided we have also A1 ∨ A2 ∨ . . . ∨ An and ∼[B1B2], ∼[B1B3], . . . , ∼[Bn-1Bn]. This form (or set of forms) of valid inference of the propositional calculus is Hauber's law. -- A.C.

Hilbert and Ackermann, Grundzuge der theoretischen Logik, 2nd edn., Berlin, 1938. Logic, traditional: the name given to those parts and that method of treatment of formal logic which have come down substantially unchanged from classical and medieval times. Traditional logic emphasizes the analysis of propositions into subject and predicate and the associated classification into the four forms, A, E, I, O; and it is concerned chiefly with topics immediately related to these, including opposition, immediate inference, and the syllogism (see logic, formal). Associated with traditional logic are also the three so-called laws of thought -- the laws of identity (q. v.), contradiction (q. v.) -- and excluded middle (q. v.) -- and the doctrine that these laws are in a special sense fundamental presuppositions of reasoning, or even (by some) that all other principles of logic can be derived from them or are mere elaborations of them. Induction (q. v.) has been added in comparatively modern times (dating from Bacon's Novum Organum) to the subject matter of traditional logic. -- A. C.

Hilbert and Ackermann use the word predicate for a propositional function of one or more variables, Carnap uses it for the corresponding syntactical entity, the name or designation of such a propositional function (i.e., of a property or relation). -- A.C.

Hilbert and Bernays, Grundlagen der Mathematik, vol. 1, Berlin, 1934; also Supplement III to vol. 2. Berlin. 1939. 2. HYPOTHETICAL SYLLOGISM, DISJUNCTIVE SYLLOGISM, DILEMMA are names traditionally given to certain, forms of inference, which may be identified as follows with certain particular forms of valid inference of the propositional calculus (see § 1).

Hilbert and Bernays, Grundlagen der mathematik, vol. 2, Berlin, 1939. 7. ALGEBRA OF CLASSES deals with classes (q. v.) whose members are from a fixed non-empty class called the universe of discourse, and with the operations of complementation, logical sum, and logical product upon such classes. (The classes are to be thought of as determined by propositional functions having the universe of discourse as the range of the independent variable.) The universal class ∨ comprises the entire universe of discourse. The null (or empty) class ∧ has no members. The complement −a of a class a has as members all those elements of the universe of discourse which are not members of a (and those only). In particular the null class and the universal class are each the complement of the other. The logical sum a ∪ b of two classes a and b has as members all those elements which are members either of a or of b, not excluding elements which are members of both a and b (and those only). The logical product a ∩ b of two classes a and b has as members all those elements which are members of both a and b (and those only) -- in other words the logical product of two classes is their common part. The expressions of the algebra of classes are built up out of class variables a, b, c, . . . and the symbols for the universal class and the null class by means of the notations for complementation, logical sum, and logical product (with parentheses). A formula of the algebra of classes consists of two expressions with one of the symbols = or ≠ between. (a = b means that a and b are the same class, a ≠ b that a and b are not the same class.)

Hilbert has given a formalization of arithmetic which takes the shape of a logistic system having primitive symbols some of a logical and some of an arithmetical character, so that logic and arithmetic are formalized together without taking logic as prior; similarly also for analysis. This would not of itself be opposed to the Frege-Russell view, since it is to be expected that the choice as to which symbols shall be taken as primitive in the formalization can be made in more than one way. Hilbert, however, took the position that many of the theorems of the system are ideale Aussagen, mere formulas, which are without meaning in themselves but are added to the reale Aussagen or genuinely meaningful formulas in order to avoid formal difficulties otherwise arising. In this respect Hilbert differs sharply from Frege and Russell, who would give a meaning (namely as propositions of logic) to all formulas (sentences) appearing. -- Concerning Hilbert's associated program for a consistency proof see the article Proof theory.

Historically, the notion of a function was of gradual growth in mathematics. The word function is used in approximately its modern sense by John Bernoulli (1698, 1718). The divorce of the notion of a function from that of a particular kind of mathematical expression (analytic or quasi-algebraic) is due to Dirichlet (1837). The general logical notion of a function, and in particular the notion of a propositional function, were introduced by Frege (1879). -- Alonzo Church

However, the test whether a given formula is a theorem, by the criterion that it is a theorem if a proof of it exists, is not effective -- since failure to find a proof upon search might mean lack of ingenuity rather than non-existence of a proof. The problem to give an effective test by means of which it can always be determined whether a given formula is a theorem is the decision problem, of the propositional calculus. This problem can be solved either by the process of reduction of a formula to disjunctive normal form, or by the truth-table decision procedure. We state the latter in detail.

H. Scholz, Geschichte der Logik, Berlin, 1931. Logical Empiricism: See Scientific Empiricism I. Logical machines: Mechanical devices or instruments designed to effect combinations of propositions, or premisses, with which the mechanism is supplied, and derive from them correct logical conclusions. Both premisses and conclusions may be expressed by means of conventional symbols. A contrivance devised by William Stanley Jevons in 1869 was a species of logical abacus. Another constructed by John Venn in 1881 consisted of diagrams which could be manipulated in such a manner that appropriate consequences appeared. A still more satisfactory machine was designed by Allan Marquand in 1882. Such devices would indicate that the inferential process is mechanical to a notable extent. -- J.J.R-

Hume, David: Born 1711, Edinburgh; died at Edinburgh, 1776. Author of A Treatise of Human Nature, Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, Enquiry Concerning the Passions, Enquiry Concerning Morals, Natural History of Religion, Dialogues on Natural Religion, History of England, and many essays on letters, economics, etc. Hume's intellectual heritage is divided between the Cartesian Occasionalists and Locke and Berkeley. From the former, he obtained some of his arguments against the alleged discernment or demonstrability of causal connections, and from the latter his psychological opinions. Hume finds the source of cognition in impressions of sensation and reflection. All simple ideas are derived from and are copies of simple impressions. Complex ideas may be copies of complex impressions or may result from the imaginative combination of simple ideas. Knowledge results from the comparison of ideas, and consists solely of the intrinsic resemblance between ideas. As resemblance is nothing over and above the resembling ideas, there are no abstract general ideas: the generality of ideas is determined by their habitual use as representatives of all ideas and impressions similar to the representative ideas. As knowledge consists of relations of ideas in virtue of resemblance, and as the only relation which involves the connection of different existences and the inference of one existent from another is that of cause and effect, and as there is no resemblance necessary between cause and effect, causal inference is in no case experientially or formally certifiable. As the succession and spatio-temporal contiguity of cause and effect suggests no necessary connection and as the constancy of this relation, being mere repetition, adds no new idea (which follows from Hume's nominalistic view), the necessity of causal connection must be explained psychologically. Thus the impression of reflection, i.e., the felt force of association, subsequent to frequent repetitions of conjoined impressions is the source of the idea of necessity. Habit or custom sufficently accounts for the feeling that everything which begins must have a cause and that similar causes must have similar effects. The arguments which Hume adduced to show that no logically necessary connection between distinct existences can be intuited or demonstrated are among his most signal contributions to philosophy, and were of great importance in influencing the speculation of Kant. Hume explained belief in external existence (bodies) in terms of the propensity to feign the independent and continued existence of perceptual complexes during the interruptions of perception. This propensity is determined by the constancy and coherence which some perceptual complexes exhibit and by the transitive power of the imagination to go beyond the limits afforded by knowledge and ordinary causal belief. The sceptical principles of his epistemology were carried over into his views on ethics and religion. Because there are no logically compelling arguments for moral and religious propositions, the principles of morality and religion must be explained naturalistically in terms of human mental habits and social customs. Morality thus depends on such fundamental aspects of human nature as self-interest and altruistic sympathy. Hume's views on religion are difficult to determine from his Dialogues, but a reasonable opinion is that he is totally sceptical concerning the possibility of proving the existence or the nature of deity. It is certain that he found no connection between the nature of deity and the rules of morality. -- J.R.W.

Hypothesis: In general, an assumption, a supposition, a conjecture, a postulate, a condition, an antecedent, a contingency, a possibility, a probability, a principle, a premiss, a ground or foundation, a tentative explanation, a probable cause, a theoretical situation, an academic question, a specific consideration, a conceded statement, a theory or view for debate or action, a likely relation, the conditioning of one thing by another. In logic, the conditional clause or antecedent in a hypothetical proposition. Also a thesis subordinate to a more general one. In methodology, a principle offered as a conditional explanation of a fact or a group of facts; or again, a provisional assumption about the ground of certain phenomena, used as a guiding norm in making observations and experiments until verified or disproved by subsequent evidence. A hypothesis is conditional or provisional, because it is based on probable and insufficient arguments or elements; yet, it is not an arbitrary opinion, but a justifiable assumption with some foundation in fact, this accounts for the expectation of some measure of agreement between the logical conclusion or implications drawn from a hypothesis, and the phenomena which are known or which may be determined by further tests. A scientific hypothesis must be   proposed after the observations it must explain (a posteriori),   compatible with established theories,   reasonable and relevant,   fruitful in its applications and controllable,   general in terms and more fundamental than the statements it has to explain. A hypothesis is descriptive (forecasting the external circumstances of the event) or explanatory (offering causal accounts of the event). There are two kinds of explanatory hypotheses   the hypothesis of law (or genetic hypothesis) which attempts to determine the manner in which the causes or conditions of a phenomenon operate and   the hypothesis of cause (or causal hypothesis) which attempt to determine the causes or conditions for the production of the phenomenon. A working hypothesis is a preliminary assumption based on few, uncertain or obscure elements, which is used provisionally as a guiding norm in the investigation of certain phenomena. Often, the difference between a working hypothesis and a scientific hypothesis is one of degree; and in any case, a hypothesis is seldom verified completely with all its detailed implications. The Socratic Method of Hypothesis, as developed by Plato in the Phaedo particularly, consists in positing an assumption without questioning its value, for the purpose of determining and analyzing its consequences only when these are clearly debated and judged, the assumption itself is considered for justification or rejection. Usually, a real condition is taken as a ground for inferences, as the aim of the method is to attain knowledge or to favor action. Plato used more specially the word "hypothesis" for the assumptions of geometry (postulates and nominal definitions) Anstotle extended this use to cover the immediate principles of mathematics. It may be observed that the modern hypothetico-deductive method in logical and mathematical theories, is a development of the Socratic method stripped of its ontological implications and purposes.

hypothesis ::: n. --> A supposition; a proposition or principle which is supposed or taken for granted, in order to draw a conclusion or inference for proof of the point in question; something not proved, but assumed for the purpose of argument, or to account for a fact or an occurrence; as, the hypothesis that head winds detain an overdue steamer.
A tentative theory or supposition provisionally adopted to explain certain facts, and to guide in the investigation of others;


Hypothetical sentence or proposition is the same as a conditional ( q.v.) sentence or proposition. -- A.C.

Identity, law of: Given by traditional logicians as "A is A." Because of the various possible meanings of the copula (q.v.) and the uncertainty as to the range of the variable A, this formulation is ambiguous. The traditional law is perhaps best identified with the theorem x = x, either of the functional calculus of first order with equality, or in the theory of types (with equality defined), or in the algebra of classes, etc. It has been, or may be, also identified with either of the theorems of the propositional calculus, p ⊃ p, p ≡ p, or with the theorem of the functional calculus of first order, F(x) ⊃x F(x). Many writers understand, however, by the law of identity a semantical principle -- that a word or other symbol may (or must) have a fixed referent in its various occurrences in a given context (so, e.g., Ledger Wood in his The Analysis of Knowledge). Some, it would seem, confuse such a semantical principle with a proposition of formal logic. -- A.C.

If the notion of possibility is admitted, in the sense of a modality (see Modality, and Strict implication), a set of propositions may be said to be inconsistent if their conjunction is impossible. -- A.C.

If the Peano postulates are formulated on the basis of an interpretation according to which the domain of individuals coincides with that of the non-negative integers, the undefined term N may be dropped and the postulates reduced to the three following: (x)(y)[[S(x) = S(y)] ⊃[x = y]]. (x) ∼[S(x) = 0]. F(0)[F(x) ⊃x F(S(x))] ⊃F (x)F(y). It is possible further to drop the undefined term 0 and to replace the successor function S by a dyadic propositional function S (the contemplated interpretation being that S(x,y) is the proposition y = x+l). The Peano postulates may then be given the following form: (x)(Ey)S(x, y). (x)[S(x,y) ⊃y [S(x,z) ⊃x [y = z]]]. (x)[S(y,x) ⊃y [S(z,x) ⊃x [y = z]]]. (Ex)[[(x) ∼S(x,y)] ≡y [y = z]]. [(x) ∼S(x,z)] ⊃x [F(z)[F(x) ⊃x [S(x, y) ⊃y F(y)]] ⊃F (x)F(x)]. For this form of the Peano postulates the underlying logic may be taken to be simply the functional calculus of second order without additions. In this formulation, numerical functions can be introduced only by contextual definition as incomplete symbols.

If we deal only with formulas of the algebra of classes which are equations (i.e., which have the form A = B), the above description by reference to the functional calculus may be replaced by a simpler description using the applied propositional calculus (§ 1) whose fundamental proposittonal symbols are xε∨, xε∧, xεa, xεb, xεc, . . . . Given an equation, C of the algebra of classes, the corresponding formula C† of the propositional calculus is obtained by replacing equality ( = ) by the biconditional ( ≡ ), replacing complementation, logical sum, and logical product respectively by negation, inclusive disjunction, and conjunction, and at the same time replacing ∨, ∧, a, b, c, . . . respectively by xε∨, xε∧, xεa, xεb, xεc, . . . . An equation C is a theorem of the algbera of classes if and only if the inference from xε∨, ∼xε∧ to C† is a valid inference of the propositional calculus; analogously for valid inferences of the algebra of classes in which the formulas involved are equations.

illative ::: a. --> Relating to, dependent on, or denoting, illation; inferential; conclusive; as, an illative consequence or proposition; an illative word, as then, therefore, etc. ::: n. --> An illative particle, as for, because.

Illicit importance, fallacy of: The mistake of assuming that because a proposition is self-evident, it is therefore important. -- H.H.

Illicit process of the major: In the categorical syllogism (Logic, formal, § 5), the conclusion cannot be a proposition E or O unless the major term appears in its premiss as distributed -- i.e., as subject of a proposition A or E, or the predicate of a proposition E or O. Violation of this rule is the fallacy of illicit process of the major. -- A.C.

Illicit process of the minor: In the categorical syllogism (logic, formal, § 5), the conclusion cannot be a proposition A or E unless the minor term appears in its premiss as distributed -- i.e., as the subject of a proposition A or E, or the predicate of a proposition E or O. Violation of this rule is the fallacy of illicit process of the minor. -- A.C.

Implication: See Logic, formal, §§1, 3; Strict implication. Importation: The form of valid inference of the propositional calculus from A ⊃ [B ⊃ C] to AB ⊃ C. The law of importation is the theorem of the propositional calculus: [p ⊃ [q ⊃ r]] ⊃ [pq ⊃ r].

In 1920, Lukasiewicz introduced a three-valued propositional calculus, with one designated value (interpreted as true) and two non-designated values (interpreted as problematical and false respectively). Later lie generalized this to n-valued propositional calculi with one designated value (first published in 1929). Post introduced n-valued propositional calculi with an arbitrary number of designated values in 1921. Also due to Post (1921) is the notion of symbolic completeness -- an n-valued propositional calculus is symbolically complete if every possible truth-function is expressible by means of the fundamental connectives.

In addition to syntactical or nominal definition we may distinguish another kind of definition, which is applicable only in connection with interpreted logistic systems, and which we shall call semantical definition. This consists in introducing a new symbol or notation by assigning a meaning to it. In an interpreted logistic system, a nominal definition carries with it implicitly a semantical definition, in that it is intended to give to the definiendum the meaning expressed by the definiens; but two different nominal definitions may correspond to the same semantical definition. Consider, for example, the two following schemata of nominal definition in the propositional calculus (Logic, formal, § 1): [A] ⊃ [B] → ∼A ∨ B. [A] ⊃ [B] → ∼[A ∼B]. As nominal definitions these are inconsistent, since they represent [A] ⊃ [B] as standing for different formulas: either one, but not both, could be used in a development of the propositional calculus. But the corresponding semantical definitions would be identical if -- as would be possible -- our interpretation of the propositional calculus were such that the two definientia had the same meaning for any particular A and B.

inadmissible ::: a. --> Not admissible; not proper to be admitted, allowed, or received; as, inadmissible testimony; an inadmissible proposition, or explanation.

In articles herein by the present writer, the notation λx[A] will be employed for the function obtained from A by abstraction relative to (or, as we may also say, with respect to) x. Russell, and Whitehead and Russell in Principia Mathematica, employ for this purpose the formula A with a circumflex ˆ placed over each (free) occurrence of x -- but only for propositional functions. Frege (1893) uses a Greek vowel, say ε, as the variable relative to which abstraction is made, and employs the notation ε(A) to denote what is essentially the function in extension (the "Werthverlauf" in his terminology) obtained from A by abstraction relative to ε.

In articles in this dictionary by the present writer the word proposition is to be understood in sense (b) above. This still leaves an element of ambiguity, since common usage does not always determine of two sentences whether they are strictly synonymous or merely logically equivalent. For a particular language or logistic system, this ambiguity may be resolved in various ways. -- A.C.

inceptive ::: a. --> Beginning; expressing or indicating beginning; as, an inceptive proposition; an inceptive verb, which expresses the beginning of action; -- called also inchoative. ::: n. --> An inceptive word, phrase, or clause.

Inconceivability: The property of being something that is unthinkable. Having self-contradictory properties such that mental representation is impossible. In metaphysics, Herbert Spencer's criterion of truth, that when the denial of a proposition is incapable of being conceived the proposition is to be accepted as necessary or true. Syn. with Inconceptible. -- J.K.F.

In connection with logic, and logical syntax, the word sentence is used for what might be called more explicitly a declarative sentence -- thus for a sequence of words or symbols which (in some language or system of notation, as determined by the context) expresses a proposition (q.v.), or which can be used to convey an assertion. A sequence of words or symbols which contains free variables and which expresses a proposition when values are given to these variables (see the article variable) may also be called a sentence.

In contributing some elements of a "universal calculus" he may be said to have been the first serious student of symbolic logic. He devised a symbolism for such concepts and relations as "and", "or", implication between concepts, class inclusion, class and conceptual equivalence, etc. One of his sets of symbolic representations for the four standard propositions of traditional logic coincides with the usage of modern logic He anticipated in the principles of his calculus many of the important rules of modern symbolic systems. His treatment, since it was primarily intensional, neglected important extensional features of recent developments, but, on the other hand, called attention to certain intensional distinctions now commonly neglected.

Individual: In formal logic, the individuals form the first or lowest type of Russell's hierarchy of types. In the Principia Mathematica of Whitehead and Russell, individuals are "defined as whatever is neither a proposition nor a function." It is unnecessary, however, to give the word any such special significance, and for many purposes it is better (as is often done) to take the individuals to be an arbitrary -- or an arbitrary infinite -- domain, or any particular well-defined domain may be taken as the domain of individuals, according to the purpose in hand. When used in this way, the term domain of individuals may be taken as synonymous with the term universe of discourse (in the sense of Boole) which is employed in connection with the algebra of classes. See Logic, formal, §§ 3, 6, 7. -- A.C.

Inference: (Lat. in + ferre, to bear) The process of reasoning whereby starting from one or more propositions accepted as true, the mind passes to another proposition or propositions whose truth is believed to be involved in the truth of the former. Inference is a psychological process connecting propositions asserted to be true and is to be distinguished from implication, the logical relation which holds between the same propositions when the inference is valid. An inference is valid when a genuine implicative relation holds between the propositions, invalid when there is no such implicative relation. Inference is deductive or inductive according as the underlying logic is deduction (see Deduction) or induction (see Induction). W. B. Joseph, An Introduction to Logic. L. S. Stebbing, Modern Introduction to Logic. J. Cook Wilson, Statement and Inference. B. Bosanquet, Implication and Linear Inference. -- L.W.

inference ::: n. --> The act or process of inferring by deduction or induction.
That which inferred; a truth or proposition drawn from another which is admitted or supposed to be true; a conclusion; a deduction.


inference rule "logic" A procedure which combines known facts to produce ("infer") new facts. For example, given that 1. Socrates is a man and that 2. all men are motal, we can infer that Socrates is mortal. This uses the rule known as "modus ponens" which can be written in {Boolean algebra} as (A & A =" B) =" B (if {proposition} A is true, and A implies B, then B is true). Or given that, 1. Either Denis is programming or Denis is sad and 2. Denis is not sad, we can infer that Denis is programming. This rule can be written ((A OR B) & not B) =" A (If either A is true or B is true (or both), and B is false, then A must be true). Compare {syllogism}. (1994-10-31)

In formulating the pure propositional calculus the primitive formulas may (if desired) be reduced to a finite number, e.g., to the seven listed above with A, B, C taken to be the particular variables p, q, r. A second primitive rule of inference, the rule of substitution is then required, allowing the inference from a formula A to the formula obtained from A by substituting a formula B for a particular variable in A (the same formula B must be substituted for all occurrences of that variable in A). The definition of a theorem is then given in the same way as before, allowing for the additional primitive rule, the definition of a valid inference must, however, be modified.

(In Kant) A judgment comprising two concepts related by a copula, typically an attribute (predicate) asserted of a substance or thing (subject). Kant denied that hypothetical and disjunctive propositions can be reduced to categorical ones and insisted that each of the forms of judgment denotes a distinct function of the understanding. See Logik, § 24. -- O.F.K.

In more general epistemology: Theory of knowledge which maintains that truth attaches to a proposition by virtue of its capacity to represent or portray fact. -- A.C.B.

In order to complete the setting up of the propositional calculus as a logistic system (q. v.) it is necessary to state primitive formulas and primitive rules of inference. Of the many possible ways of doing this we select the following.

In order to set the calculus up formally as a logistic system, we suppose that we have given four lists of symbols, as follows: an infinite list of individual variables x, y, z, t, x', y', z', t', x'', . . . , which denote ambiguously any individual; a list of propositional variables p, q, r, s, p', . . . , representing ambiguously any proposition of a certain appropriate class; a list of functional variables F1, G1, H1, . . . , F2, G2, H2, . . . , F3, G3, H3, . . . , a variable with subscript n representing ambiguously any n-adic propositional function of individuals; a list of functional constants, which denote particular propositional functions of individuals. There shall be an effective notational criterion associating with each functional constant a positive integer n, the functional constant denoting an n-adic propositional function of individuals. One or more of the lists (2), (3), (4) may be empty, but not both (3) and (4) shall be empty. The list (1) is required to be infinite, and the remaining lists may, some or all of them, be infinite. Finally, no symbol shall be duplicated either by appearing twice in the same list or by appearing in two different lists; and no functional constant shall contain braces [ ] (or either a left brace or a right brace) as a constituent part of the symbol.

In philosophy, a proposition opposed to a given thesis expressing a fact or a positive statement. With Kant, it is the negative member of the antinomies of reason. With Hegel, it is the second phase of the dialectical process, which denies the first moment or thesis, and which contributes to the emergence of the synthesis blending the partial truths of the thesis and the antithesis, and transcending them both.

In Reconstruction in Philosophy (New York, 1920, p. 156), Dewey states "When the claim or pretension or plan is acted upon it guides us truly or falsely; it leads us to our end or away from it. Its active, dynamic function is the all-important thing about it, and in the quality of activity induced by it lies all its truth and falsity. The hypothesis that works is the true one, and truth is an abstract noun applied to the collection of cases, actual, foreseen and desired, that receive confirmation in their work and consequences". The needs and desires which truth must satisfy, however, are not conceived as personal and emotional (as with James) but rather as "public" in some not altogether explicit sense. Although Dewey emphasizes the functional role of propositions and laws (and even of sensations, facts and objects), and describes these materials of knowledge as means, tools, instruments or operations for the transformation of an indeterminate situation into a determinate one in the process of inquiry (Logic, The Theory of Inquiry, N. Y., 1938), he does not clearly deny that they have a strictly cognitive role as well, and he once states that "the essence of pragmatic instrumentalism is to conceive of both knowledge and practice as means of making goods -- excellencies of all kinds -- secure in experienced existence". (The Quest for Certainty, N. Y., 1929, p. 37.) Indeed, in his Logic (p. 345), he quotes with approval Peirce's definition "truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless inquiry would tend to bring scientific belief, . . ." Here truth seems to be represented as progressive approximation to reality, but usually it is interpreted as efficacy, verification or practical expediency.

Intelligible: Understandable; comprehensible; knowable; meaningful; Orderly; logical; coherent; rational; Communicable; expressible; Having unity of principle; capable of complete rational explanation or understanding; capable of causal explanation; Clear to natural or pure reason; apprehensible by the intellect (q.v.) only as against apprehensible through the senses; conceptual as against perceptual; conceptually describable or explainable; Capable of being known synoptically or as it is in itself or in essence; capable of being known through itself as against by agency of something else; graspable by in tuition, self-explanatory; Capable of being appreciated or sympathized with; Super-sensible; of the nature of mind, reason, or their higher powers. . -- M.T.K Intension and extension: The intension of a concept consists of the qualities or properties which go to make up the concept. The extension of a concept consists of the things which fall under the concept; or, according to another definition, the extension of a concept consists of the concepts which are subsumed under it (determine subclasses). This is the old distinction between intension and extension, and coincides approximately with the distinction between a monadic proposittonal function (q. v.) in intension and a class (q. v.). The words intension and extension are also used in connection with a number of distinctions related or analogous to this one, the adjective extensional being applied to notions or points of view which in some respect confine attention to truth-values of propositions as opposed to meanings constituting propositions. In the case of (interpreted) calculi of propositions or propositional functions, the adjective intensional may mean that account is taken of modality, extensional that all functions of propositions which appear are truth-functions. The extreme of the extensional point of view does away with propositions altogether and retains only truth-values in their place. -- A.C.

In the propositional calculus, the name law of assertion is given to the theorem: p ⊃ [[p ⊃ q] &sup q]. (The associated form of inference from A and A ⊃ B to B is, however, known rather as modus ponens.) -- A.C.

In the propositional calculus there are the four following associative laws (two dually related pairs): [p ∨ [q ∨ r]] ≡ [[p ∨ q] ∨ r]. [p[qr]] ≡ [[qp]r]. [p +[q + r]] ≡ [[p + q] + r]. [p ≡ [q ≡ r]] ≡ [[p ≡ q] ≡ r]. Also four corresponding laws in the algebra of classes.

(In the case of propositional functions, the distinction between intension and extension is usually made somewhat differently, two propositional functions in extension being identical if they have materially equivalent values for even set of arguments.)

In the foregoing the list of fundamental propositional symbols has been left unspecified. A case of special importance is the case that the fundamental propositional symbols are an infinite list of variables, p, q, r, . . ., which may be taken as representing ambiguously any proposition whatever -- or any proposition of a certain class fixed in advance (the class should be closed under the operations of negation, conjunction, and inclusive disjunction). In this case we speak of the pure propositional calculus, and refer to the other cases as applied propositional calculus (although the application may be to something as abstract in character as the pure propositional calculus itself, as, e.g., in the case of the pure functional calculus of first order (§3), which contains an applied propositional calculus).

In what follows (to the end of §1) we shall, for convenience of statement, confine attention to the case of the pure propositional calculus. Similar statements hold, with minor modifications, for the general case.

irenicon ::: n. --> A proposition or device for securing peace, especially in the church.

→ is used to express definitions, the definiendum being placed to the left and the definiens to the right. An alternative notation is the sign = (or, in connection with the propositional calculus, ≡) with the letters Df, or df, written above it, or as a subscript, or separately after the definiens.

It can be shown that all theorems A of the pure functional calculus of first order which contain no free individual variables have the property that ∼A is not satisfiable. Hence the pure functional calculus of first order is not complete in the strong sense in which the pure propositional calculus is complete. Gödel has shown that the pure functional calculus of first order is complete in the weaker sense that if a formula A contains no free individual variables and ∼A is not satisfiable then A is a theorem.

It can be shown that the following principles of duality hold in the propositional calculus (where A* and B* denote the duals of the formulas A and B respectively): if A is a theorem, then ∼A* is a theorem; if A ⊃ B is a theorem, then B* ⊃ A* is a theorem; if A ≡ B is a theorem, then A* ≡ B* is a theorem. Special names have been given to certain particular theorems and forms of valid inference of the propositional calculus. Besides § 2 following, see: absorption; affirmation of the consequent; assertion; associative law; commutative law; composition; contradiction, law of; De Morgan's laws; denial of the antecedent; distributive law; double negation, law of; excluded middle, law of; exportation; Hauber's law; identity, law of; importation; Peirce's law; proof by cases; reductio ad absurdum; reflexivity; tautology; transitivity; transposition. Names given to particular theorems of the propositional calculus are usually thought of as applying to laws embodied in the theorems rather than to the theorems as formulas; hence, in particular, the same name is applied to theorems differing only by alphabetical changes of the variables appearing; and frequently the name used for a theorem is used also for one or more forms of valid inference associated with the theorem. Similar remarks apply to names given to particular theorems of the functional calculus of first order, etc.

It is customary to distinguish between the nature of truth and the tests for truth. There are three traditional theories as to the nature of truth, each finding virious expression in the works of different exponents. According to the correspondence theory, a proposition (or meaning) is true if there is a fact to which it corresponds. if it expresses what is the case. For example, "It is raining here now" is true if it is the case that it is raining here now; otherwise it is false. The nature of the relation of correspondence between fact and true proposition is variously described by different writers, or left largely undescribed. Russell in The Problems of Philosophy speaks of the correspondence as consisting of an identity of the constituents of the fact and of the proposition. According to the coherence theory (see H. H. Joachim: The Nature of Truth), truth is systematic coherence. This is more than logical consistency. A proposition is true insofar is it is a necessary constituent of a systematically coherent whole. According to some (e.g., Brand Blanshard, The Nature of Truth), this whole must be such that every element in it necessitates, indeed entails, every other element. Strictly, on this view, truth, in its fullness, is a characteristic of only the one systematic coherent whole, which is the absolute. It attaches to propositions as we know them and to wholes as we know them only to a degree. A proposition has a degree of truth proportionate to the completeness of the systematic coherence of the system of entities to which it belongs. According to the pragmatic theory of truth, a proposition is true insofar as it works or satisfies, working or satisfying being described variously by different exponents of the view. Some writers insist that truth chiracterizes only those propositions (ideas) whose satisfactory working has actually verified them; others state that only verifiability through such consequences is necessary. In either case, writers differ as to the precise nature of the verifying experiences required. See Pragmatism. --C.A.B. Truth, semantical: Closely connected with the name relation (q.v.) is the property of a propositional formula (sentence) that it expresses a true proposition (or if it has free variables, that it expresses a true proposition for all values of these variables). As in the case of the name relation, a notation for the concept of truth in this sense often cannot be added, with its natural properties, to an (interpreted) logistic system without producing contradiction. A particular system may, however, be made the beginning of a hierarchy of systems each containing the truth concept appropriate to the preceding one.

IV. Probability as a Primitive Notion: According to this interpretation, whicn is due particularly to Keynes, probability is taken as ultimate or undefined, and it is made known through its essential characteristics. Thus, probability is neither an intrinsic property of propositions like truth, nor an empty concept, but a relative property linking a proposition with its partial evidence. It follows that the probability of the same proposition varies with the evidence presented, and that even though a proposition may turn out to be false, our judgment that it is probable upon a given evidence can be correct. Further, since probability belongs to a proposition only in its relation to other propositions, probability-inferences cannot be the same as truth-inferences as they cannot break the chain of relations between their premisses, they lack one of the essential features usually ascribed to inference. That is why, in particular, the conclusions of the natural sciences cannot be separated from their evidence, as it may be the case with the deductive sciences. With such assumptions, probability is the group name given to the processes which strengthen or increase the likelihood of an analogy. The main objection to this interpretation is the arbitrary character of its primitive idea. There is no reason why there are relations between propositions such that p is probable upon q, even on the assumption of the relative character of probability. There must be conditions determining which propositions are probable upon others. Hence we must look beyond the primitive idea itself and place the ground of probability elsewhere.

Judgment of Taste: The assertion that an object is beautiful, or aesthetically pleasing. Such propositions are traditionally classified as judgments of value, as distinguished from judgments of fact, and are regarded as making assertions about the subjective reaction and interest that the object has aroused, and not about any intrinsic property of the object. Hence, generally interpreted as having no claim to universality. Kant, and others, have sought to establish their universality on the ground that they assert a necessary subjective reaction. -- I.J.

judgment ::: v. i. --> The act of judging; the operation of the mind, involving comparison and discrimination, by which a knowledge of the values and relations of thins, whether of moral qualities, intellectual concepts, logical propositions, or material facts, is obtained; as, by careful judgment he avoided the peril; by a series of wrong judgments he forfeited confidence.
The power or faculty of performing such operations (see 1); esp., when unqualified, the faculty of judging or deciding


lemma ::: n. --> A preliminary or auxiliary proposition demonstrated or accepted for immediate use in the demonstration of some other proposition, as in mathematics or logic.

L. L. Post, Introduction to a general theory of elementary propositions, American Journal of Mathematics, vol. 43 (1921), pp. 163-185. Truth-value: On the view that every proposition is either true or false, one may speak of a proposition as having one of two truth-values, viz. truth or falsehood. This is the primary meaning of the term truth-value, but generalizations have been consideied according to which there are more than two truth-values -- see propositional calculus, many-valued. -- A.C.

logic 1. "philosophy, logic" A branch of philosophy and mathematics that deals with the formal principles, methods and criteria of validity of {inference}, reasoning and {knowledge}. Logic is concerned with what is true and how we can know whether something is true. This involves the formalisation of logical arguments and {proofs} in terms of symbols representing {propositions} and {logical connectives}. The meanings of these logical connectives are expressed by a set of rules which are assumed to be self-evident. {Boolean algebra} deals with the basic operations of truth values: AND, OR, NOT and combinations thereof. {Predicate logic} extends this with existential and universal {quantifiers} and symbols standing for {predicates} which may depend on variables. The rules of {natural deduction} describe how we may proceed from valid premises to valid conclusions, where the premises and conclusions are expressions in {predicate logic}. Symbolic logic uses a {meta-language} concerned with truth, which may or may not have a corresponding expression in the world of objects called existance. In symbolic logic, arguments and {proofs} are made in terms of symbols representing {propositions} and {logical connectives}. The meanings of these begin with a set of rules or {primitives} which are assumed to be self-evident. Fortunately, even from vague primitives, functions can be defined with precise meaning. {Boolean logic} deals with the basic operations of {truth values}: AND, OR, NOT and combinations thereof. {Predicate logic} extends this with {existential quantifiers} and {universal quantifiers} which introduce {bound variables} ranging over {finite} sets; the {predicate} itself takes on only the values true and false. Deduction describes how we may proceed from valid {premises} to valid conclusions, where these are expressions in {predicate logic}. Carnap used the phrase "rational reconstruction" to describe the logical analysis of thought. Thus logic is less concerned with how thought does proceed, which is considered the realm of psychology, and more with how it should proceed to discover truth. It is the touchstone of the results of thinking, but neither its regulator nor a motive for its practice. See also fuzzy logic, logic programming, arithmetic and logic unit, first-order logic, See also {Boolean logic}, {fuzzy logic}, {logic programming}, {first-order logic}, {logic bomb}, {combinatory logic}, {higher-order logic}, {intuitionistic logic}, {equational logic}, {modal logic}, {linear logic}, {paradox}. 2. "electronics" {Boolean} logic circuits. See also {arithmetic and logic unit}, {asynchronous logic}, {TTL}. (1995-03-17)

Logic, formal: Investigates the structure of propositions and of deductive reasoning by a method which abstracts from the content of propositions which come under consideration and deals only with their logical form. The distinction between form and content can be made definite with the aid of a particular language or symbolism in which propositions are expressed, and the formal method can then be characterized by the fact that it deals with the objective form of sentences which express propositions and provides in these concrete terms criteria of meaningfulness and validity of inference. This formulation of the matter presupposes the selection of a particular language which is to be regarded as logically exact and free from the ambiguities and irregularities of structure which appear in English (or other languages of everyday use) -- i.e., it makes the distinction between form and content relative to the choice of a language. Many logicians prefer to postulate an abstract form for propositions themselves, and to characterize the logical exactness of a language by the uniformity with which the concrete form of its sentences reproduces or parallels the form of the propositions which they express. At all events it is practically necessary to introduce a special logical language, or symbolic notation, more exact than ordinary English usage, if topics beyond the most elementary are to be dealt with (see logistic system, and semiotic).

Main works: The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 1885; The Spirit of Modem Philosophy, 1892; The World and the Indidvidual, 1900; Lectures on Modem Idealism, 1919. Rule, ethical or moral: Any general ethical proposition enjoining a certain kind of action in a certain kind of situation, e.g., one who has made a promise should keep it. Rules figure especially in "dogmatic" types of deontological or intuitionstic ethics, and teleological ethics is often described as emphasizing ends rather than rules. Even a teleologist may, however, recommend certain rules, such as the above, as describing kinds of action which are generally conducive to good ends. -- W.K.F.

Many-valued logic: See propositional calculus, many-valued. Marburg School: Founded by Herman Cohen (1842-1918) and Paul Natorp (1854-1924) and supported by Ernst Cassirer (1874-), the noteworthy historian of philosophy, and Rudolf Stammler (1856-1938), the eminent legal philosopher, the school revived a specialized tendency of critical idealism. Stress is laid on the a priori, non-empirical, non-psychological and purely logical of every certain knowledge. Cohen and Natorp register an emphatic opposition to psychologism, and sought to construct a system upon pure thought on the basis of Kant and the Kantian reconstruction of Platonism. The logical and a priori in aesthetics, ethics, psychology and law is, being also independent of experience, the essential basis of these fields. Cf. Natorp, Kant u.d. Marburger Schule, 1915. -- H.H.

Materialism: A proposition about the existent or the real: that only matter (q.v.) is existent or real; that matter is the primordial or fundamental constituent of the universe; atomism; that only sensible entities, processes, or content are existent or real; that the universe is not governed by intelligence, purpose, or final causes; that everything is strictly caused by material (inanimate, non-mental, or having certain elementary physical powers) processes or entities (mechanism); that mental entities, processes, or events (though existent) are caused solely by material entities, processes, or events and themselves have no causal effect (epiphenomenalism); that nothing supernatural exists (naturalism); that nothing mental exists; a proposition about explanation of the existent or the real: that everything is explainable in terms of matter in motion or matter and energy or simply matter (depending upon conception of matter entertained); that all qualitative differences are reducible to quantitative differences; that the only objects science can investigate are the physical or material (that is, public, manipulable, non-mental, natural, or sensible); a proposition about values: that wealth, bodily satisfactions, sensuous pleasures, or the like are either the only or the greatest values man can seek or attain; a proposition about explanation of human history: that human actions and cultural change are determined solely or largely by economic factors (economic determinism or its approximation); an attitude, postulate, hypothesis, assertion, assumption, or tendency favoring any of the above propositions; a state of being limited by the physical environment or the material elements of culture and incapable of overcoming, transcending, or adjusting properly to them; preoccupation with or enslavement to lower or bodily (non-mental or non-spiritual) values. Confusion of epiphenomenalism or mechanism with other conceptions of materialism has caused considerable misunderstanding. -- M.T.K.

maxim ::: n. --> An established principle or proposition; a condensed proposition of important practical truth; an axiom of practical wisdom; an adage; a proverb; an aphorism.
The longest note formerly used, equal to two longs, or four breves; a large.


Misology: (Gr. miseo: to hate; logia: proposition) A contempt for logic. -- V.F.

Modality is the name given to certain classifications of propositions which are either supplementary to the classification into true and false or intended to provided categories additional to truth and falsehood -- namely to classifications of propositions as possible, problematical, and the like. See Strict implication, and Propostitional calculus, Many-valued.

modality ::: n. --> The quality or state of being modal.
A modal relation or quality; a mode or point of view under which an object presents itself to the mind. According to Kant, the quality of propositions, as assertory, problematical, or apodeictic.


modal logic "logic" An extension of {propositional calculus} with {operators} that express various "modes" of truth. Examples of modes are: necessarily A, possibly A, probably A, it has always been true that A, it is permissible that A, it is believed that A. "It is necessarily true that A" means that things being as they are, A must be true, e.g. "It is necessarily true that x=x" is TRUE while "It is necessarily true that x=y" is FALSE even though "x=y" might be TRUE. Adding modal operators [F] and [P], meaning, respectively, henceforth and hitherto leads to a "{temporal logic}". Flavours of modal logics include: {Propositional Dynamic Logic} (PDL), {Propositional Linear Temporal Logic} (PLTL), {Linear Temporal Logic} (LTL), {Computational Tree Logic} (CTL), {Hennessy-Milner Logic}, S1-S5, T. C.I. Lewis, "A Survey of Symbolic Logic", 1918, initiated the modern analysis of modality. He developed the logical systems S1-S5. JCC McKinsey used algebraic methods ({Boolean algebras} with operators) to prove the decidability of Lewis' S2 and S4 in 1941. Saul Kripke developed the {relational semantics} for modal logics (1959, 1963). Vaughan Pratt introduced {dynamic logic} in 1976. Amir Pnuelli proposed the use of temporal logic to formalise the behaviour of continually operating {concurrent} programs in 1977. [Robert Goldblatt, "Logics of Time and Computation", CSLI Lecture Notes No. 7, Centre for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, Second Edition, 1992, (distributed by University of Chicago Press)]. [Robert Goldblatt, "Mathematics of Modality", CSLI Lecture Notes No. 43, Centre for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, 1993, (distributed by University of Chicago Press)]. [G.E. Hughes and M.J. Cresswell, "An Introduction to Modal Logic", Methuen, 1968]. [E.J. Lemmon (with Dana Scott), "An Introduction to Modal Logic", American Philosophical Quarterly Monograpph Series, no. 11 (ed. by Krister Segerberg), Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1977]. (1995-02-15)

model checking "theory, algorithm, testing" To algorithmically check whether a program (the model) satisfies a specification. The model is usually expressed as a {directed graph} consisting of {nodes} (or {vertices}) and {edges}. A set of {atomic propositions} is associated with each node. The nodes represents states of a program, the edges represent possible executions which alters the state, while the atomic propositions represent the basic properties that hold at a point of execution. A specification language, usually some kind of {temporal logic}, is used to express properties. The problem can be expressed mathematically as: given a temporal logic formula p and a model M with initial state s, decide if M,s \models p. ["Automatic verification of finite state concurrent systems using temporal logic", E.M. Clarke, E.A. Emerson, and A.P. Sisla, ACM Trans. on Programming Languages and Systems 8(2), pp. 244--263, 1986]. (1997-06-26)

mover ::: n. --> A person or thing that moves, stirs, or changes place.
A person or thing that imparts motion, or causes change of place; a motor.
One who, or that which, excites, instigates, or causes movement, change, etc.; as, movers of sedition.
A proposer; one who offers a proposition, or recommends anything for consideration or adoption; as, the mover of a resolution in a legislative body.


Mp, "p is possible." This is Lukasiewicz's notation and has been used especially in connection with his three-valued propositional calculus. For the different notion of possibility which is appropriate to the calculus of strict implication, Lewis employs a diamond.

natural deduction "logic" A set of rules expressing how valid {proofs} may be constructed in {predicate logic}. In the traditional notation, a horizontal line separates {premises} (above) from {conclusions} (below). Vertical ellipsis (dots) stand for a series of applications of the rules. "T" is the constant "true" and "F" is the constant "false" (sometimes written with a {LaTeX} {\perp}). "^" is the AND ({conjunction}) operator, "v" is the inclusive OR ({disjunction}) operator and "/" is NOT (negation or {complement}, normally written with a {LaTeX} {\neg}). P, Q, P1, P2, etc. stand for {propositions} such as "Socrates was a man". P[x] is a proposition possibly containing instances of the variable x, e.g. "x can fly". A proof (a sequence of applications of the rules) may be enclosed in a box. A boxed proof produces conclusions that are only valid given the assumptions made inside the box, however, the proof demonstrates certain relationships which are valid outside the box. For example, the box below labelled "Implication introduction" starts by assuming P, which need not be a true {proposition} so long as it can be used to derive Q. Truth introduction: - T (Truth is free). Binary AND introduction: ----------- | . | . | | . | . | | Q1 | Q2 | -----------  Q1 ^ Q2 (If we can derive both Q1 and Q2 then Q1^Q2 is true). N-ary AND introduction: ---------------- | . | .. | . | | . | .. | . | | Q1 | .. | Qn | ---------------- Q1^..^Qi^..^Qn Other n-ary rules follow the binary versions similarly. Quantified AND introduction: --------- | x . | |  . | | Q[x] | --------- For all x . Q[x] (If we can prove Q for arbitrary x then Q is true for all x). Falsity elimination: F - Q (Falsity opens the floodgates). OR elimination:  P1 v P2 ----------- | P1 | P2 | | . | . | | . | . | | Q | Q | -----------   Q (Given P1 v P2, if Q follows from both then Q is true). Exists elimination: Exists x . P[x] ----------- | x P[x] | |   . | |   . | |   Q | -----------    Q (If Q follows from P[x] for arbitrary x and such an x exists then Q is true). OR introduction 1:   P1 ------- P1 v P2 (If P1 is true then P1 OR anything is true). OR introduction 2:   P2 ------- P1 v P2 (If P2 is true then anything OR P2 is true). Similar symmetries apply to ^ rules. Exists introduction:   P[a] ------------- Exists x.P[x] (If P is true for "a" then it is true for all x). AND elimination 1: P1 ^ P2 -------   P1 (If P1 and P2 are true then P1 is true). For all elimination: For all x . P[x] ----------------    P[a] (If P is true for all x then it is true for "a"). For all implication introduction: ----------- | x P[x] | |   . | |   . | |  Q[x] | ----------- For all x . P[x] -" Q[x] (If Q follows from P for arbitrary x then Q follows from P for all x). Implication introduction: ----- | P | | . | | . | | Q | ----- P -" Q (If Q follows from P then P implies Q). NOT introduction: ----- | P | | . | | . | | F | ----- / P (If falsity follows from P then P is false). NOT-NOT: //P --- P (If it is not the case that P is not true then P is true). For all implies exists: P[a] For all x . P[x] -" Q[x] -------------------------------    Q[a] (If P is true for given "a" and P implies Q for all x then Q is true for a). Implication elimination, modus ponens: P P -" Q ----------   Q (If P and P implies Q then Q). NOT elimination, contradiction: P /P ------  F (If P is true and P is not true then false is true). (1995-01-16)

Necessary: According to distinctions of modality (q. v.), a proposition is necessary if its truth is certifiable on a priori grounds, or on purely logical grounds. Necessity is thus, as it were a stronger kind of truth, to be distinguished from the contingent truth of a proposition which might have been otherwise. (As thus described, the notion is of course vague, but it may in various ways be given an exact counterpart in one logistic system or another.)

Negation: The act of denying a proposition as contrasted with the act of affirming it. The affirmation of a proposition p, justifies the negation of its contradictory, p', and the negation of p justifies the affirmation of p'. Contrariwise the affirmation of p' justifies the negation of p and the negation of p' justifies the affirmation of p. -- C.A.B.

Negative proposition: See affirmative proposition. Negative Sensation: Term used by Wundt to designate sensations produced by stimuli below the threshold of positive sensation. See Limits of Sensation. The term has largely been discarded because the existence of such sensations is now generally denied. -- L.W.

neutrosophic logic "logic" (Or "Smarandache logic") A generalisation of {fuzzy logic} based on {Neutrosophy}. A {proposition} is t true, i indeterminate, and f false, where t, i, and f are real values from the ranges T, I, F, with no restriction on T, I, F, or the sum n=t+i+f. Neutrosophic logic thus generalises: - {intuitionistic logic}, which supports incomplete theories (for 0"n"100 and i=0, 0"=t,i,f"=100); - {fuzzy logic} (for n=100 and i=0, and 0"=t,i,f"=100); - {Boolean logic} (for n=100 and i=0, with t,f either 0 or 100); - {multi-valued logic} (for 0"=t,i,f"=100); - {paraconsistent logic} (for n"100 and i=0, with both t,f"100); - {dialetheism}, which says that some contradictions are true (for t=f=100 and i=0; some {paradoxes} can be denoted this way). Compared with all other logics, neutrosophic logic introduces a percentage of "indeterminacy" - due to unexpected parameters hidden in some propositions. It also allows each component t,i,f to "boil over" 100 or "freeze" under 0. For example, in some {tautologies} t"100, called "overtrue". {(http://gallup.unm.edu/~smarandache/NeutLog.txt)}. ["Neutrosophy / Neutrosophic probability, set, and logic", F. Smarandache, American Research Press, 1998]. (1999-10-04)

Neutrosophy "philosophy" (From Latin "neuter" - neutral, Greek "sophia" - skill/wisdom) A branch of philosophy, introduced by Florentin Smarandache in 1980, which studies the origin, nature, and scope of neutralities, as well as their interactions with different ideational spectra. Neutrosophy considers a {proposition}, theory, event, concept, or entity, "A" in relation to its opposite, "Anti-A" and that which is not A, "Non-A", and that which is neither "A" nor "Anti-A", denoted by "Neut-A". Neutrosophy is the basis of {neutrosophic logic}, {neutrosophic probability}, {neutrosophic set}, and {neutrosophic statistics}. {(http://gallup.unm.edu/~smarandache/NeutroSo.txt)}. ["Neutrosophy / Neutrosophic Probability, Set, and Logic", Florentin Smarandache, American Research Press, 1998]. (1999-07-29)

Newton's Method: The method of procedure in natural philosophy as formulated by Sir Isaac Newton, especially in his Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Book III). These rules are as follows: We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes. The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intension nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever. In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from phaenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phaenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions. To this passage should be appended another statement from the closing pages of the same work. "I do not make hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phaenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy." -- A.C.S.

Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu: (Lat.) Nothing is in the intellect which was not first in sense. All the materials, or content, of higher, intellectual cognition are derived from the activity of lower, sense cognition. A principle subscribed to by Aristotle, St. Thomas and Locke; opposed by Plato, St. Augustine and Leibniz (who qualified the proposition by adding: nisi intellectus ipse, i.e. except for what is already present as part of the innate nature of the intellect, thus making it possible for Kant to suggest that certain forms of sensibility and reason are prior to sense experience). -- V.J.B.

nor ::: conj. --> A negative connective or particle, introducing the second member or clause of a negative proposition, following neither, or not, in the first member or clause (as or in affirmative propositions follows either). Nor is also used sometimes in the first member for neither, and sometimes the neither is omitted and implied by the use of nor.

Now it is readily verified that all the primitive formulas are tautologies, and that for the rule of modus ponens (and the rule of substitution) the property holds that if the premisses of the inference are tautologies the conclusion must be a tautology. It follows that every theorem of the propositional calculus is a tautology. By a more difficult argument it can be shown also that every tautology is a theorem. Hence the test whether a formula is a tautology provides a solution of the decision problem of the propositional calculus.

objector ::: n. --> One who objects; one who offers objections to a proposition or measure.

Obversion of a proposition A, E, I, or O consists in replacing P by a functional constant p which denotes the negation of the propositional function (property) denoted by P, and at the same time inserting ∼ if not already present or deleting it if present. Thus the obverse of S(x) ⊃x P(x) is S(x) ⊃x ∼p(x) (the obverse of "all men are mortal" is "no men are immortal"). The obverse of S(x) ⊃x ∼P(x) is S(x) ⊃x p(x); the obverse of S(x) ∧x P(x) is S(x) ∧x ∼p(x); the obverse of S(x) ∧x ∼P(x) is S(x) ∧x p(x).

Of quite a different kind are so-called real definitions, which are not conventions for introducing new symbols or notations -- as syntactical and semantical definitions are -- but are propositions of equivalence (material, formal, etc.) between two abstract entities (propositions, concepts, etc.) of which one is called the definiendum and the other the definiens. Not all such propositions of equivalence, however, are real definitions, but only those in which the definiens embodies the "essential nature" (essentia, ουσια) of the definiendum. The notion of a real definition thus has all the vagueness of the quoted phrase, but the following may be given as an example. If all the notations appearing, including ⊃x, have their usual meanings (regarded as given in advance), the proposition expressed by (F)(G)[[F(x) ⊃x G(x)] ≡ (x)[∼F(x) ∨ G(x)]] is a real definition of formal implication -- to be contrasted with the nominal definition of the ¦notation for formal implication which is given in the article Logic, formal, § 3. This formula, expressing a real definition of formal implication, might appear, e.g., as a primitive formula in a logistic system.

Often, however, the assumption is made that two propositional functions are identical if corresponding values are materially equivalent, and in this case we speak of propositional functions in extension (the definition in the preceding paragraph applying rather to propositional functions in intension). The values of a propositional function in extension are truth-values (q.v.) rather than propositions. A monadic propositional function in extension is not essentially different from a class (q. v.)

Operationalism: Scientific propositions are, roughly speaking, predictions and a prediction is an if-then proposition: "If certain operations are performed, then certain phenomena having determinate properties will be observed. Its hypothetical character shows that it is not final or complete but intermediate and instrumental" (Logic, p. 456). P. W. Bridgman's very influential formulation of operationalism is comparable: "In general, we mean by any concept nothing more than a set of operations, the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations". (The Logic of Modern Physics, p. 5.) If the operation is (or can be), carried out the proposition has meaning, if the consequences which it forecasts occur, it is true, has "warranted assertibility" or probability.

opponency ::: n. --> The act of opening an academical disputation; the proposition of objections to a tenet, as an exercise for a degree.

Or, as in traditional logic, modality may refer to a classification of propositions according to the kind of assertion which is contained rather than have the character of a truth-value. From this point of view propositions are classed as assertoric. (In which something is asserted as true), problematic (in which something is asserted as possible), and apodeictic (in which something is asserted as necessary). -- A.C.

or ::: conj. --> A particle that marks an alternative; as, you may read or may write, -- that is, you may do one of the things at your pleasure, but not both. It corresponds to either. You may ride either to London or to Windsor. It often connects a series of words or propositions, presenting a choice of either; as, he may study law, or medicine, or divinity, or he may enter into trade. ::: prep. & adv.

Or the name may be applied to a proposition or sentence of logic corresponding to a certain form of valid inference. E.g., the law of exportation (q. v.) may be called the leading principle of the form of valid inference known as exportation. -- A.C.

overture ::: --> An opening or aperture; a recess; a recess; a chamber.

Disclosure; discovery; revelation.

A proposal; an offer; a proposition formally submitted for consideration, acceptance, or rejection.
A composition, for a full orchestra, designed as an introduction to an oratorio, opera, or ballet, or as an independent piece; -- called in the latter case a concert overture.


paradox ::: 1. Any person, thing, or situation exhibiting an apparently contradictory nature; puzzle; anomaly; riddle. 2. A statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. paradoxical.

paradox ::: n. --> A tenet or proposition contrary to received opinion; an assertion or sentiment seemingly contradictory, or opposed to common sense; that which in appearance or terms is absurd, but yet may be true in fact.

parataxis ::: n. --> The mere ranging of propositions one after another, without indicating their connection or interdependence; -- opposed to syntax.

Particular proposition: In traditional logic, propositions A, E (excepting singular forms, according to some) were called universal and I, O, particular. See Logic, formal, § 4. -- A.C.

PDL 1. {Page Description Language}. 2. {Program Design Language}. 3. {Push Down List}. 4. Dave Lebling, one of the co-authors of {Zork}. His {network address} on the {ITS} machines was at one time "pdl@dms". 5. {Propositional Dynamic Logic}. [{Jargon File}]

Peirce's law: The theorem of the propositional calculus, [[p ⊃ q] ⊃ p] ⊃ p.

Petitio principii, or begging the question, is a fallacy involving the assumption as premisses of one or more propositions which are identical with (or in a simple fashion equivalent to) the conclusion to be proved, or which would require the conclusion for their proof, or which are stronger than the conclusion and contain it as a particular case or otherwise as an immediate consequence. There is a fallacy, however, only if the premisses assumed (without proof) are illegitimate for some other reason than merely their relation to the conclusion -- e.g., if they are not among the avowed presuppositions of the argument, or if they are not admitted by an opponent in a dispute. -- A.C.

philosopheme ::: n. --> A philosophical proposition, doctrine, or principle of reasoning.

Philosophers have in the past been concerned with two questions covered by our definition, though attempts to organize the subject as an autonomous department of philosophy are of recent date. Enquiries into the origin of language (e.g. in Plato's Kratylos) once a favorite subject for speculation, are now out of fashion, both with philosophers and linguists. Enquiries as to the nature of language (as in Descartes, Leibniz, and many others) are, however, still central to all philosophical interest in language. Such questions as "What are the most general characters of symbolism?", "How is 'Language' to be defined?", "What is the essence of language?", "How is communication possible?", "What would be the nature of a perfect language?", are indicative of the varying modulations which this theme receives in the works of contemporaries.   Current studies in the philosophy of language can be classified under five hends:   Questions of method, relation to other disciplines, etc. Much discussion turns here upon the proposal to establish a science and art of symbolism, variously styled semiotic, semantics or logical syntax,   The analysis of meaning. Problems arising here involve attention to those under the next heading.   The formulation of general descriptive schemata. Topics of importance here include the identification and analysis of different ways in which language is used, and the definition of men crucial notions as "symbol'', "grammar", "form", "convention", "metaphor", etc.   The study of fully formalized language systems or "calculi". An increasingly important and highly technical division which seeks to extend and adapt to all languages the methods first developed in "metamathematics" for the study of mathematical symbolism.   Applications to problems in general philosophy. Notably the attempt made to show that necessary propositions are really verbal; or again, the study of the nature of the religious symbol. Advance here awaits more generally acceptable doctrine in the other divisions.   References:

Pieh Mo: Neo-Mohists; heretical Mohists. See Mo che and Chinese philosophy. Pien: Argumentation or dialectics, which "is to make clear the distinction between right and wrong, to ascertain the principles of order and disorder, to make clear the points of similarity and difference, to examine the laws of names and actualities, to determine what is beneficial and what is harmful, and to decide what is uncertain and doubtful. It describes the ten thousand things as they are, and discusses the various opinions in their comparative merits. It uses names to specify actualities, propositions to express ideas, and explanations to set forth reasons, including or excluding according to classes." It involves seven methods: "The method of possibility is to argue from what is not exhausted. The method of hypothesis is to argue from what is not actual at present. The method of imitation is to provide a model. What is imitated is taken as the model. If the reason agrees with the model, it is correct. If it does not agree with the model, it is incorrect. This is the method of imitation. The method of comparison is to make clear about one thing by means of another. The method of parallel is to compare two propositions consistently throughout. The method of analogy says, 'You are so. Why should I not be so?" The method of induction is to grant what has not been accepted on the basis of its similarity to what has already been accepted. For example, when it is said that all the others are the same, how can I say that the others are different?" (Neo-Mohism.) -- W.T.C.

Platonism, medieval: Plato's works were not accessible to the medievil writers previous to the 13th century. They possessed only part of the Timaeus in the translation and commentary by Chalcidius. Nor were they acquainted with the writings of the Neo-Platonists. They had the logical texts by Porphyrius; little besides. St. Augustine, the greatest authority in these ages, was well acquainted with the teachings of the "Academy" of his time and became a source for Neo-Platonic influences. Furthermore, there were the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius of which first Alcuin had made a rather insufficient, later Scotus Eriugena a readible translation. Scotus himself was thoroughly Neo-Platonic in his philosophy, however "Christianized" his Platonism may have been. The medieval "Platoniststs" held, among some propositions of minor importance, that universals were existent substances (Realism, q.v.), that body and soul were two independent substances, united more or less accidentally; they assumed accordingly a "plurality of forms" in one substance. Some believed that Plato had been given a peculiar insight even in the mysteries of Christian faith. Thus they went so far as to identify the anima mundi, which they believed to be a Platonic notion, with the Holy Ghost (e.g. Abelard). Even after the revival of Aristotelian philosophy, against which the "Platonists" reacted violently, Platonism, or as they afterwards preferred to call it, Augustinianism persisted in many schools, especially in those depending on the Franciscans. -- R.A.

PLTL {Propositional Linear Temporal Logic}

PLUSS {Proposition of a Language Useable for Structured Specifications}

Pons asinorum: The literal meaning of the Latin expression, asses' bridge, has been figuratively applied to a diagram constructed by Petrus Tartaretus about 1480, whose purpose was to aid the student of logic in finding the middle term of a syllogism and disclose its relations. It was assumed that it was as difficult to persuade students to do this as to get asses to pass over a bridge. Hence the expression has also been applied to any relatively easy test. Euclids proposition, that if two sides of a triangle are equal the angles opposite to those sides must also be equal, has been called a pons asinorum for students of geometry -- J.J.R.

porime ::: n. --> A theorem or proposition so easy of demonstration as to be almost self-evident.

porism ::: n. --> A proposition affirming the possibility of finding such conditions as will render a certain determinate problem indeterminate or capable of innumerable solutions.
A corollary.


Posit: (Lat. ponere, to put or place) (a) In logic and epistemology, positing is the act of entertaining or asserting a proposition immediately i.e. without recourse to inference. A proposition may be posited either because it is regarded as (1) a self-evident truth or (2) a postulate arbitrarily assumed. The postulational sense of positing is the more common at present. See Postulate.

Possibility: According to distinctions of modality (q. v.), a proposition is possible if its negation is not necessary. The word possible is also used in reference to a state of knowledge rather than to modality, as a speaker might say, "It is possible that 486763 is a prime number," meaning that he had no information to the contrary (although this proposition is impossible in the sense of modality).

pq, the conjunction of p and q, "p and q." Instead of simple juxtaposition of the propositional symbols, a dot is sometimes written between, as p·q. Or the common abbreviation for and may be employed as a logical symbol, p & q. Or an inverted letter ∨, usually from a gothic font, may be used. In the Lukasiewicz notation for the propositional calculus, which avoids necessity for parentheses, the conjunction of p and q id Kpq.

Pragmatic theory of truth: Theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of a proposition is determined by its practical consequences. See Pragmatism. -- A.C.B.

Pragmatism: (Gr. pragma, things done) Owes its inception as a movement of philosophy to C. S. Peirce and William James, but approximations to it can be found in many earlier thinkers, including (according to Peirce and James) Socrates and Aristotle, Berkeley and Hume. Concerning a closer precursor, Shadworth Hodgson, James says that he "keeps insisting that realities are only what they are 'known as' ". Kant actually uses the word "pragmatic" to characterize "counsels of prudence" as distinct from "rules of skill" and "commands of morality" (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, p. 40). His principle of the primacy of practical reason is also an anticipation of pragmatism. It was reflection on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason which originally led Peirce to formulate the view that the muddles of metaphysics can be cleared up if one attends to the practical consequences of ideas. The pragmatic maxim was first stated by Peirce in 1878 (Popular Science Monthly) "Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object". A clearer formulation by the same author reads: "In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception one should consider what practical consequences might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception, and the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire meaning of the conception". This is often expressed briefly, viz.: The meaning of a proposition is its logical (or physical) consequences. The principle is not merely logical. It is also admonitory in Baconian style "Pragmatism is the principle that everv theoretical judgment expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form of thought whose onlv meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to enforce a corresponding practical maxim expressible as a conditional sentence having its apodosis in the impentive mood". (Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, 5.18.) Although Peirce's maxim has been an inspiration not only to later pragmatists, but to operationalists as well, Peirce felt that it might easily be misapplied, so as to eliminate important doctrines of science -- doctrines, presumably, which hive no ascertainable practical consequences.

Pragmatism is first and always a doctrine of meaning, and often a definition of truth as well, but as to the latter, not all pragmatists are in complete agreement. Neither Peirce nor Dewey, for example, would accept James' view that if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily for the individual, it is true. Pragmatism is also a method of interpreting ideas in terms of their consequences. James, however, apparently does not believe that this method entails his specific philosophical doctrines -- his pluralism, individualism, neutralism, indeterminism, meliorism, pragmatic theism, "crass" supernaturalism, etc. In fact, he states that pragmatism is independent of his new philosophy of "radical empiricism" and agrees with the anti-intellectualist bent of the Italian pragmatist, Papini, who sees the pragmatic method available to the atheist, the praying penitent, the investigating chemist, the metaphysician and the anti-metaphysician ("What Pragmatism Means".) On the other hand, insofar as pragmatism is practically identified with the scientific method (as is allegedly the case with Dewey) it appears that the pragmatic method might be expected to yield much the same conclusions for one philosopher as for another. In general, pragmatism as a method, does not seem to imply any final philosophical conclusions. It may imply a general direction of thought, such as empiricism. Although pragmatists (Peirce, James, Dewey) frequently attack older forms of empiricism, or crude empiricism, and necessarily reject truth as a simple or static correspondence of propositions with sense data, they nevertheless continue to describe themselves as empiricists, so that today pragmatism (especially in Dewey's case) is often regarded as synonymous with empiricism. See Empiricism.

Prameya: (Skr. to be measured, measurable) The proposition or thing to be proved; the object of knowledge. -- K.F.L.

predesignate ::: a. --> A term used by Sir William Hamilton to define propositions having their quantity indicated by a verbal sign; as, all, none, etc.; -- contrasted with preindesignate, defining propositions of which the quantity is not so indicated.

Predicables: (Lat. praedicabilia) In Aristotle's logic the five types of predicates that may be affirmed or denied of a subject in a logical proposition, viz. definition, genus, differentia, property, and accident. The list of predicables as formulated by Porphyry and later logicians omits definition and includes species. See Definition: Genus; Species; Differentia; Property; Accident. -- G.R.M.

predicate logic "logic" (Or "predicate calculus") An extension of {propositional logic} with separate symbols for {predicates}, {subjects}, and {quantifiers}. For example, where propositional logic might assign a single symbol P to the proposition "All men are mortal", predicate logic can define the predicate M(x) which asserts that the subject, x, is mortal and bind x with the {universal quantifier} ("For all"): All x . M(x) Higher-order predicate logic allows predicates to be the subjects of other predicates. (2002-05-21)

Predicate: The four traditional kinds of categorical propositions (see Logic, formal, § 4) are: all S is P, no S is P, some S is P, some S is not P. In each of these the concept denoted by S is the subject and that denoted by P is the predicate.

predicate ::: v. t. --> To assert to belong to something; to affirm (one thing of another); as, to predicate whiteness of snow.
To found; to base.
That which is affirmed or denied of the subject. In these propositions, "Paper is white," "Ink is not white," whiteness is the predicate affirmed of paper and denied of ink.
The word or words in a proposition which express what is affirmed of the subject.


Prehistory: That part of history of which we have no written records, documents or oral accounts, but which is reconstructed from material remains by archeologists and anthropologists. Premiss: A proposition, or one of several propositions, from which an inference is drawn, or the sentence expressing such a proposition. Following C. S. Peirce, we here prefer the spelling premiss, to distinguish from the word premise in other senses (in particular to distinguish the plural from the legal term premises). -- A.C.

premise ::: n. --> A proposition antecedently supposed or proved; something previously stated or assumed as the basis of further argument; a condition; a supposition.
Either of the first two propositions of a syllogism, from which the conclusion is drawn.
Matters previously stated or set forth; esp., that part in the beginning of a deed, the office of which is to express the grantor and grantee, and the land or thing granted or conveyed, and all that


preposition ::: n. --> A word employed to connect a noun or a pronoun, in an adjectival or adverbial sense, with some other word; a particle used with a noun or pronoun (in English always in the objective case) to make a phrase limiting some other word; -- so called because usually placed before the word with which it is phrased; as, a bridge of iron; he comes from town; it is good for food; he escaped by running.
A proposition; an exposition; a discourse.


Pretty Good Privacy "tool, cryptography" (PGP) A high security {RSA} {public-key encryption} application for {MS-DOS}, {Unix}, {VAX/VMS}, and other computers. It was written by {Philip R. Zimmermann} "pkz@acm.org" of Phil's Pretty Good(tm) Software and later augmented by a cast of thousands, especially including Hal Finney, Branko Lankester, and Peter Gutmann. PGP was distributed as "{guerrilla freeware}". The authors don't mind if it is distributed widely, just don't ask Philip Zimmermann to send you a copy. PGP uses a {public-key encryption} {algorithm} claimed by US patent

Prima facie duties: A phrase used by W. D. Ross to indicate the nature of the general material rules of duty which he regarded as self-evident. Promise-keeping is a prima facie duty, one among others. I.e., if I have made a promise, I have a prima facie duty to keep it, which means that I will have an actual duty to keep it, if no higher prima facie duty is incumbent upon me. What Ross calls "prima facie duties" H. A. Prichard calls "claims" and E. F. Carntt "responsibilities." The notion is central to the recent neo-intuitionism of Oxford, constituting its reply to the usual objection to intuited general material propositions about duty on the score that these may conflict and must admit of exceptions. -- W.K.F.

Primary truth: (Lat. primus, first) A conception or proposition which is dependent for its truth on no other principle in the same order of thought, it may be considered self-evident from common experience, special intuitive insight, or even by postulation, but it is not demonstrated -- V.J.B.

principle ::: n. --> Beginning; commencement.
A source, or origin; that from which anything proceeds; fundamental substance or energy; primordial substance; ultimate element, or cause.
An original faculty or endowment.
A fundamental truth; a comprehensive law or doctrine, from which others are derived, or on which others are founded; a general truth; an elementary proposition; a maxim; an axiom; a


Principle of non-sufficient reason: According to this law, the probabilities of two propositions may be said to be equal, if there is no adequate ground for declaring them unequal. When applied without qualification, this principle may lead to unwarranted results. Such a difficulty may be avoided by an adequate formulation of the Principle of Indifference. -- T.G.

Probe An {object-oriented} {logic language} based on {ObjVlisp}. ["Proposition d'une Extension Objet Minimale pour Prolog", Actes du Sem Prog en Logique, Tregastel (May 1987), pp. 483-506].

Proof by cases: Represented in its simplest form by the valid inference of the propositional calculus, from A ⊃ C and B ⊃ C and A ∨ B to C. More complex forms involve multiple disjunctions, e.g., the inference from A ⊃ D and B ⊃ D and C⊃ D and [A ∨ B] ∨ C to D. The simplest form of proof by cases is thus the same as the simple constructive dilemma (see Logic, formal, § 2), the former term deriving from mathematical usage and the latter from traditional logic. For the more complex forms of proof by cases, and like generalizations of the other kinds of dilemma to the case of more than two major premisses, logicians have devised the names trilemma, tetralemma, polylemma -- but these are not much found in actual use. -- A.C.

Proof theory: The formalization of mathematical proof by means of a logistic system (q. v.) makes possible an objective theory of proofs and provability, in which proofs are treated as concrete manipulations of formulas (and no use is made of meanings of formulas). This is Hilbert's proof theory, or metamathematics. p A central problem of proof theory, according to Hilbert, is the proof of consistency of logistic systems adequate to mathematics or substantial parts of mathematics. -- A logistic system is said to be consistent, relatively to a particular notation in the system called negation, if there is no formula A such that both A and the negation of A are provable (i.e., are theorems). The systems with which Hilbert deals, and the notations in them which he wishes to call negation, are such that, if a formula A and its negation were once proved, every propositional formula could be proved; hence he is able to formulate the consistency by snying that a particular formula (e.g., ∼[0 = 0]) is not provable.

proponent ::: a. --> Making proposals; proposing. ::: n. --> One who makes a proposal, or lays down a proposition.
The propounder of a thing.


PROPOSITIONAL CALCULUS (see Logic, formal, § 1, and strict implication)

Propositional calculus: See Logic, formal, § 1. Propositional calculus, many-valued: The truth-table method for the classical (two-valued) propositional calculus is explained in the article logic, formal, § 1. It depends on assigning truth-tables to the fundamental connectives, with the result that every formula -- of the pure propositional calculus, to which we here restrict ourselves for the sake of simplicity -- has one of the two truth-values for each possible assignment of truth-values to the variables appearing. A formula is called a tautology if it has the truth-value truth for every possible assignment of truth-values to the variables; and the calculus is so constructed that a formula is a theorem if and only if it is a tautology.

Proposition of a Language Useable for Structured Specifications "language" (PLUSS) An {algebraic specification language}, built on top of {ASL}. ["A First Introduction to PLUSS", M.C. Gaudel, TR, U Paris Sud, Orsay 1984]. (2006-03-14)

Proposition: This word has been used to mean a declarative sentence (in some particular language); the content of meaning of a declarative sentence, i e., a postulated abstract object common not only to different occurrences of the same declarative sentence but also to different sentences (whether of the same language or not) which are synonymous or, as we say, mean the same thing; a declarative sentence associated with its content of meaning. Often the word proposition is used ambiguously between two of these meanings, or among all three.

Protasis: (Gr. protasis, placed first) In Aristotle's logic a proposition, more particularly a proposition used as a premiss in a syllogism. -- G.R.M.

protasis ::: n. --> A proposition; a maxim.
The introductory or subordinate member of a sentence, generally of a conditional sentence; -- opposed to apodosis. See Apodosis.
The first part of a drama, of a poem, or the like; the introduction; opposed to epitasis.


psephism ::: n. --> A proposition adopted by a majority of votes; especially, one adopted by vote of the Athenian people; a statute.

∼p, the negation of p, "not p." Instead of ∼, a dash − may be used, written either before the propositional symbol or above it. Heyting adds a short downward stroke at the right end of the dash (a notation which has come to be associated particularly with the intuitionistic propositional calculus and the intuitionistic concept of negation). Also employed is an accent after the propositional symbol (but this more usual as a notation for the complement of a class). In the Lukasiewicz notation, the negation of p is Np.

Quality: The four traditional kinds of categorical propositions (see logic, formal, § 4) were distinguished according to quality as affirmative or negative, and according to quantity as particular, singular, or universal. See the articles Affirmative Proposition and Particular Proposition. -- A.C.

ratiocinative ::: a. --> Characterized by, or addicted to, ratiocination; consisting in the comparison of propositions or facts, and the deduction of inferences from the comparison; argumentative; as, a ratiocinative process.

R. Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language, New York and London, 1937. Truth-Frequency: (Prob.) See Probability, sec. D (III). Truth-function is either (1) a function (q.v.) from propositions to propositions such that the truth-value of the value of the function is uniquely determined by the truth-values alone of the arguments; or (2) simply a function from truth-values to truth-values. -- A.C.

recant ::: v. t. --> To withdraw or repudiate formally and publicly (opinions formerly expressed); to contradict, as a former declaration; to take back openly; to retract; to recall. ::: v. i. --> To revoke a declaration or proposition; to unsay what has been said; to retract; as, convince me that I am wrong, and I will

recede ::: v. i. --> To move back; to retreat; to withdraw.
To withdraw a claim or pretension; to desist; to relinquish what had been proposed or asserted; as, to recede from a demand or proposition.
To cede back; to grant or yield again to a former possessor; as, to recede conquered territory.


Reductio ad absurdum: The method of proving a proposition by deducing a contradiction from the negation of the proposition taken together with other propositions which were previously proved or are granted. It may thus be described as the valid inference of the propositional calculus from three premisses, B and B[∼A] ⊃ C and B[∼A] ⊃ ∼C, to the conclusion A (this presupposes the deduction theorem, q.v.). Such an argument may be rearranged so that the element of reductio ad absurdum appears in the inference from ∼A ⊃ A to A.

Reductto ad impossible: The method of establishing a proposition by showing that its contradictory involves impossible consequences; also of disproving a proposition by showing that its consequences are absurd; reductio ad absurdum (q.v.). See Apagoge. -- G.R.M.

Reflexivity: A dyadic relation R is called reflexive if xRx holds for all x within a certain previously fixed domain which must include the field of R (cf. logic, formal, § 8). In the propositional calculus, the laws of reflexivity of material implication and material equivalence (the conditional and biconditional) are the theorems, p ⊃ p, p ≡ p, expressing the reflexivity of these relations. Other examples of reflexive relations are equality, class inclusion, ⊂ (see logic, formal, § 7); formal implication and formal equivalence (see logic, formal, § 3); the relation not greater than among whole numbers, or among rational numbers, or among real numbers; the relation not later than among instants of time; the relation less than one hour apart among instants of time.

Rejected in particular by intuitionism are the use of impredicative definition (q. v.); the assumption that all things satisfying a given condition can be united into a set and this set then treated as an individual thing --or even the weakened form of this assumption which is found in Zermelo's Aussonderungsaxiom or axiom of subset formation (see logic, formal, § 9); the law of excluded middle as applied to propositions whose expression lequires a quantifier for which the variable involved has an infinite range. As an example of the rejection of the law of excluded middle, consider the proposition, "Either every even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers or else not every even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers." This proposition is intuitionistically unacceptable, because there are infinitely many even numbers greater than 2 and it is impossible to try them all one by one and decide of each whether or not it is the sum of two prime numbers. An intuitionist would accept the disjunction only after a proof had been given of one or other of the two disjoined propositions -- and in the present state of mathematical knowledge it is not certain that this can be done (it is not certain that the mathematical problem involved is solvable). If, however, we replace "greater than 2" by "greater than 2 and less than 1,000,000,000," the resulting disjunction becomes intuitionistically acceptable, since the number of numbers involved is then finite. The intuitionistic rejection of the law of excluded middle is not to be understood as an assertion of the negation of the law of excluded middle; on the contrary, Brouwer asserts the negation of the negation of the law of excluded middle, i.e., ∼∼[p ∨ ∼p]. Still less is the intuitionistic rejection of the law of excluded middle to be understood as the assertion of the existence of a third truth-value intermediate between truth and falsehood.

Relation: The same as dyadic propositional function (q.v.). The distinction between relations in intension and relations in extension is the same as that for propositional functions. -- Sometimes the word relation is used to mean a propositional function of two or more variables, and in this case one distinguishes binary (dyadic) relations, ternary (triadic) relations, etc.

Relative: A concept is relative if it is -- a word, if it denotes -- a polyadic propositional function, or relation, rather than a monadic propositional function. The term relative is applied especially to words which have been or might be thought to denote monadic propositional functions, but for some reason must be taken as denoting relations. Thus the word short or the notion of shortness may be called relative because as a monadic propositional function it is vague, while as a relation (shorter than) it is not vague.

Relativity of Knowledge: Sec Relativism, Epistemological. Relevance or Relevancy: (Fr. relevant) Relation between concepts which are capable of combining to form meaningful propositions or between propositions belonging to the same "universe of discourse." -- L.W.

rhematic ::: a. --> Having a verb for its base; derived from a verb; as, rhematic adjectives. ::: n. --> The doctrine of propositions or sentences.

riddle ::: n. --> A sieve with coarse meshes, usually of wire, for separating coarser materials from finer, as chaff from grain, cinders from ashes, or gravel from sand.
A board having a row of pins, set zigzag, between which wire is drawn to straighten it.
Something proposed to be solved by guessing or conjecture; a puzzling question; an ambiguous proposition; an enigma; hence, anything ambiguous or puzzling.


Scepticism: (1) a proposition about the limitations of knowledge: that no knowledge at all or that no absolute, unquestionable, trustworthy, certain, complete, or perfect knowledge (or rationally justifiable belief) is attainable by man; or that such is not attainable by any knower, or that none of these kinds of knowledge, if attained, would be recognizable as such; or that no such knowledge is attainable about certain subjects, e g , questions about cxistence, ultimate reality, certain religious beliefs, or the existence or nature of certain entities (e.g., God, one's self, other selves, values, an external world, or causal connections); or that one or more or all of these types of knowledge is not attainable by certain methods or media, e g, reason, infeience, revelation, any non-empirical method, direct observation, or immediate experience (hence identification of scepticism variously with inti-rationalism, anti-supernaturalism, or doctrines of relativity of the senses or relativity of all knowledge);

Secundi adjacentis: Latin expression employed to describe a proposition which consists solely of a subject and a predicate without even a copula. -- J.J.R.

Secundum quid, or more fully, a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid, is any fallacy arising from the use of a general proposition without attention to tacit qualifications which would invalidate the use made of it. -- A.C.

See the article Propositional function. -- Alonzo Church

self-contradiction ::: n. --> The act of contradicting one&

Self-Evidence: That property of a proposition by which its truth is open to direct inspection and requires no appeal to other evidence. See Intuition. -- A.C.B.

self-evident ::: a. --> Evident without proof or reasoning; producing certainty or conviction upon a bare presentation to the mind; as, a self-evident proposition or truth.

send ::: v. t. --> To cause to go in any manner; to dispatch; to commission or direct to go; as, to send a messenger.
To give motion to; to cause to be borne or carried; to procure the going, transmission, or delivery of; as, to send a message.
To emit; to impel; to cast; to throw; to hurl; as, to send a ball, an arrow, or the like.
To cause to be or to happen; to bestow; to inflict; to grant; -- sometimes followed by a dependent proposition.


Sentences (Scholastic): Sententiae were originally collections of various propositions and explanations thereof; e.g., the Sententiae divinitatis of Anselm of Laon. Peter Lombardus condensed the main theological and philosophical ideas of his time into the famous Quattuor libri sententiarum which became the textbook for the medieval universities and had to be studied and expounded by everyone aspiring to highei academic honors. The student had to pass the degree of sententiarius, and as such he had to read on the sentences. From these expositions developed the many commentaries on the four books of sentences. Practically every scholar of renown has left such a commentary. Peter's books are divided into "distinctions" which division is conscientiously followed by the commentators. -- R.A.

Sentential calculus: Same as propositional calculus (see logic, formal, § 1). -- A.C.

Sentential function has been used by some as a syntactical term, to mean a sentence (q.v.) containing free variables. This notion should not be confused with that of a propositional function (q.v.), the relationship is that a propositional function may be obtained from a sentential function by abstraction (q. v.) -- A.C.

Simple conversion of a proposition, A, E, I, or O, consists in interchanging S and P without other change. Thus the converse of S(x) ⊃x P(x) is P(x) ⊃x S(x), and the converse of S(x) ⊃x ∼P(x) is P(x) ⊃x ∼S(x). In mathematics the term converse is used primarily for the simple converse of a proposition A; loosely also for any one of a number of transformations similar to this (e.g., F(x)G(x) ⊃x H (x) may be said to have the converse F(x)H(x) ⊃x G(x)). Simple conversion of a proposition is a valid inference, in general, only in the case of E and I.

Singular proposition: See logic, formal, §§4, 5. Skepticism: Sec Scepticism. Skolem paradox: See Löwenheim's theorem. Smith, Adam: (1723-1790) Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic at Glasgow. He is best known for his The Wealth of Nations, but he is not to be forgotten for his contributions to the study of ethics, expressed principally in his "The Theory of Moral Sentiments." He finds sympathy as the fundamental fact of the moral consciousness and he makes of sympathy the test of morality, the sympathy of the impartial and well informed spectator. -- L.E.D.

S. K. Langer, An Introduction to Symbolic Logic, 1937. Appendix A. 3. THE FUNCTIONAL CALCULUS OF FIRST ORDER is the next discipline beyond the propositional calculus, according to the usual treatment. It is the first step towards the hierarchy of types (§ 6) and deals, in addition to unanalyzed propositions, with propositional functions (q. v.) of the lowest order. It employs the sentential connectives of § 1, and in addition the universal quantifier (q. v.), written (X) where X is any individual variable, and the existential quantifier, written (EX) where X is any individual variable. (The E denoting existential quantification is more often written inverted, as by Peano and Whitehead-Russell, but we here adopt the typographically more convenient usage, which also has sanction.)

sorites ::: n. --> An abridged form of stating of syllogisms in a series of propositions so arranged that the predicate of each one that precedes forms the subject of each one that follows, and the conclusion unites the subject of the first proposition with the predicate of the last proposition

Sri Aurobindo: "What we call unconsciousness is simply other-consciousness; it is the going in of this surface wave of our mental awareness of outer objects into our subliminal self-awareness and into our awareness too of other planes of existence. We are really no more unconscious when we are asleep or stunned or drugged or ``dead"" or in any other state, than when we are plunged in inner thought oblivious of our physical selves and our surroundings. For anyone who has advanced even a little way in Yoga, this is a most elementary proposition and one which offers no difficulty whatever to the thought because it is proved at every point by experience.” *The Synthesis of Yoga

Strict implication: As early as 1912, C. I. Lewis projected a kind of implication between propositions, to be called strict implication, which should more nearly accord with the usual meaning of "implies" than does material implication (see logic, formal, § 1). should make "p implies q" synonymous with "q is deducible from p," and should avoid such so-called paradoxes of material implication as the theorem [p ⊃ q] ∨ [q ⊃ p]. The first satisfactory formulition of a calculus of propositions with strict implication appeared in 1920, and this system, and later modified forms of it. have since been extensively investigated. An essential feature is the introduction of modalities through the notation (say) M[p], to mean "p is possible" (Lewis uses a diamond instead of M). The strict implication of q by p is then identified with ∼M[p ∼q], whereas the material implication p ⊃ q is given by ∼[p ∼q]. In 1932 Lewis, along with other modifications, added a primitive formula (involving the binding of propositional variables by existential quantifiers) which renders definitively impossible an interpretation of the system which would make Mp the same as p and strict implication the same as material implication. Consistency of the system, including this additional primitive formula, may be established by means of an appropriate four-valued propositional calculus, the theorems of the system being some among the tautologies of the four-valued propositional calculus. -- A.C.

Strictly speaking, there are no contraries in the category of substance, since substances are the subject of contraries, nor in the category of quantity, since these are relative. Two contrary states cannot obtain in one and the same individual at the same time and in the same respect; cf. contradiction. Some contraries, e.g. good-bad, black-white, have intermediaries; while others do not, e.g. odd-even. (ii) Propositions: Two universal propositions, having opposite quality (i.e. one affirmative and one negative) are contrary; De Interpretattone, 17b-4, See Logic, formal § 4, 8.

Subsumption: Noun signifying that the subject of a proposition is taken under the predicate. Also the inclusion of the species under the genus, and the individual under the species. The minor premiss which applies a general law stated by the major premiss of a syllogism is called a subsumption. -- J.J.R.

Suppositio personalis confusa (opposed to the preceding as suppositio personalis determinata) was further ascribed to a common noun used for the subject or predicate of a universal affirmative proposition. The relation of this to suppositio naturalis and suppositio simplex is not clear, and not uniform among different writers. -- A.C.

Suppositio simplex: The use of a common noun to stand for the class concept to which it refers -- "Homo est species." Suppositio simplex was also ascribed to a common noun used for the predicate of an affirmative proposition. -- A.C.

Symmetry: A dyadic relation R is symmetric if, for all x and y in the field of R, xRy ⊃ yRx; it is asymmetric if, for all x and y in the field of R, xRy ⊃ ∼ yRx; non-symmetric if there are x and y in the field of R such that [xRy] [∼ yRx]. An n-adic propositional function F is symmetric if F(x1, x2, . . . , xn) is materially equivalent to the proposition obtained from it by permuting x1, x2, . . . , xn among themselves in any fashion -- for all sets of n arguments x1, x2, . . . , xn belonging; to the range of F.

Synkatathesis: Greek noun derived from syn, together, and katathesis, to put down; hence Synkatathesis, to deposit together. In the passive voice the verb means, to assent to, to agree with. Used by the Stoics in the sense of agreement, or conviction. In general it signifies, the acknowledgment of the truth of a proposition, or consent given to it with someone else. -- J.J.R.

tautological probability "logic" A notion introduced by Florentin Smarandache whereby the probability of some event is more than one. Tautological probability is used for universally true {propositions}, i.e. those which do not depend on time, space, subjectivity, etc. [Florentin Smarandache, "A Unifying Field in Logics. / Neutrosophy: Neutrosophic Probability, Set, and Logic", American Research Press, Rehoboth 1999]. (2001-04-06)

tautological set "logic" A notion introduced by Florentin Smarandache: An element x(T, I, F) belongs more than sure to the {set} M; here T, I, F are real subsets representing the truth, indeterminacy, and falsity percentages respectively, and sup(T)"100. tautological set are used for universally true {propositions} where no parameter such as time, space, or subjectivity influences the truth value. [{Florentin Smarandache, "A Unifying Field in Logics. / Neutrosophy: Neutrosophic Probability, Set, and Logic", American Research Press, Rehoboth, 1999 (http://gallup.unm.edu/~smarandache/neut-ad.htm)}] (1999-11-24)

Tautology: As a syntactical term of the propositional calculus this is defined in the article on logic, formal (q.v.). Wittgenstein and Ramsey proposed to extend the concept of a tautology to disciplines involving quantifiers, by interpreting a quantified expression as a multiple (possibly infinite) conjunction or disjunction; under this extension, however, it no longer remains true that the test of a tautology is effective.

tautology "logic" A {proposition} which is always true. Compare: {paradox}. {The Linguistic Smarandache Tautologies, (http://gallup.unm.edu/~smarandache/tautolog.txt)}. (1999-07-28)

temporal logic "logic" An extension of {predicate calculus} which includes notation for arguing about *when* statements are true. Time is discrete and extends indefinitely into the future. Three {prefix} operators, represented by a circle, square and diamond mean "is true at the next time instant", "is true from now on" and "is eventually true". x U y means x is true until y is true. x P y means x precedes y. There are two types of formula: "state formulae" about things true at one point in time, and "path formulae" about things true for a sequence of steps. An example of a path formula is "x U y", and example of a state formula is "next x" or a simple atomic formula such at "waiting". "true until" in this context means that a state formula holds at every point in time up to a point when another formula holds. "x U y" is the "strong until" and implies that there is a time when y is true. "x W y" is the "weak until" in which it is not necessary that y holds eventually. There are two types of temporal logic used: branching time and linear time. The basic propositional temporal logic cannot differentiate between the two, though. Linear time considers only one possible future, in branching time you have several alternative futures. In branching temporal logic you have the extra operators "A" (for "all futures") and "E" (for "some future"). For example, "A(work U go_home)" means "I will work until I go home" and "E(work U go_home)" means "I may work until I go home". (1997-01-21)

Term: In common English usage the word "term"' is syntactical or semantical in character, and means simply a word (or phrase), or a word associated with its meaning. The phrase "undefined term" as used in mathematical postulate theory (see mathematics) is perhips best referred to this common meaning of "term " In traditional logic, a term is a concept appearing as subject or predicate (q.v.). of a categorical proposition; also, a word or phrase denoting such a concept. The word "term" has also been employed in a syntactical sense in various special developments of logistic systems (q.v.), usually in a way suggested by the traditional usage.

Tertii adjacentis: Latin expression employed to describe a proposition in which the subject, predicate, and copula are clearly distinguishable. -- J.J.R.

That a propositional function F is necessary may mean simply (x)F(x), or it may mean that (x)F(x) is necessary in one of the preceding senses. -- A.C.

The act of declaring a proposition or propositional form to be true (or to be necessarily true, or to be a part of a system).

The assertion sign was adopted by Russell, and by Whitehead and Russell in Principia Mathematica, in approximately Frege's sense of 1879, and it is from this source that it has come into general use. Some recent writers omit the assertion sign, either as understood, or on the ground that the Frege-Russell distinction between asserted and unasserted propositions is illusory. Others use the assertion sign in a syntactical sense, to express that a formula is a theorem of a logistic system (q.v.); this usage differs from that of Frege and Russell in that the latter requires the assertion sign to be followed by a formula denoting a proposition, or a truth value, while the former requires it to be followed by the syntactical name of such a formula.

The capital roman letters here denote arbitrary formulas of the propositional calculus (in the technical sense defined below) and the arrow is to be read "stands for" or "is an abbreviation for." Suppose that we have given some specific list of propositional symbols, which may be infinite in number, and to which we shall refer as the fundamental propositional symbols. These are not necessarily single letters or characters, but may be expressions taken from any language or system of notation; they may denote particular propositions, or they may contain variables and denote ambiguously any proposition of a certain form or class. Certain restrictions are also necessary upon the way in which the fundamental propositional symbols can contain square brackets [ ]; for the present purpose it will suffice to suppose that they do not contain square brackets at all, although they may contain parentheses or other kinds of brackets. We call formulas of the propositional calculus (relative to the given list of fundamental propositional symbols) all the expressions determined by the four following rules: all the fundamental propositional symbols are formulas if A is a formula, ∼[A] is a formula; if A and B are formulas [A][B] is a formula; if A and B are formulas [A] ∨ [B] is a formula. The formulas of the propositional calculus as thus defined will in general contain more brackets than are necessary for clarity or freedom from ambiguity; in practice we omit superfluous brackets and regard the shortened expressions as abbreviations for the full formulas. It will be noted also that, if A and B are formulas, we regard [A] | [B], [A] ⊃ [B], [A] ≡ [B], and [A] + [B], not as formulas, but as abbreviations for certain formulas in accordance with the above given definitions.

The case of infinitely many truth-values was first considered by Lukasiewicz. -- A.C. J. Lukasiewicz, O logice trojwartosciowej, Ruch Fifozoficzny, vol. 5 (1920), pp. 169-171. E. L. Post, Introduction to a general theory of elementary propositions, American Journal of Mathematics, vol. 43 (1921), pp. 163-185. Lukasiewicz and Tarski, Untersuchungen über den Aussagenkalkül, Comptes Rendus des Seances de la Societe des Sciences et des Lettres de Varsovie, Classe III, vol. 23 (1930), pp. 30-50. J. Lukasiewicz, Philosophische Bemerkungen zu mehrwertigen Systemen des Aussagenkalküls, ibid , pp 51-77. Lewis and Langford, Symbolic Logic, New York and London, 1932. Propositional function is a function (q.v.) for which the range of the dependent variable is composed of propositions (q.v.) A monadic propositional function is thus in substance a property (of things belonging to the range of the independent variable), and a dyadic propositional function a relation. If F denotes a propositional function and X1, X2, . . . , Xn denote arguments, the notation F(X1, X2, . . . , Xn) -- or [F](X1, X2, . . . , Xn) -- is used for the resulting proposition, which is said to be the value of the propositional function for the given arguments, and to be obtained from the propositional function by applying it to, or predicating it of the given arguments.

The doctrine that the concepts of mathematics are empirical and the postulates elementary experimental truths has been held in various forms (either for all mathematics, or specially for geometry) by J. S. Mill, H. Helmholtz, M. Pasch, and others. However, the usual contemporary view, especially among mathematicians, is that the propositions of mathematics say nothing about empirical reality. Even in the case of applied geometry, it is held, the geometry is used to organize physical measurement, but does not receive an interpretation under which its propositions become unqualifiedly experimental or empirical in character; a particular system of geometry, applied in a particular way, may be wrong (and demonstrably wrong by experiment), but there is not, in significant cases, a unique geometry which, when applied in the particular way, is right.

The formalization as a logistic system of the functional calculus of order omega with axiom of infinity leads, by a method which cannot be given here, to a (definite but quite complicated) proposition of arithmetic which is equivalent to -- in a certain sense, expresses -- the consistency of the system. This proposition of arithmetic can be represented within the system by a formula A containing no free variables, and the following second form of gödel's incompleteness theorem can then be proved: If the system is consistent, then the formula A, although its meaning is a true proposition of arithmetic, is not a theorem of the system. We might, of course, add A to the system as a new primitive formula -- we would then have a new system, whose consistency would correspond to a new proposition of arithmetic, represented by a new formula B (containing no free variables), and we would still have in the new system, if consistent, that B was not a theorem.

The formulation which we have given provides a means of proving theorems of the propositional calculus, the proof consisting of an explicit finite sequence of formulas, the last of which is the theorem proved, and each of which is either a primitive formula or inferable from preceding formulas by a single application of the rule of inference (or one of the rules of inference, if the alternative formulation of the pure propositional calculus employing the rule of substitution is adopted). The test whether a given finite sequence of formulas is a proof of the last formula of the sequence is effective -- we have the means of always determining of a given formula whether it is a primitive formula, and the means of always determining of a given formula whether it is inferable from a given finite list of formulas by a single application of modus ponens (or substitution). Indeed our formulation would not be satisfactory otherwise. For in the contrary case a proof would not necessarily carry conviction, the proposer of a proof could fairly be asked to give a proof that it was a proof -- in short the formal analysis of what constitutes a proof (in the sense of a cogent demonstration) would be incomplete.

The general philosophical position which has as its fundamental tenet the proposition that the natural world is the whole of reality. "Nature" and "natural world" are certainly ambiguous terms, but this much is clear in thus restricting reality, naturalism means to assert that there is but one system or level of reality, that this system is the totality of objects and events in space and time; and that the behavior of this system is determined only by its own character and is reducible to a set of causal laws. Nature is thus conceived as self-contained and self-dependent, and from this view spring certain negations that define to a great extent the influence of naturalism. First, it is denied that nature is derived from or dependent upon any transcendent, supernatural entities. From this follows the denial that the order of natural events can be intruded upon. And this in turn entails the denial of freedom, purpose, and transcendent destiny.

The inferences from A ⊃ B and C ⊃ A to C &sup B, and from A ⊃ B and C ⊃ ∼B to C ⊃ ∼A are called pure hypothetical syllogisms, and the above simpler forms of the hypothetical syllogism are then distinguished as mixed hypothetical. Some recent writers apply the names, modus ponens and modus tollens respectively, also to these two forms of the pure hypothetical syllogism. Other variations of usage or additional forms arc also found. Some writers include under these heads forms of inference which belong to the functional calculus of first order rather than to the propositional calculus.

The kind of an interpretation, or assignment of meaning, which is normally intended for a logistic system is indicated by the technical terminology employed. This is namely such an interpretation that the formulas, some or all of them, mean or express propositions; the theorems express true propositions; and the proofs and valid inferences represent proofs and valid inferences in the ordinary sense. (Formulas which do not mean propositions may be interpreted as names of things other than propositions, or may be interpreted as containing free variables and having only an ambiguous denotation -- see variable.) A logistic system may thus be regarded as a device for obtaining -- or, rather stating -- an objective, external criterion for the validity of proofs and inferences (which are expressible in a given notation).

theme ::: n. --> A subject or topic on which a person writes or speaks; a proposition for discussion or argument; a text.
Discourse on a certain subject.
A composition or essay required of a pupil.
A noun or verb, not modified by inflections; also, that part of a noun or verb which remains unchanged (except by euphonic variations) in declension or conjugation; stem.
That by means of which a thing is done; means; instrument.


The name immediate inference is given to certain inferences involving propositions A, E, I, O. These include obversion of A, E, I, or O, simple conversion of E or I, conversion per accidens of A, subalternation of A, E. The three last require the additional premiss (Ex)S(x). Other immediate inferences (for which the terminology is not wholly uniform among different writers) may be obtained by means of sequences of these: e.g., given that all men are mortal we may take the obverse of the converse of the obverse and so infer that all immortals are non-men (called by some the contrapositive, by others the obverted contrapositive).

The name law of tautology is given to either of the two dually related theorems of the propositional calculus, [p ∨ p] ≡ p, pp ≡ p, or either of the two corresponding dually related theorems of the algebra of classes, a ∪ a, a ∩ a. Whitehead and Russell reserve the name principle of tautology for the theorem of the propositional calculus, [p ∨ p] ⊃ p, but use law of tautology in the above senses. -- A.C.

The name reductio ad absurdum is also given to the method of proving the negation of a proposition by deducing a contradiction from the proposition itself, together with other propositions which were previously proved or are granted.

The negation of a proposition p is the proposition ∼p (see Logic, formal, § 1). The negation of a monadic propositional function F is the monadic propositional function λ[∼F(x)]; similarly for dyadic propositional functions, etc.

The notion of definition by recursion may be extended to functions whose ranges consist of only a portion of the non-negative integers (in the case of monadic functions) or of only a portion of the ordered sets of n non-negative integers (in the case of n-adic functions); also to functions for which the range of the dependent variable may consist wholly or partly of other things than non-negative integers (in particular, propositional functions -- properties, relations -- of integers may receive definition by recursion).

Theorem: (Gr. theorema, a sight, theory, theorem) Any proposition which is demonstrated in terms of other more basic propositions. -- A.C.B.

The Port-Royal Logic defines a proposition to be the same as a judgment but elsewhere speaks of propositions as denoting judgments. Traditional logicians generally have defined a proposition as a judgment expressed in words, or as a sentence expressing a judgment, but some say or seem to hold in actual usage that synonymous or intertranslatable sentences represent the same proposition. Recent writers in many cases adopt or tend towards (b).

The question of whether the operations must be specified or merely conceivable for the proposition to have meaning (which is analogous to the constructibility problem in mathematical discussions) has occasioned considerable criticism, for there appeared to be a danger that important scientific propositions might be excluded as meaningless. To this and other problems of operationalism the logical positivists (or empiricists) have contributed formulary modifications and refinements. See Logical Empiricism. In spite of their frequent difference with regard to the empirical foundation of logic and mathematics, pragmatism has received some support from the strict logicians and mathematical philosophers. One of the most important instances historically was C. I. Lewis' paper "The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge" (University of California Publications in Philosophy, 1926). Here he stated 'that the truth of experience must always be relative to our chosen conceptual systems", and that our choice between conceptual systems "will be determined consciously or not, on pragmatic grounds".

The reader should distinguish between theorems about the propositional calculus -- the deduction theorem, the principles of duality (below), etc. -- and theorems of the propositional calculus in the sense just defined. It is convenient to use such words as theorem, premiss, conclusion both for propositions (in whatever language expressed) and for formulas representing propositions in some fixed system or calculus.

There are two methods of devising such a system which (so at least it is widely held or conjectured) do not lead to any inconsistency. One of these involves the theory of types, which was set forth in § 6 above, explicitly for propositional functions, and by implication for classes (classes being divided into types according to the types of the monadic propositional functions which determine them). The other method is the Zermelo set theory, which avoids this preliminary division of classes into types, but imposes restrictions in another direction.

There is also another sense in which it has been held that mathematics is reducible to logic, namely that in the expressions for the postulates of a mathematical discipline the undefined terms are to be given definitions which involve logical terms only, in such a way that postulates and theorems of the discipline thereby become propositions of pure logic, demonstrable on the basis of logical principles only. This view was first taken, as regards arithmetic and analysis, by Frege, and was afterwards adopted by Russell, who extended it to all mathematics.

The rejection of the law of excluded middle carries with it the rejection of various other laws of the classical propositional calculus and functional calculus of first order, including the law of double negation (and hence the method of indirect proof). In general the double negation of a proposition is weaker than the proposition itself; but the triple negation of a proposition is equivalent to its single negation. Noteworthy also is the rejection of ∼(x)F(x) ⊃ (Ex)∼F(x); but the reverse implication is valid. (The sign ⊃ here does not denote material implication, but is a distinct primitive symbol of implication.) -- A.C.

thesicle ::: n. --> A little or subordinate thesis; a proposition.

Thesis: (Gr. thesis) In Aristotle's logic (1) an undemonstrated proposition used as a premiss in a syllogism, sometimes distinguished from axiom in that it need not be self-evident or intrinsically necessary; (2) any proposition contrary to general opinion but capable of being supported by reasoning. See Antithesis, Dialectic, Synthesis. -- G.R.M.

thesis ::: n. --> A position or proposition which a person advances and offers to maintain, or which is actually maintained by argument.
Hence, an essay or dissertation written upon specific or definite theme; especially, an essay presented by a candidate for a diploma or degree.
An affirmation, or distinction from a supposition or hypothesis.
The accented part of the measure, expressed by the downward


The structural problem stated in terms of the antithesis between subjective and objective is rather too vague for the purposes of epistemology and a more precise analysis of the knowledge-situation and statement of the issues involved is required. The perceptual situation -- and this analysis may presumably be extended with appropriate modifications to memory, imagination and other modes of cognition -- consists of a subject (the self, or pure act of perceiving), the content (sense data) and the object (the physical thing perceived). In terms of this analysis, two issues may be formulated Are content and object identical (epistemological monism), or are they numerically distinct (epistemological dualism)? and Does the object exist independently of the knowing subject (epistemological idealism) or is it dependent upon the subject (epistemological realism)? (h) The problem of truth is perhaps the culmination of epistemological enquiry -- in any case it is the problem which brings the enquiry to the threshold of metaphysics. The traditional theories of the nature of truth are: the correspondence theory which conceives truth as a relation between an "idea" or a proposition and its object --the relation has commonly been regarded as one of resemblance but it need not be so considered (see Correspondence theory of truth); the Coherence theory which adopts as the criterion of truth, the logical consistency of a proposition with a wider system of propositions (see Coherence theory of truth), and the intrinsic theory which views truth as an intrinsic property of the true proposition. See Intrinsic theory of truth. --L-W. Bibliography:

The term "empiricism" has been used with extreme looseness and confused with numerous related propositions, practices, and attitudes. Many definitions here listed are themselves ambiguous, but to remove their ambiguity would require misrepresentation of usage of the term. See also Scepticism, Sensationalism, Pluralism, Phenomenalism, Pragmatism, Positivism, Intuitionalism, Nativism, Rationalism, A Priorism, Intellectualism, Idealism, Transcendentalism, Scientific Empiricism. -- M.T.K.

The theorems of the propositional calculus are the formulas which can be derived from the primitive formulas by a succession of applications of the primitive rule of inference. In other words, the primitive formulas are theorems, and if A and A ⊃ B are theorems then B is a theorem. An inference from premisses A1, A2, . . . , An to a conclusion B is a valid inference of the propositional calculus if B becomes a theorem upon adding A1, A2, . . . , An to the list of primitive formulas. In other words, the inference from A1, A2, . . . , An to B is a valid inference if B is either a primitive formula or one of the formulas A1, A2, . . . , An, and if the inference from A1, A2, . . . , An to C and the inference from A1, A2, . . . , An to C ⊃ B are both valid inferences then the inference from A1, A2, . . . , An to B is a valid inference. It can be proved that the inference from A1, A2, . . . , An to B is a valid inference of the propositional calculus if (obviously), and only if (the deduction theorem), [A1 ⊃ [A2 ⊃ . . . [An ⊃ B] . . . ]] is a theorem of the propositional calculus.

The three primitive connectives (and consequently all connectives definable from them) denote truth-functions -- i.e., the truth-value (truth or falsehood) of each of the propositions &min;p, pq, and p ∨ q is uniquely determined by the truth-values of p and q. In fact, &min;p is true if p is false and false if p is true; pq is true if p and q are both true, false otherwise; p ∨ q is false if p and q are both false, true otherwise. Thus, given a formula of the (pure) propositional calculus and an assignment of a truth-value to each of the variables appearing, we can reckon out by a mechanical process the truth-value to be assigned to the entire formula. If, for all possible assignments of truth-values to the variables appearing, the calculated truth-value corresponding to the entire formula is truth, the formula is said to be a tautology.The test whether a formula is a tautology is effective, since in any particular case the total number of different assignments of truth-values to the variables is finite, and the calculation of the truth-value corresponding to the entire formula can be carried out separately for each possible assignment of truth-values to the variables.

This extension of the traditional reductions of the syllogistic moods is due to Christine Ladd Franklin. She, however, stated the matter within the algebra of classes (see logic, formal, § 7), taking the three terms of the syllogism as classes. From this point of view the three propositions of an antilogism appear as follows: m ∩ −p = Λ, s ∩ −p ≠ Λ. -- A.C.

This isomorphism between the algebra of classes and the indicated part of the functional calculus of first order can be taken as representing a parallelism of meaning. In fact, the meanings become identical if we wish to construe the functional calculus in extension, (see the article propositional function); or, inversely, if we wish to construe the algebra of classes in intension, instead of the usual construction.

This may be generalized by arbitrarily taking n different truth-values, t1, t2, . . . , tm, f1, f2, . . . , fn-m, of which the first m are called designated values -- and then setting up truth tables (in terms of these n truth-values) for a set of connectives, which usually includes connectives notationally the game as the fundamental connectives of the classical calculus, and may also include others. A formula constructed out of these connectives and variables is then called a tautology if it has a designated value for each possible assignment of truth-values to the variables, and the theorems of the n-valued propositional calculus are to coincide with the tautologies.

This representation does not reproduce faithfully all particulars of the traditional account. The fact is that the traditional doctrine, having grown up from various sources and under an inadequate formal analysis, is not altogether what seems to be the best representation, and simply note the four following points of divergence: We have defined the connectives ⊃x and ∧x in terms of universal and existential quantification, whereas the traditional account might be thought to be more closely reproduced if they were taken as primitive notations. (It would, however, not be difficult to reformulate the functional calculus of first order so that these connectives would be primitive and the usual quantifiers defined in terms of them.) The traditional account associates the negation in E and O with the copula (q. v.), whereas the negation symbol is here prefixed to the sub-formula P(x). (Notice that this sub-formula represents ambiguously a proposition and that, in fact, the notation of the functional calculus of first order provides for applying negation only to propositions.) The traditional account includes under A and E respectively, also (propositions denoted by) P(A) and ∼P(A), where A is an individual constant. These singular propositions are ignored in our account of opposition and immediate inference, but will appear in § 5 as giving variant forms of certain syllogisms. Some aspects of the traditional account require that A and E be represented as we have here, others that they be represented by     [(Ex)S(x)][S(x) ⊃x P(x)]   and   [(Ex)S(x)][S(x) ⊃x ∼P(x)]     respectively. The question concerning the choice between these two interpretations is known as the problem of existential import of propositions. We prefer to introduce (Ex)S(x) as a separate premiss at those places where it is required. Given a fixed subject S and a fixed predicate P, we have, according to the square of opposition, that A and O are contradictory, E and I are contradictory, A and E are contrary, I and O are subcontrary, A and I are subaltern, E and O are subaltern. The two propositions in a contradictory pair cannot be both true and cannot be both false (one is the exact negation of the other). The two propositions in a subaltern pair are so related that the first one, together with the premiss (Ex)S(x), implies the second (subalternation). Under the premiss (Ex)S(x), the contrary pair, A, E, cannot be both true, and the subcontrary pair, I, O, cannot be both false.

Three senses of "Ockhamism" may be distinguished: Logical, indicating usage of the terminology and technique of logical analysis developed by Ockham in his Summa totius logicae; in particular, use of the concept of supposition (suppositio) in the significative analysis of terms. Epistemological, indicating the thesis that universality is attributable only to terms and propositions, and not to things as existing apart from discourse. Theological, indicating the thesis that no tneological doctrines, such as those of God's existence or of the immortality of the soul, are evident or demonstrable philosophically, so that religious doctrine rests solely on faith, without metaphysical or scientific support. It is in this sense that Luther is often called an Ockhamist.   Bibliography:   B. Geyer,   Ueberwegs Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Phil., Bd. II (11th ed., Berlin 1928), pp. 571-612 and 781-786; N. Abbagnano,   Guglielmo di Ockham (Lanciano, Italy, 1931); E. A. Moody,   The Logic of William of Ockham (N. Y. & London, 1935); F. Ehrle,   Peter von Candia (Muenster, 1925); G. Ritter,   Studien zur Spaetscholastik, I-II (Heidelberg, 1921-1922).     --E.A.M. Om, aum: (Skr.) Mystic, holy syllable as a symbol for the indefinable Absolute. See Aksara, Vac, Sabda. --K.F.L. Omniscience: In philosophy and theology it means the complete and perfect knowledge of God, of Himself and of all other beings, past, present, and future, or merely possible, as well as all their activities, real or possible, including the future free actions of human beings. --J.J.R. One: Philosophically, not a number but equivalent to unit, unity, individuality, in contradistinction from multiplicity and the mani-foldness of sensory experience. In metaphysics, the Supreme Idea (Plato), the absolute first principle (Neo-platonism), the universe (Parmenides), Being as such and divine in nature (Plotinus), God (Nicolaus Cusanus), the soul (Lotze). Religious philosophy and mysticism, beginning with Indian philosophy (s.v.), has favored the designation of the One for the metaphysical world-ground, the ultimate icility, the world-soul, the principle of the world conceived as reason, nous, or more personally. The One may be conceived as an independent whole or as a sum, as analytic or synthetic, as principle or ontologically. Except by mysticism, it is rarely declared a fact of sensory experience, while its transcendent or transcendental, abstract nature is stressed, e.g., in epistemology where the "I" or self is considered the unitary background of personal experience, the identity of self-consciousness, or the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifoldness of ideas (Kant). --K.F.L. One-one: A relation R is one-many if for every y in the converse domain there is a unique x such that xRy. A relation R is many-one if for every x in the domain there is a unique y such that xRy. (See the article relation.) A relation is one-one, or one-to-one, if it is at the same time one-many and many-one. A one-one relation is said to be, or to determine, a one-to-one correspondence between its domain and its converse domain. --A.C. On-handedness: (Ger. Vorhandenheit) Things exist in the mode of thereness, lying- passively in a neutral space. A "deficient" form of a more basic relationship, termed at-handedness (Zuhandenheit). (Heidegger.) --H.H. Ontological argument: Name by which later authors, especially Kant, designate the alleged proof for God's existence devised by Anselm of Canterbury. Under the name of God, so the argument runs, everyone understands that greater than which nothing can be thought. Since anything being the greatest and lacking existence is less then the greatest having also existence, the former is not really the greater. The greatest, therefore, has to exist. Anselm has been reproached, already by his contemporary Gaunilo, for unduly passing from the field of logical to the field of ontological or existential reasoning. This criticism has been repeated by many authors, among them Aquinas. The argument has, however, been used, if in a somewhat modified form, by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz. --R.A. Ontological Object: (Gr. onta, existing things + logos, science) The real or existing object of an act of knowledge as distinguished from the epistemological object. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ontologism: (Gr. on, being) In contrast to psychologism, is called any speculative system which starts philosophizing by positing absolute being, or deriving the existence of entities independently of experience merely on the basis of their being thought, or assuming that we have immediate and certain knowledge of the ground of being or God. Generally speaking any rationalistic, a priori metaphysical doctrine, specifically the philosophies of Rosmini-Serbati and Vincenzo Gioberti. As a philosophic method censored by skeptics and criticists alike, as a scholastic doctrine formerly strongly supported, revived in Italy and Belgium in the 19th century, but no longer countenanced. --K.F.L. Ontology: (Gr. on, being + logos, logic) The theory of being qua being. For Aristotle, the First Philosophy, the science of the essence of things. Introduced as a term into philosophy by Wolff. The science of fundamental principles, the doctrine of the categories. Ultimate philosophy; rational cosmology. Syn. with metaphysics. See Cosmology, First Principles, Metaphysics, Theology. --J.K.F. Operation: "(Lit. operari, to work) Any act, mental or physical, constituting a phase of the reflective process, and performed with a view to acquiring1 knowledge or information about a certain subject-nntter. --A.C.B.   In logic, see Operationism.   In philosophy of science, see Pragmatism, Scientific Empiricism. Operationism: The doctrine that the meaning of a concept is given by a set of operations.   1. The operational meaning of a term (word or symbol) is given by a semantical rule relating the term to some concrete process, object or event, or to a class of such processes, objectj or events.   2. Sentences formed by combining operationally defined terms into propositions are operationally meaningful when the assertions are testable by means of performable operations. Thus, under operational rules, terms have semantical significance, propositions have empirical significance.   Operationism makes explicit the distinction between formal (q.v.) and empirical sentences. Formal propositions are signs arranged according to syntactical rules but lacking operational reference. Such propositions, common in mathematics, logic and syntax, derive their sanction from convention, whereas an empirical proposition is acceptable (1) when its structure obeys syntactical rules and (2) when there exists a concrete procedure (a set of operations) for determining its truth or falsity (cf. Verification). Propositions purporting to be empirical are sometimes amenable to no operational test because they contain terms obeying no definite semantical rules. These sentences are sometimes called pseudo-propositions and are said to be operationally meaningless. They may, however, be 'meaningful" in other ways, e.g. emotionally or aesthetically (cf. Meaning).   Unlike a formal statement, the "truth" of an empirical sentence is never absolute and its operational confirmation serves only to increase the degree of its validity. Similarly, the semantical rule comprising the operational definition of a term has never absolute precision. Ordinarily a term denotes a class of operations and the precision of its definition depends upon how definite are the rules governing inclusion in the class.   The difference between Operationism and Logical Positivism (q.v.) is one of emphasis. Operationism's stress of empirical matters derives from the fact that it was first employed to purge physics of such concepts as absolute space and absolute time, when the theory of relativity had forced upon physicists the view that space and time are most profitably defined in terms of the operations by which they are measured. Although different methods of measuring length at first give rise to different concepts of length, wherever the equivalence of certain of these measures can be established by other operations, the concepts may legitimately be combined.   In psychology the operational criterion of meaningfulness is commonly associated with a behavioristic point of view. See Behaviorism. Since only those propositions which are testable by public and repeatable operations are admissible in science, the definition of such concepti as mind and sensation must rest upon observable aspects of the organism or its behavior. Operational psychology deals with experience only as it is indicated by the operation of differential behavior, including verbal report. Discriminations, or the concrete differential reactions of organisms to internal or external environmental states, are by some authors regarded as the most basic of all operations.   For a discussion of the role of operational definition in phvsics. see P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics, (New York, 1928) and The Nature of Physical Theory (Princeton, 1936). "The extension of operationism to psychology is discussed by C. C. Pratt in The Logic of Modem Psychology (New York. 1939.)   For a discussion and annotated bibliography relating to Operationism and Logical Positivism, see S. S. Stevens, Psychology and the Science of Science, Psychol. Bull., 36, 1939, 221-263. --S.S.S. Ophelimity: Noun derived from the Greek, ophelimos useful, employed by Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) in economics as the equivalent of utility, or the capacity to provide satisfaction. --J.J.R. Opinion: (Lat. opinio, from opinor, to think) An hypothesis or proposition entertained on rational grounds but concerning which doubt can reasonably exist. A belief. See Hypothesis, Certainty, Knowledge. --J.K.F- Opposition: (Lat. oppositus, pp. of oppono, to oppose) Positive actual contradiction. One of Aristotle's Post-predicaments. In logic any contrariety or contradiction, illustrated by the "Square of Opposition". Syn. with: conflict. See Logic, formal, § 4. --J.K.F. Optimism: (Lat. optimus, the best) The view inspired by wishful thinking, success, faith, or philosophic reflection, that the world as it exists is not so bad or even the best possible, life is good, and man's destiny is bright. Philosophically most persuasively propounded by Leibniz in his Theodicee, according to which God in his wisdom would have created a better world had he known or willed such a one to exist. Not even he could remove moral wrong and evil unless he destroyed the power of self-determination and hence the basis of morality. All systems of ethics that recognize a supreme good (Plato and many idealists), subscribe to the doctrines of progressivism (Turgot, Herder, Comte, and others), regard evil as a fragmentary view (Josiah Royce et al.) or illusory, or believe in indemnification (Henry David Thoreau) or melioration (Emerson), are inclined optimistically. Practically all theologies advocating a plan of creation and salvation, are optimistic though they make the good or the better dependent on moral effort, right thinking, or belief, promising it in a future existence. Metaphysical speculation is optimistic if it provides for perfection, evolution to something higher, more valuable, or makes room for harmonies or a teleology. See Pessimism. --K.F.L. Order: A class is said to be partially ordered by a dyadic relation R if it coincides with the field of R, and R is transitive and reflexive, and xRy and yRx never both hold when x and y are different. If in addition R is connected, the class is said to be ordered (or simply ordered) by R, and R is called an ordering relation.   Whitehcid and Russell apply the term serial relation to relations which are transitive, irreflexive, and connected (and, in consequence, also asymmetric). However, the use of serial relations in this sense, instead ordering relations as just defined, is awkward in connection with the notion of order for unit classes.   Examples: The relation not greater than among leal numbers is an ordering relation. The relation less than among real numbers is a serial relation. The real numbers are simply ordered by the former relation. In the algebra of classes (logic formal, § 7), the classes are partially ordered by the relation of class inclusion.   For explanation of the terminology used in making the above definitions, see the articles connexity, reflexivity, relation, symmetry, transitivity. --A.C. Order type: See relation-number. Ordinal number: A class b is well-ordered by a dyadic relation R if it is ordered by R (see order) and, for every class a such that a ⊂ b, there is a member x of a, such that xRy holds for every member y of a; and R is then called a well-ordering relation. The ordinal number of a class b well-ordered by a relation R, or of a well-ordering relation R, is defined to be the relation-number (q. v.) of R.   The ordinal numbers of finite classes (well-ordered by appropriate relations) are called finite ordinal numbers. These are 0, 1, 2, ... (to be distinguished, of course, from the finite cardinal numbers 0, 1, 2, . . .).   The first non-finite (transfinite or infinite) ordinal number is the ordinal number of the class of finite ordinal numbers, well-ordered in their natural order, 0, 1, 2, . . .; it is usually denoted by the small Greek letter omega. --A.C.   G. Cantor, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, translated and with an introduction by P. E. B. Jourdain, Chicago and London, 1915. (new ed. 1941); Whitehead and Russell, Princtpia Mathematica. vol. 3. Orexis: (Gr. orexis) Striving; desire; the conative aspect of mind, as distinguished from the cognitive and emotional (Aristotle). --G.R.M.. Organicism: A theory of biology that life consists in the organization or dynamic system of the organism. Opposed to mechanism and vitalism. --J.K.F. Organism: An individual animal or plant, biologically interpreted. A. N. Whitehead uses the term to include also physical bodies and to signify anything material spreading through space and enduring in time. --R.B.W. Organismic Psychology: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, an instrument) A system of theoretical psychology which construes the structure of the mind in organic rather than atomistic terms. See Gestalt Psychology; Psychological Atomism. --L.W. Organization: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, work) A structured whole. The systematic unity of parts in a purposive whole. A dynamic system. Order in something actual. --J.K.F. Organon: (Gr. organon) The title traditionally given to the body of Aristotle's logical treatises. The designation appears to have originated among the Peripatetics after Aristotle's time, and expresses their view that logic is not a part of philosophy (as the Stoics maintained) but rather the instrument (organon) of philosophical inquiry. See Aristotelianism. --G.R.M.   In Kant. A system of principles by which pure knowledge may be acquired and established.   Cf. Fr. Bacon's Novum Organum. --O.F.K. Oriental Philosophy: A general designation used loosely to cover philosophic tradition exclusive of that grown on Greek soil and including the beginnings of philosophical speculation in Egypt, Arabia, Iran, India, and China, the elaborate systems of India, Greater India, China, and Japan, and sometimes also the religion-bound thought of all these countries with that of the complex cultures of Asia Minor, extending far into antiquity. Oriental philosophy, though by no means presenting a homogeneous picture, nevertheless shares one characteristic, i.e., the practical outlook on life (ethics linked with metaphysics) and the absence of clear-cut distinctions between pure speculation and religious motivation, and on lower levels between folklore, folk-etymology, practical wisdom, pre-scientiiic speculation, even magic, and flashes of philosophic insight. Bonds with Western, particularly Greek philosophy have no doubt existed even in ancient times. Mutual influences have often been conjectured on the basis of striking similarities, but their scientific establishment is often difficult or even impossible. Comparative philosophy (see especially the work of Masson-Oursel) provides a useful method. Yet a thorough treatment of Oriental Philosophy is possible only when the many languages in which it is deposited have been more thoroughly studied, the psychological and historical elements involved in the various cultures better investigated, and translations of the relevant documents prepared not merely from a philological point of view or out of missionary zeal, but by competent philosophers who also have some linguistic training. Much has been accomplished in this direction in Indian and Chinese Philosophy (q.v.). A great deal remains to be done however before a definitive history of Oriental Philosophy may be written. See also Arabian, and Persian Philosophy. --K.F.L. Origen: (185-254) The principal founder of Christian theology who tried to enrich the ecclesiastic thought of his day by reconciling it with the treasures of Greek philosophy. Cf. Migne PL. --R.B.W. Ormazd: (New Persian) Same as Ahura Mazdah (q.v.), the good principle in Zoroastrianism, and opposed to Ahriman (q.v.). --K.F.L. Orphic Literature: The mystic writings, extant only in fragments, of a Greek religious-philosophical movement of the 6th century B.C., allegedly started by the mythical Orpheus. In their mysteries, in which mythology and rational thinking mingled, the Orphics concerned themselves with cosmogony, theogony, man's original creation and his destiny after death which they sought to influence to the better by pure living and austerity. They taught a symbolism in which, e.g., the relationship of the One to the many was clearly enunciated, and believed in the soul as involved in reincarnation. Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plato were influenced by them. --K.F.L. Ortega y Gasset, Jose: Born in Madrid, May 9, 1883. At present in Buenos Aires, Argentine. Son of Ortega y Munillo, the famous Spanish journalist. Studied at the College of Jesuits in Miraflores and at the Central University of Madrid. In the latter he presented his Doctor's dissertation, El Milenario, in 1904, thereby obtaining his Ph.D. degree. After studies in Leipzig, Berlin, Marburg, under the special influence of Hermann Cohen, the great exponent of Kant, who taught him the love for the scientific method and awoke in him the interest in educational philosophy, Ortega came to Spain where, after the death of Nicolas Salmeron, he occupied the professorship of metaphysics at the Central University of Madrid. The following may be considered the most important works of Ortega y Gasset:     Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914;   El Espectador, I-VIII, 1916-1935;   El Tema de Nuestro Tiempo, 1921;   España Invertebrada, 1922;   Kant, 1924;   La Deshumanizacion del Arte, 1925;   Espiritu de la Letra, 1927;   La Rebelion de las Masas, 1929;   Goethe desde Adentio, 1934;   Estudios sobre el Amor, 1939;   Ensimismamiento y Alteracion, 1939;   El Libro de las Misiones, 1940;   Ideas y Creencias, 1940;     and others.   Although brought up in the Marburg school of thought, Ortega is not exactly a neo-Kantian. At the basis of his Weltanschauung one finds a denial of the fundamental presuppositions which characterized European Rationalism. It is life and not thought which is primary. Things have a sense and a value which must be affirmed independently. Things, however, are to be conceived as the totality of situations which constitute the circumstances of a man's life. Hence, Ortega's first philosophical principle: "I am myself plus my circumstances". Life as a problem, however, is but one of the poles of his formula. Reason is the other. The two together function, not by dialectical opposition, but by necessary coexistence. Life, according to Ortega, does not consist in being, but rather, in coming to be, and as such it is of the nature of direction, program building, purpose to be achieved, value to be realized. In this sense the future as a time dimension acquires new dignity, and even the present and the past become articulate and meaning-full only in relation to the future. Even History demands a new point of departure and becomes militant with new visions. --J.A.F. Orthodoxy: Beliefs which are declared by a group to be true and normative. Heresy is a departure from and relative to a given orthodoxy. --V.S. Orthos Logos: See Right Reason. Ostensible Object: (Lat. ostendere, to show) The object envisaged by cognitive act irrespective of its actual existence. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ostensive: (Lat. ostendere, to show) Property of a concept or predicate by virtue of which it refers to and is clarified by reference to its instances. --A.C.B. Ostwald, Wilhelm: (1853-1932) German chemist. Winner of the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1909. In Die Uberwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialistmus and in Naturphilosophie, his two best known works in the field of philosophy, he advocates a dynamic theory in opposition to materialism and mechanism. All properties of matter, and the psychic as well, are special forms of energy. --L.E.D. Oupnekhat: Anquetil Duperron's Latin translation of the Persian translation of 50 Upanishads (q.v.), a work praised by Schopenhauer as giving him complete consolation. --K.F.L. Outness: A term employed by Berkeley to express the experience of externality, that is the ideas of space and things placed at a distance. Hume used it in the sense of distance Hamilton understood it as the state of being outside of consciousness in a really existing world of material things. --J.J.R. Overindividual: Term used by H. Münsterberg to translate the German überindividuell. The term is applied to any cognitive or value object which transcends the individual subject. --L.W. P

Transitivity: A dyadic relation R is transitive if, whenever xRy and yRz both hold, xRz also holds. Important examples of transitive relations are the relation of identity or equality; the relation less than among whole numbers, or among rational numbers, or among real numbers, the relation precedes among instants of time (as usually taken); the relation of class inclusion, ⊂ (see logic, formal, §7); the relations of material implication and material equivalence among propositions, the relations of formal implication and formal equivalence among monadic propositional functions. In the propositional calculus, the laws of transitivity of material implication and material equivalence (the conditional and biconditional) are: [p ⊃ q][q ⊃ r] ⊃ [p ⊃ r] [p ≡ q][q ≡ r] ⊃ [p ≡ r] Similar laws of transitivity may be formulated for equality (e.g., in the functional calculus of first order with equality), class inclusion (e.g., in the Zermelo set theory), formal implication (e.g., in the pure functional calculus of first order), etc. -- A.C.

transpose ::: v. t. --> To change the place or order of; to substitute one for the other of; to exchange, in respect of position; as, to transpose letters, words, or propositions.
To change; to transform; to invert.
To bring, as any term of an equation, from one side over to the other, without destroying the equation; thus, if a + b = c, and we make a = c - b, then b is said to be transposed.
To change the natural order of, as words.


Transposition: The form of valid inference of the propositional calculus from A ⊃ B to ∼B ⊃ ∼A. The law of transposition is the theorem of the propositional calculus, [p ⊃ q] ⊃ [∼q ⊃ ∼q]. -- A.C.

trilemma ::: n. --> A syllogism with three conditional propositions, the major premises of which are disjunctively affirmed in the minor. See Dilemma.
A state of things in which it is difficult to determine which one of three courses to pursue.


truism ::: n. --> An undoubted or self-evident truth; a statement which is pliantly true; a proposition needing no proof or argument; -- opposed to falsism.

truthfulness ::: The validity claim of the Upper-Left quadrant. Truthfulness determines whether the person making a proposition is telling the truth or lying. Are they being truthful, honest, or sincere?

Truth: See also Semiotic 2. Truth: A characteristic of some propositional meanings, namely those which are true. Truth (or falsity) as predicated of "ideas" is today normally restricted to those which are propositional in nature, concepts being spoken of as being exemplified or not rather than as being true or false. Truth is predicable indirectly of sentences or symbols which express true meanings. (See Truth, semantical.)

Truth-table method: See logic, formal, § 1, and propositional calculus, many-valued.

truth ::: The validity claim of the Upper-Right quadrant. Refers to objective, observable truth. It determines whether a proposition or statement is observably accurate or not. Does the proposition correspond or fit with the facts? Does the map match the territory?

ulterior ::: a. --> Situated beyond, or on the farther side; thither; -- correlative with hither.
Further; remoter; more distant; succeeding; as, ulterior demands or propositions; ulterior views; what ulterior measures will be adopted is uncertain. ::: n.


ultimatum ::: n. --> A final proposition, concession, or condition; especially, the final propositions, conditions, or terms, offered by either of the parties in a diplomatic negotiation; the most favorable terms a negotiator can offer, the rejection of which usually puts an end to the hesitation.

unconsciousness ::: “What we call unconsciousness is simply other-consciousness; it is the going in of this surface wave of our mental awareness of outer objects into our subliminal self-awareness and into our awareness too of other planes of existence. We are really no more unconscious when we are asleep or stunned or drugged or ``dead’’ or in any other state, than when we are plunged in inner thought oblivious of our physical selves and our surroundings. For anyone who has advanced even a little way in Yoga, this is a most elementary proposition and one which offers no difficulty whatever to the thought because it is proved at every point by experience.” The Synthesis of Yoga

understand ::: v. t. --> To have just and adequate ideas of; to apprehended the meaning or intention of; to have knowledge of; to comprehend; to know; as, to understand a problem in Euclid; to understand a proposition or a declaration; the court understands the advocate or his argument; to understand the sacred oracles; to understand a nod or a wink.
To be apprised, or have information, of; to learn; to be informed of; to hear; as, I understand that Congress has passed


Undistributed middle: In the categorical syllogism (logic, formal, § 5), the middle term must appear in at least one of the two premisses (major and minor) is dtstributed -- i.e., as denoting the subject of a proposition A or E, or the predicate of a proposition E or O. Violation of this rule is the fallacy of undistributed middle. A.C. Uniformity of Nature: Principle that what happens once in nature will, under a sufficient degree of similarity of circumstances, happen again and as often as the same circumstances recur. -- A.C.B.

Universal class: See logic, formal, § 7. Universal proposition: See particular proposition. Universal quantifier: See quantifier. Universalism: The doctrine that each individual should seek as an end the welfare of all. Usually advanced on the basis of the principle that the intrinsic value of an entity, e.g., pleasure, does not vary with the individual possessing it. -- C.A.B.

universalist ::: n. --> One who believes in Universalism; one of a denomination of Christians holding this faith.
One who affects to understand all the particulars in statements or propositions. ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Unversalists of their doctrines.


universality ::: n. --> The quality or state of being universal; unlimited extension or application; generality; -- distinguished from particularity; as, the unversality of a proposition; the unversality of sin; the unversality of the Deluge.

vague ::: v. i. --> Wandering; vagrant; vagabond.
Unsettled; unfixed; undetermined; indefinite; ambiguous; as, a vague idea; a vague proposition.
Proceeding from no known authority; unauthenticated; uncertain; flying; as, a vague report.
To wander; to roam; to stray. ::: n.


Veridicity: A property of certain perceptions, memories and other acts of cognition which, though not in the strictest sense true -- since truth is usually considered an exclusive property of propositions and judgments -- tend to form true propositions. Non-veridical cognitions including illusions and hallucinations though not in themselves false are deceptive and foster falsity and error. -- L.W.

Verification, Confirmation: Verification: the procedure of finding out whether a sentence (or proposition) is true or false. A sentence is verifiable (in principle) if a (positive or negative) verification of it is possible under suitable conditions, leaving aside technical difficulties. Many philosophical doctrines (e.g. Scientific Empiricism, q.v.) hold that a verification is replaced here by the concept of confirmation. A certain hypothesis is said to be confirmed to a certain degree by a certain amount of evidence. The concept of degree of confirmation is closely connected or perhaps identical (Reichenbach) with the statistical concept of probability (q.v.). A sentence is confirmable if suitable (possible, not necessarily actual) experiences could contribute positively or negatively to its confirmation. Many etnpiricists (see e.g. Scientific Empiricism 1C) regard either verifiability (e.g. Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle in its earlier phase) or confirimability as a criterion of meaningfulness (in the sense of factual meaning, see Meaning, Kinds of, 2). This view leads to a rejection of certain metaphysical doctrines (see Anti-metaphysics, 2)

verity ::: n. --> The quality or state of being true, or real; consonance of a statement, proposition, or other thing, with fact; truth; reality.
That which is true; a true assertion or tenet; a truth; a reality.


volitive ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the will; originating in the will; having the power to will.
Used in expressing a wish or permission as, volitive proposition.


When (2) and (3) are complete -- i.e., contain all the variables indicated above (an infinite number of propositional variables and for each positive integer n an infinite number of functional variables with subscript n) -- and (4) is empty, we shall speak of the pure functional calculus of first order. When (2) and (3) are empty and (4) is not empty, we shall speak of a simple applied functional calculus of first order.

when ::: adv. --> At what time; -- used interrogatively.
At what time; at, during, or after the time that; at or just after, the moment that; -- used relatively.
While; whereas; although; -- used in the manner of a conjunction to introduce a dependent adverbial sentence or clause, having a causal, conditional, or adversative relation to the principal proposition; as, he chose to turn highwayman when he might have continued an honest man; he removed the tree when it was the best in html{color:


Whence, in the typical Scholastic or medieval notion, intellect is an immaterial faculty of the soul, that is, its operations are performed without a bodily organ, though they depend on the body and its senses for the material from which they receive their first impulse. Nothing is in the intellect that has not been previously in the senses. The impressions received by the external senses are synthesized by the internal sensus communis which forms an image or phantasm; the phantasm is presented to the intellect by imagination, memory and the vis cogitativa co-operating. The internal senses are conceived as being bound to organic functions of the brain. The intellect operates in a twofold manner, but is only one. As active intellect (intellectus agens) it "illuminates" the phantasm, disengaging there from the universal nature; as passive intellect (int. possibilis) it is informed by the result of this abstractive operation and develops the concept. Concepts are united into judgments by combination and division (assertion and negation). Judgments are related to each other in syllogistic reasoning or by the abbreviated form of enthymeme. Aquinas denies to the intellect the capacity of becoming aware of particulars in any direct way. The intellect knows of them (e.g. when asserting: Socrates is a man) only indirectly by reflecting on its own operations and finally on the phantasm which served as starting point. Propositions, however, have no directly corresponding phantasm. Later Scholastics credit the intellect with a direct knowledge of particulars (Suarez). See Abstraction, Faculty. -- R.A.

Whitehead and Russell, by introducing classes into their system only as incomplete symbols, "avoid the assumption that there are such things as classes." Their method (roughly) is to reinterpret a proposition about a class determined by a propositional function A as being instead an existential proposition, about some propositional function formally equivalent to A.

Whitehead and Russell give the name principle of reductio ad absurdum to the theorem of the propositional calculus: [p ⊃ ∼p] ⊃ ∼p.

Whitehead and Russell (Principia Mathematica) give the name law of absorption to theorem of the propositional calculus, [p ⊃ q] ≡ [p ≡ pq].

Whitehead and Russell use the term propositional function in approximately the sense above described, but qualify it by holding, as a corollary of Russell's doctrine of descriptions (q.v.), that propositional functions are the fundamental kind from which other kinds of functions are derived -- in fact that non-propositional ("descriptive") functions do not exist except as incomplete symbols. For details of their view, which underwent some changes between publication of the first and the second edition of Principia Mathematica, the reader is referred to that work.

withhold ::: v. t. --> To hold back; to restrain; to keep from action.
To retain; to keep back; not to grant; as, to withhold assent to a proposition.
To keep; to maintain; to retain.


Zermelo, Ernst (Friedrich Ferdinand), 1871-, German mathematician. Professor of mathematics at Zurich, 1910-1916, and at Freiburg, 1926-. His important contributions to the foundations of mathematics are the Zermelo axiomatic set theory (see logic, formal, § 9), and the explicit enunciation of the axiom of choice (q.v.) and proof of its equivalence to the proposition that every class cm be well-ordered. -- A.C.



QUOTES [6 / 6 - 849 / 849]


KEYS (10k)

   1 Bertrand Russell
   1 Alfred Korzybski
   1 The Mother
   1 Sri Aurobindo
   1 Jorge Luis Borges
   1 Aleister Crowley

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   25 Anonymous
   24 Ludwig Wittgenstein
   19 Bertrand Russell
   12 John Stuart Mill
   11 Sam Harris
   11 Daniel Kahneman
   9 Harper Lee
   9 G K Chesterton
   8 John Locke
   8 Charles Sanders Peirce
   7 Robert A Heinlein
   7 Ralph Waldo Emerson
   7 Haruki Murakami
   7 Alfred North Whitehead
   6 Friedrich Nietzsche
   6 Alexander Osterwalder
   6 A J Ayer
   5 Thomas Huxley
   5 Milton Friedman
   5 David Hume

1:Any proposition containing the word "is" creates a linguistic structural confusion which will eventually give birth to serious fallacies. ~ Alfred Korzybski,
2:Perfect rationality consists, not in believing what is true, but in attaching to every proposition a degree of belief corresponding to its degree of credibility.
   ~ Bertrand Russell,
3:We can no longer assert any single proposition, unless we guard ourselves by enumerating countless conditions which must be assumed. ~ Aleister Crowley,
4:To hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life,
5:
   Sweet Mother, I feel that something is wrong and you are very displeased with me.


It is the very first proposition that is wrong, I am not displeased with you - so all that follows cannot be correct.
   ~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother,
6:Gradually, the concrete enigma I labored at disturbed me less than the generic enigma of a sentence written by a god. What type of sentence (I asked myself) will an absolute mind construct? I considered that even in the human languages there is no proposition that does not imply the entire universe: to say "the tiger" is to say the tigers that begot it, the deer and turtles devoured by it, the grass on which the deer fed, the earth that was mother to the grass, the heaven that gave birth to the earth. I considered that in the language of a god every word would enunciate that infinite concatenation of facts, and not in an implicit but in an explicit manner, and not progressively but instantaneously. In time, the notion of a divine sentence seemed puerile or blasphemous. A god, I reflected, ought to utter only a single word and in that word absolute fullness. No word uttered by him can be inferior to the universe or less than the sum total of time.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings,
1:It means nothing to be open to a proposition we don't understand. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove
2:Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
3:Masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition, but the enemy I see wears a cloak of decency. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove
4:This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: At the time, no one knew what was coming. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove
5:Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove
6:Philosophy rests on a proposition that whatever is is right. Preaching begins by assuming that whatever is is wrong. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove
7:To hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove
8:In a mathematical proposition, for example, the objectivity is given, but therefore its truth is also an indifferent truth. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
9:I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-sr, @wisdomtrove
10:That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove
11:It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
12:Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. ~ abraham-lincoln, @wisdomtrove
13:I dare say that I have worked off my fundamental formula on you that the chief end of man is to frame general propositions and that no general proposition is worth a damn. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove
14:All democracies are based on the proposition that power is very dangerous and that it is extremely important not to let any one person or small group have too much power for too long a time. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove
15:Where God's presence is no longer a tenable proposition and where his absence is no longer a felt, indeed overwhelming weight, certain dimensions of thought and creativity are no longer attainable. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove
16:The whole of natural theologyresolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous proposition, That the cause or causesof order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove
17:The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
18:I used to think a wedding was a simple affair. Boy and girl meet, they fall in love, he buys a ring, she buys a dress, they say I do. I was wrong. That's getting married. A wedding is an entirely different proposition. ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove
19:Truth has no gradations; nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove
20:A proposition of geometry does not compete with life; and a proposition of geometry is a fair and luminous parallel for a work of art. Both are reasonable, both untrue to the crude fact; both inhere in nature, neither represents it. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove
21:The world isn't kept running because it's a paying proposition. (God doesn't make a cent on the deal.) The world goes on because a few men in every generation believe in it utterly, accept it unquestioningly; they underwrite it with their lives. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove
22:When considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't. Religion is one area of our lives where people imagine that some other standard of intellectual integrity applies. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove
23:Nature does not teach. A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature; an experience of nature cannot validate a philosophy. Nature will not verify any theological or metaphysical proposition (or not in the manner we are now considering); she will help to show what it means. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
24:It must be granted that in every syllogism, considered as an argument to prove the conclusion, there is a petitio principii. When we say, All men are mortal Socrates is a man therefore Socrates is mortal; it is unanswerably urged by the adversaries of the syllogistic theory, that the proposition, Socrates is mortal. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove
25:Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. There is no scepticism, no atheism but that. Could it be received into common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet.  ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove
26:Socialism" is no more an evil word than "Christianity." Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove
27:Man is full of desires: he loves only those who can satisfy them all. "This man is a good mathematician," someone will say. But I have no concern for mathematics; he would take me for a proposition. "That one is a good soldier." He would take me for a besieged town. I need, that is to say, a decent man who can accommodate himself to all my desires in a general sort of way. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove
28:I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove
29:[People] have seen the credit market seize up. They're worried about money market funds, although the latest proposition from government should take care of that. They've seen eight percent of the bank deposits in the United States get moved very skillfully, I might say, within the last couple of weeks from institutions that they thought were fine a few months ago to other institutions. They are not wrong to be worried. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove
30:I won't close down a business of subnormal profitability merely to add a fraction of a point to our corporate returns. I also feel it inappropriate for even an exceptionally profitable company to fund an operation once it appears to have unending losses in prospect. Adam Smith would disagree with my first proposition and Karl Marx would disagree with my second; the middle ground is the only position that leaves me comfortable. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove
31:Our principles were revolutionary. We began as a small, weak republic. But we survived. Our example inspired others, imperfectly at times, but it inspired them nevertheless. This constitutional republic, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, prospered and grew strong. To this day, America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny. That is our purpose in the world - nothing more and nothing less. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
32:The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove
33:The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove
34:The Western approach to reality is mostly through theory, and theory begins by denying reality - to talk about reality, to go around reality, to catch anything that attracts our sense-intellect and abstract it away from reality itself. Thus philosophy begins by saying that the outside world is not a basic fact, that its existence can be doubted and that every proposition in which the reality of the outside world is affirmed is not an evident proposition but one that needs to be divided, dissected and analyzed. It is to stand consciously aside and try to square a circle. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove
35:The angels also said, When people arrive in this world from the physical one and hear that they are in another world, they gather together in many places to form groups. They ask where heaven and hell are, and also where God is. After they have been taught, they start arguing, disputing, and fighting about whether God exists. This is a result of the great number of materialists in the physical world today. When the topic of religion comes up, materialists start to debate about it with one another and with other groups. The ensuing proposition and debate rarely results in an affirmation of the faith that God exists. Materialists associate more and more with the evil, because only from God can one do something good with a love for what is good. ~ emanuel-swedenborg, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:True love has always been a two-way proposition. ~ Jon Jones,
2:The above proposition is occasionally useful. ~ Bertrand Russell,
3:Proposition one: time is a man, space is a woman. ~ Angela Carter,
4:I'd say pot has been a break-even proposition for me. ~ George Carlin,
5:if a proposition cannot be falsified, it is not scientific. ~ Edward Humes,
6:Administering another country is always a very tricky proposition. ~ Juan Cole,
7:It means nothing to be open to a proposition we don't understand. ~ Carl Sagan,
8:Unfortunately, sometimes doing the right thing is a costly proposition. ~ M Z Kelly,
9:If you live only for yourself, dying is an especially scary proposition. ~ Barry Eisler,
10:Love is seldom—almost never—an even proposition. Someone always loves more. ~ Emily Giffin,
11:Reversing a proposition rearranges its terms, but still keeps out new terms. ~ Mason Cooley,
12:Love is seldom—almost never—an even proposition. Someone always
loves more. ~ Emily Giffin,
13:At the end of the day, the true value proposition of education is employment. ~ Sebastian Thrun,
14:Proposition IX. Radiant light consists in Undulations of the Luminiferous Ether. ~ Thomas Young,
15:Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition. ~ G K Chesterton,
16:Conceived in mistrust, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created evil. ~ Harper Lee,
17:It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. ~ Alfred North Whitehead,
18:Trying to make sense of rules that didn't make sense was rather a losing proposition. ~ Bella Forrest,
19:The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa. ~ Robert A Heinlein,
20:Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
21:These terrorists had gambled on the proposition that the Empire would never strike back. ~ Claudia Gray,
22:If you cannot state a proposition clearly and unambiguously, you do not understand it. ~ Milton Friedman,
23:In fact I thought life was pretty much a losing proposition, and I didn't mind saying so. ~ Richard Hell,
24:Conceived in mistrust, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created evil. “—they ~ Harper Lee,
25:Define a winning proposition that is consumer right and delivers margin accretion. ~ Michael J Silverstein,
26:The heterosexuality or homosexuality of many individuals is not an all-or-none proposition. ~ Alfred Kinsey,
27:Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books. ~ Francis Bacon, Proposition touching Amendment of Laws.,
28:The proposition that economist Ludwig von Mises was a feminist is an apodictic impossibility. ~ Ilana Mercer,
29:A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
30:We must be willing to be guided of God, not merely now and then, but as a life proposition. ~ E Stanley Jones,
31:We should pledge ourselves to the proposition that the irresponsible life is not worth living. ~ Thomas Szasz,
32:Life’s a tough proposition, and the first hundred years are the hardest. —WILSON MIZNER L ~ Charles R Swindoll,
33:Masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition, but the enemy I see wears a cloak of decency. ~ Bob Dylan,
34:The California proposition [Prop. 187] is one I would agree with. That's the easiest way to put it. ~ Bob Dole,
35:You need to simplify the value proposition in the company's metrics for success on a whiteboard. ~ Keith Rabois,
36:To begin with, we put the proposition: pure phenomenology is the science of pure consciousness. ~ Edmund Husserl,
37:You know you're having a seriously fucked-up day when ontology becomes a life-or-death proposition ~ Elan Mastai,
38:In post-Mao China, qigong replaced Maoism as an unconscious outlet for religious zealotry.2 PROPOSITION ~ Anonymous,
39:It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true ~ Bertrand Russell,
40:There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it’s a you-do or you-don’t proposition with them all. ~ Harper Lee,
41:Marriage isn't a 50-50 proposition very often. It's more like 100-0 one moment and 0-100 the next. ~ Billie Jean King,
42:The utter absence of proof for a proposition is proof of a successful conspiracy to destroy all proof. ~ George F Will,
43:I have a truly marvellous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain. ~ Steig Larsson,
44:I have a truly marvellous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain. ~ Stieg Larsson,
45:Ice-skating is a dangerous proposition and tennis is going to be something I'm probably not very good at. ~ Maggie Grace,
46:Moreover, according to the correspondence theory, one and the same proposition cannot be both true and false ~ Anonymous,
47:You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne,
48:I expect to fight that proposition until hell freezes over. Then I propose to start fighting on the ice. ~ Russell B Long,
49:The thought has crossed my mind.” Trujillo turns to me, his expression serious. “I have a proposition for you. ~ R R Banks,
50:A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought. A thought is a proposition with a sense. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
51:Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books."

[Proposition touching Amendment of Laws] ~ Francis Bacon,
52:Life to him was a very serious proposition, and that’s the way he lived it, soberly and with due reflection. ~ David Brooks,
53:Okay," he said, leaning closer to me. "I have a proposition for you." Dear God, let it be marriage, I thought. ~ Emery Lord,
54:This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: At the time, no one knew what was coming. ~ Haruki Murakami,
55:The Christian confession is not a neutral proposition; it is prayer, only yielding its meaning within prayer. ~ Benedict XVI,
56:This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: 'At the time, no one knew what was coming. ~ Haruki Murakami,
57:This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: “At the time, no one knew what was coming. ~ Haruki Murakami,
58:Communism starts with the proposition that there are no universal truths or general truths of human nature. ~ Richard M Nixon,
59:It's a losing proposition, but one you can't refuse. It's the politics of contraband, it's the smuggler's blues. ~ Glenn Frey,
60:Hurried and worried until we're buried, and there's no curtain call, Lifes a very funny proposition after all. ~ George M Cohan,
61:Faith is the assent to any proposition not made out by the deduction of reason but upon the credit of the proposer. ~ John Locke,
62:A man ought to know enough to make a choice; and pa, he always advised me to look to both sides of a proposition. ~ Louis L Amour,
63:Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted. ~ Bertrand Russell,
64:You know, I have never had a casting couch proposition in my life. I thought there was something wrong with me. ~ Shirley MacLaine,
65:That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent. ~ Aldous Huxley,
66:Therefore, I do not wish to consider any proposition to cede any portion of our tribal holdings to the Great Father. ~ Sitting Bull,
67:A proposition is in itself neither probable nor improbable. An event occurs or does not occur, there is no middle course ~ Anonymous,
68:But the proposition that we can look into another person’s heart with perfect clarity strikes me as a fool’s game. ~ Haruki Murakami,
69:Cultivating your value proposition in life is the way to move forward. You are the raw material of your own destiny. ~ Bryant McGill,
70:Never accept the proposition that just because a solution satisfies a problem, that it must be the only solution. ~ Raymond E Feist,
71:Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it. ~ Gertrude Stein,
72:Philosophy rests on a proposition that whatever is is right. Preaching begins by assuming that whatever is is wrong. ~ Elbert Hubbard,
73:Cultivating your value proposition in life is the way to move forward. You are the raw material of your own destiny. ~ Bryant H McGill,
74:To hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
75:A spontaneous proposition deserves a spontaneous response."
"You gave me a spontaneous response when you said no. ~ Jeri Smith Ready,
76:I firmly disbelieve in death. A spirit never dies. Where it wanders when it leaves the flesh, is a cognitive proposition. ~ Kellie Elmore,
77:I would put forward a modest proposition that we were very much better governed by Henry VIII than we are by King Gordon. ~ David Starkey,
78:What's wrong with my proposition?"
Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal - I do not like your face. ~ Agatha Christie,
79:It's no fun to appreciate to the full the truth of the materialist proposition that I don't have a body, I am a body. ~ Christopher Hitchens,
80:Love is nothing but Joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause (Ethics, part III, proposition 13, scholium). ~ Baruch Spinoza,
81:Why is it so easy to believe that a mother’s love isn’t a zero-sum proposition, but that sexual love is a finite resource? ~ Christopher Ryan,
82:It is fairly clear that many of the arguments against proposition testing are really arguments against propositions themselves. ~ Stephen King,
83:Keeping big secrets, particularly secrets about things of one's own doing, is a tough proposition for even very bright people. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
84:Talking to the gods had been a much more comfortable proposition when there had seemed no danger of Their talking back. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold,
85:In a mathematical proposition, for example, the objectivity is given, but therefore its truth is also an indifferent truth. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
86:In short, the proposition that God was in any way involved in our creation is effectively outlawed, and implicitly negated. ~ Phillip E Johnson,
87:There is no such thing as an isolated proposition. For what I call a "proposition" is a position in the game of language. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
88:A minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers.” This proposition is supported by 79 percent of economists. ~ Anonymous,
89:It’s a tiresome proposition, having to take up the work of the Enlightenment all over again, but it’s happened on your watch. ~ Rebecca Goldstein,
90:Once you attach your personality to a proposition, people start reacting to the personality and stop reacting to the proposition. ~ Harvey Mackay,
91:The plan was to remake Oil of Olay—its brand, its business model, its package and product, its value proposition, and even its name. ~ A G Lafley,
92:Yeah that’ll go over well. You better hope all the ammo is gone before you make that little proposition. Besides it won’t work.” Alex ~ Mark Tufo,
93:[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting. ~ Alfred North Whitehead,
94:What's wrong with my proposition?" Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal-I do not like your face, M. Ratchett. ~ Agatha Christie,
95:I am led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction; there is only narrative. ~ Nora Ephron,
96:Taleb’s hero, on the other hand, is Karl Popper, who said that you could not know with any certainty that a proposition was true; ~ Malcolm Gladwell,
97:Your customers are the judge, jury, and executioner of your value proposition. They will be merciless if you don’t find fit! ~ Alexander Osterwalder,
98:A classical concept in Hinduism has been that a true proposition has to be consistent with sruti, yukti (reason/logic) and anubhava. ~ Rajiv Malhotra,
99:I am firmly committed to the proposition that whoever is in power is exceedingly silly.... And that goes for the opposition as well. ~ Calvin Trillin,
100:I am led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative. ~ E L Doctorow,
101:I am led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction; there is only narrative. ~ E L Doctorow,
102:It is my proposition that the human race has become a collective problem-solving machine and it solves problems by changing its ways. It ~ Matt Ridley,
103:Reality is devoid of any intrinsic identity that can be captured by any one single proposition - that is what Buddha meant by "voidness." ~ Dalai Lama,
104:All myth is an enriched pattern, a two-faced proposition, allowing its operator to say one thing and mean another, to lead a double life. ~ Anne Carson,
105:We can no longer assert any single proposition, unless we guard ourselves by enumerating countless conditions which must be assumed. ~ Aleister Crowley,
106:You cannot obtain more truth for a fixed proposition by arguing it. To improve our beliefs, we must necessarily change our beliefs. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky,
107:Consistent alignment of capabilities and internal processes with the customer value proposition is the core of any strategy execution. ~ Robert S Kaplan,
108:We can no longer assert any single proposition, unless we guard ourselves by enumerating countless conditions which must be assumed. ~ Aleister Crowley,
109:Any woman who still thinks marriage is a fifty-fifty proposition is only proving that she doesn't understand either men or percentages. ~ Florynce Kennedy,
110:I am led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction; there is only narrative.” From ~ Nora Ephron,
111:It may therefore be asserted as a general proposition that nothing is more opposed to the well-being and the freedom of man than vast empires. ~ Anonymous,
112:Situationism is a ludicrous proposition. It's ill-formed and it's perfectly French. That Gallic disposition towards common sense. L'Anarchie! ~ John Lydon,
113:Hillary apparently never appreciated that when she went after Trump’s sins of the flesh, it would quickly prove a losing proposition. ~ Victor Davis Hanson,
114:What's wrong with my proposition? Poirot rose. If you will forgive me for being personal - I do not like tour face, M. Ratchett, he said. ~ Agatha Christie,
115:When you exist in the centre of a debate, as a topic, a hypothesis - otherised and stigmatised - you become the prop in a proposition. ~ Randa Abdel Fattah,
116:Microcredit has shown how you can reach out to people that conventional banking cannot. It has demonstrated that it's a doable proposition. ~ Muhammad Yunus,
117:You make an open-ended proposition and the audience completes it somehow. That’s what you hope an artwork to be-a constantly living thing. ~ Cornelia Parker,
118:Any proposition containing the word "is" creates a linguistic structural confusion which will eventually give birth to serious fallacies. ~ Alfred Korzybski,
119:One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. ~ John Locke,
120:Some object that unless we have some explanation of what it is for a proposition to correspond with the facts, the theory is not very informative ~ Anonymous,
121:Of course, there is no conceivable way of getting by reason from the proposition "I am losing interest in this" to the proposition "This is false. ~ C S Lewis,
122:people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
123:I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr,
124:If you ask Americans whether they've been successful at sealing the border with Mexico, they'll tell you that it's a very difficult proposition. ~ Bashar al Assad,
125:that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
126:That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise. ~ David Hume,
127:A proposition is completely logically analyzed if its grammar is made completely clear: no matter what idiom it may be written or expressed in. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
128:Comparing how you feel on the inside (bad) to the way someone else looks on the outside (great) is a losing proposition. It's an impossible standard. ~ Maria Shriver,
129:Fifteen years ago, if you said business will help save the environment people would have laughed at you. Today, I believe that is a serious proposition. ~ Tony Blair,
130:Truth exists. The sole purpose of this proposition is to assert the existence of truth against imbeciles and sceptics. ~ Edward Herbert 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury,
131:We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express. ~ A J Ayer,
132:The proposition that the alphabet has hindered women’s aspirations and accomplishments seems, at first glance, to be antithetical to historical facts. ~ Leonard Shlain,
133:I tell you the solemn truth, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics. ~ Henry Adams,
134:To hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life,
135:The Republican Party and the conservative movement cannot unify around a single proposition, and the Democrats easily do. They have total contempt for us. ~ Rush Limbaugh,
136:We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers ~ Daniel Kahneman,
137:Deduction, which takes us from the general proposition to facts again-teaches us, if I may so say, to anticipate from the ticket what is inside the bundle. ~ Thomas Huxley,
138:..some things were better, some were worse, and the only way one can ever learn to understand one's own youth is by accepting both halves of the proposition. ~ Nick Hornby,
139:To fear the examination of any proposition apears to me an intellectual and a moral palsy that will ever hinder the firm grasping of any substance whatever. ~ George Eliot,
140:Unique Value Proposition: A single, clear compelling message that states why you are different and worth buying. ” - Steve Blank The Four Steps to the Epiphany ~ Anonymous,
141:We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
142:Dis ain’t no business proposition, and no race after property and titles. Dis is uh love game. Ah done lived Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine. ~ Zora Neale Hurston,
143:These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing. ~ Isaac Asimov,
144:We know that people can maintain an unshakeable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
145:When I thought of every proposition or threat that I got just walking down the street in my girl body, I decided I might as well get paid for the trouble. ~ Molly Crabapple,
146:If someone were to put a proposition before men bidding them choose, after examination, the best customs in the world, each nation would certainly select its own ~ Herodotus,
147:It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
148:It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
149:Love's the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it's a you-do or you-don't proposition with them all. ~ Harper Lee,
150:Love’s the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it’s a you-do or you-don’t proposition with them all. ~ Harper Lee,
151:The magical proposition of the gospel, once free from the clasps of fairy tale, was very adult to me, very gritty like something from Hemingway or Steinbeck, ~ Donald Miller,
152:But if you’re approaching prediction as more of a business proposition, you’re usually better off finding someplace where you can be the big fish in a small pond. ~ Anonymous,
153:Painting is the same kind of problem as unfolding a long, sustained interlocked argument... It is a proposition commanded by a single unity of conception. ~ Winston Churchill,
154:Memory, then, is a necessary part of the logical faculty. … The proposition A = A must have a psychological relation to time, otherwise it would be At1 = At2. ~ Otto Weininger,
155:For the reason, or maxim, is inevitably a proposition of some generality. It cannot embody specifications to fit every detail of the particular state of affairs. ~ Gilbert Ryle,
156:It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. ~ Thomas Huxley,
157:The graphic emphasis placed on those first lines is rather hard to square with the proposition that the monument expresses no particular religious preference. ~ John Paul Stevens,
158:It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other people before her time and since) that whenever her original proposition was questioned, she exaggerated it. ~ Charles Dickens,
159:I was not an atheist. Few people really are, for that means blind faith in the strange proposition that this universe originated in a cipher and aimlessly rushes nowhere. ~ Bill W,
160:Football is a very short-term proposition. Football really prepares you for nothing. The only thing I got out of football was the ability to work hard, and that's it. ~ Gale Sayers,
161:In fact, the proposition that man’s species nature is estranged from him means that one man is estranged from the other, as each of them is from man’s essential nature. ~ Karl Marx,
162:Perfect rationality consists, not in believing what is true, but in attaching to every proposition a degree of belief corresponding to its degree of credibility. ~ Bertrand Russell,
163:The so-called law of induction cannot possibly be a law of logic, since it is obviously a proposition with a sense.--Nor, therefore, can it be an a priori law. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
164:Perfect rationality consists, not in believing what is true, but in attaching to every proposition a degree of belief corresponding to its degree of credibility.
   ~ Bertrand Russell,
165:It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley,
166:We are now somewhat readily accepting the proposition that high-explosive shells used in unprecedented and extraordinary quantities will achieve decisive results. ~ Winston S Churchill,
167:Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. ~ Lee Child,
168:It felt to me like I was living my life in a way that didn't make mockery of my values. That's what I intended to do. So, that became a very radicalizing proposition for me. ~ Bill Ayers,
169:The proposition that the meek (that is the adaptable and serviceable), inherit the earth is not merely a wishful sentiment of religion, but an iron law of evolution. ~ Kenneth E Boulding,
170:Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776. We are really founded on an argument about what that proposition means. ~ Joseph J Ellis,
171:What we see happening with this Republican strategy is a willingness to threaten the very foundation of the world's greatest economic power. That is a very risky proposition. ~ Jay Carney,
172:We're starting to make some progress. But there's still gonna be some pain out there. If I don't have this done in three years, then there's gonna be a one-term proposition. ~ Barack Obama,
173:A true proposition is a proposition belief which would never lead to such disappointment so long as the proposition is not understood otherwise than it was intended. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce,
174:We believe that economics does not necessarily have to be a zero-sum game; it can be a win-win proposition for everyone involved so long as they have the tools in which to succeed. ~ Ron Kind,
175:The atheist proposition is the following - most of the time - it may not be said that there is no god; it may be said that there is no reason to think that there is one. ~ Christopher Hitchens,
176:There's a story everywhere. Being bored to death someplace is basically a funny proposition. What you have to watch out for is you don't write a boring story about a boring place. ~ Tim Cahill,
177:First proposition. The grounds upon which ‘this’ world has been designated as apparent establish rather its reality – another kind of reality is absolutely undemonstrable. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
178:Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. ~ Abraham Lincoln,
179:Lola Montes is, in my unhumble opinion, the greatest film of all time, and I am willing to stake my critical reputation, such as it is, on this one proposition above all others. ~ Andrew Sarris,
180:Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. ~ Abraham Lincoln,
181:My faith in the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in me. ~ Abraham Lincoln,
182:When an idea, a proposition, a cause is presented to me in terms that leave me no alternative but to be for it, because it's all pros and no cons, then I know I'm being conned. ~ Jean Louis Gassee,
183:rewards for improved performance work better than punishment of mistakes. This proposition is supported by much evidence from research on pigeons, rats, humans, and other animals. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
184:Twitter Inc. has a proposition for app makers: Let’s start over. Two years ago, Twitter irked developers with stricter rules around applications that plug into the social-media service. ~ Anonymous,
185:When my father began his work in the 1970s it was a very different EU. I pay tribute to what he did. But it has now become a very different proposition: the United States of Europe. ~ Boris Johnson,
186:History offers no evidence for the proposition that the assignment of women to military combat jobs is the way to win wars, improve combat readiness, or promote national security. ~ Phyllis Schlafly,
187:I dare say that I have worked off my fundamental formula on you that the chief end of man is to frame general propositions and that no general proposition is worth a damn. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr,
188:It is almost always the unhappiness of a victorious disputant to destroy his own authority by claiming too many consequences, or diffusing his proposition to an indefensible extent. ~ Samuel Johnson,
189:Well, because I have twin seven-year-old boys, I enjoy the gift giving stuff a great deal. We do both Hanukkah and Christmas, so it is a costly, though extremely pleasing proposition. ~ Fred Melamed,
190:It follows at once from the last proposition that the centre of gravity of any triangle is at the intersection of the lines drawn from any two angles to the middle points of the opposite ~ Archimedes,
191:The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
192:Happiness isn't a one-size-fits-all proposition. You must define what it looks like for you and then make a conscious effort to access whatever gets you to your unique definition of joy. ~ Phil McGraw,
193:The proposition that Muslims are welcome in Britain if, and only if, they stop behaving like Muslims is a doctrine which is incompatible with the principles that guide a free society. ~ Roy Hattersley,
194:During the few minutes that Lewis was away, Morse was acutely conscious of the truth of the proposition that the wider the circle of knowledge the greater the circumference of ignorance. ~ Colin Dexter,
195:We criticize a thinker more acutely when he advances a proposition that is disagreeable to us; and yet it would be more reasonableto do so when his proposition is agreeable to us. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
196:Communism is a proposition to structure the world more reasonably, a proposition for changing the world. As such, we have to analyze it and, if we deem it reasonable, act upon it. ~ Friedrich Durrenmatt,
197:It's possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way. ~ Karl Marx,
198:It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way. ~ Karl Marx,
199:Proposition VIII. When two Undulations, from different Origins, coincide either perfectly or very nearly in Direction, their joint effect is a Combination of the Motions belonging to each. ~ Thomas Young,
200:Farming was a risky proposition under even the best of circumstances. Folks who toiled in the dirt could do everything right and a drought or an early freeze could come and wipe them out. ~ David Baldacci,
201:All democracies are based on the proposition that power is very dangerous and that it is extremely important not to let any one person or small group have too much power for too long a time ~ Aldous Huxley,
202:hen the price of carbon reaches $100 a tonne, then it will become an economically viable business proposition to start taking CO₂ out of the atmosphere and sequestering it underground. ~ Thomas Homer Dixon,
203:It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards. ~ Søren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 1843.,
204:The proposition that growth itself creates value is so deeply entrenched in the rhetoric of business that it has become an article of almost unquestioned faith that growth is a good thing. ~ Richard P Rumelt,
205:I think that there is no supernatural dimension. The natural world is quite wonderful enough. The more we know about it, the much more wonderful it is than any supernatural proposition. ~ Christopher Hitchens,
206:My proposition for a regiment of ten companies is four of Sikhs, two of Hill Rajputs, two of Punjabi Mohammedans, two of Pathans. In Peshawar, if you like, you might have a third of Pathans. ~ Rajmohan Gandhi,
207:By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece. ~ G K Chesterton,
208:Memory, then, is a necessary part of the logical faculty. … The proposition A = A must have a psychological relation to time, otherwise it would be At1 = At2. ~ Otto Weininger, Sex and Character (1906), p. 148.,
209:An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a definite proposition... A contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says." No, it's not. ~ Graham Chapman,
210:Belief, in this sense, seems to me to be assent to a proposition which we think so overwhelmingly probable that there is a psychological exclusion of doubt, though not a logical exclusion of dispute. It ~ C S Lewis,
211:That’s right, but it’s not a mathematical proposition. It’s a sociological observation
and there is always the possibility of exceptions to such observations." - Dr. Mandamus to Dr. Kelden Amadiro ~ Isaac Asimov,
212:Where God's presence is no longer a tenable proposition and where his absence is no longer a felt, indeed overwhelming weight, certain dimensions of thought and creativity are no longer attainable. ~ Rudolf Steiner,
213:Before I met Ayn Rand, I was a logical positivist, and accordingly, I didn't believe in absolutes, moral or otherwise. If I couldn't prove a proposition with facts and figures, it was without merit. ~ Alan Greenspan,
214:...to imitate Western civilization in its spirit, its mode of life and its social organization is impossible without dealing a fatal blow to the very existence of Islam as an ideological proposition. ~ Muhammad Asad,
215:By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
216:Everyone wants to get out of living where they're living now, because life is a pretty tough proposition and not much fun. But when you think back to earlier times, you only extrapolate the nice things. ~ Woody Allen,
217:The sense of a truth-function of p is a function of the sense of p.   Denial, logical addition, logical multiplication, etc. etc., are operations.   (Denial reverses the sense of a proposition.) ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
218:What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one,--and that is not only true, but identical,--that men always act from self-interest. ~ Thomas B Macaulay,
219:If religion has set up the proposition that we are sinners altogether, I set over against it the other: we are perfect altogether! For we are, every moment, all that we can be; and we never need be more. ~ Max Stirner,
220:As a first approximation, I define belief not as the object of believing (a dogma, a program, etc.) but as the subject's investment in a proposition, the act of saying it and considering it as true. ~ Michel de Certeau,
221:The great argument used now against any theological proposition is not, that it is untrue, or unthinkable, or unedifying, or unscriptural, or unorthodox, but simply, that the modern mind cannot accept it. ~ Ronald Knox,
222:If a tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, it still very probably makes a sound. A baseball game that's played with no one around to watch it, though - that's a different proposition. ~ Carson Cistulli,
223:(R)eality TV (is) a medium dedicated to the proposition that with the help of judicious editing, carefully chosen half-wits can hold the attention of millions of their fellow half-wits for weeks on end. ~ Terry Teachout,
224:The whole of natural theologyresolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous proposition, That the cause or causesof order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence. ~ David Hume,
225:To get your prospects and clients to see you or your business as offering them a superior benefit or advantage that no other competitor offers them is the essence of a unique selling proposition (USP). You ~ Jay Abraham,
226:Before you can pick a social-media strategy, you have to think of your customer and what the value proposition is for them. Social media is a way to engage customers, not to give your business a 'shout out.' ~ Carol Roth,
227:If the assertion that there is a god is nonsensical, then the atheist's assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical, since it is only a significant proposition that can be significantly contradicted. ~ A J Ayer,
228:The main proposition I insist on is this: that a gracious spirit is a contented spirit. The doctrine of contentment is very important; for until we have learned this, we have not learned to be Christians. ~ Thomas Watson,
229:The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted. ~ Bertrand Russell,
230:Definitely beats my first kiss. Seventh grade, Andrea Williams, behind the gym after school. She came over to my table at lunch, whispered the proposition in my ear, and I had a hard-on for the rest of the day. ~ Jay Asher,
231:Although now that I'm in middle management I'm supposed to call it "refactoring the strategic value proposition in real time with agile implementation,” or, if I’m being honest, “making it up as I go along. ~ Charles Stross,
232:supported by a powerful professional culture. We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers. Given ~ Daniel Kahneman,
233:All philosophy is a 'critique of language' (though not in Mauthner's sense). It was Russell who performed the service of showing that the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
234:Because of my own experience with market fluctuation, I recognize the great risks one takes on investments. This converts the Social Security safety net into a risky proposition many cannot afford to take. ~ Grace Napolitano,
235:Of course there is no conceivable way of getting by reason from the proposition ‘I am losing interest in this’ to the proposition ‘This is false’. But, as I said before, it is jargon, not reason, you must rely on. ~ C S Lewis,
236:The evidence of history speaks with a single voice. I do not know any exception to the proposition that if you compare like with like, the freer the system, the better off the ordinary poor people have been. ~ Milton Friedman,
237:I confess that Fermat's Theorem as an isolated proposition has very little interest for me, because I could easily lay down a multitude of such propositions, which one could neither prove nor dispose of. ~ Carl Friedrich Gauss,
238:Of course with John McCain out of the race, George W. Bush has to pick a running mate. Which is kind of a scary proposition when you think about it. I mean his dad picked Dan Quayle, an he isn't as smart as his dad. ~ Jay Leno,
239:The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother. ~ G K Chesterton,
240:The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body. ~ John Adams,
241:...[I]f I know that it is only by this process that the intended operation can be performed, then to say that if I fully will the operation, I also will the action required for it, is an analytical proposition... ~ Immanuel Kant,
242:Every single American - gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, transgender - every single American deserves to be treated equally in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of our society. It’s a pretty simple proposition. ~ Barack Obama,
243:We stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt,
244:It goes without saying that the Jewish people can have no other goal than Palestine and that, whatever the fate of the proposition may be, our attitude toward the land of our fathers is and shall remain unchangeable ~ Theodor Herzl,
245:One of our biggest challenges is making sure our life’s purpose doesn’t become a beggar’s bowl, a bottomless pit of desire continually searching for the next thing that will make us happy. That’s a losing proposition. ~ Gary Keller,
246:For a Westerner, it is usually sufficient for a proposition to be logically sound. For a Chinese it is not sufficient that a proposition be logically correct, but it must be at the same time in accord with human nature. ~ Lin Yutang,
247:I've always favoured proposition over opposition. But we will oppose the government when it's off track. We'll support positive suggestions that we'll bring forward and support the government when it's making progress. ~ Jack Layton,
248:The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
249:I used to think a wedding was a simple affair. Boy and girl meet, they fall in love, he buys a ring, she buys a dress, they say I do. I was wrong. That's getting married. A wedding is an entirely different proposition. ~ Steve Martin,
250:I wanted to get to that aesthetic proposition that comes out of learning the human elements of a world, so that those notes and rhythms mean something to you besides just the academic way in which they fall in place. ~ Stanley Crouch,
251:The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent. This proposition is by no means novel; it has long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion. ~ Thorstein Veblen,
252:While good strategy content is based on a compelling value proposition for buyers with a robust profit proposition for the organization, sustainable strategy execution is based largely on a motivating-people proposition. ~ W Chan Kim,
253:Should I just tell her how I feel about her? Do I tell her that I think sex will change everything? That I'm so fucking mad about her that the second I stick my dick inside her, I might proposition her with marriage? ~ Rachel Robinson,
254:They were signaling how much that person truly believed in the value and integrity of her idea and her ability to bring it to fruition, which may in turn have signaled something about the quality of the proposition itself. ~ Amy Cuddy,
255:You have attempted to tinge detection with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid." - Holmes to Watson, The Sign of Four ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,
256:Finally, it follows from the preceding proposition that the joy by which the drunkard is enslaved is altogether different from the joy which is the portion of the philosopher,--a think I wished just to hint in passing. ~ Baruch Spinoza,
257:Truth has no gradations; nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true. ~ Samuel Johnson,
258:A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. ~ John Gall,
259:Cyanide. On ice with a twist of lime. Or water. But I’m not budging on the lime.”

Lyon, Jennifer (2013-02-22). The Proposition (The Plus One Chronicles) (Kindle Location 1365). Jennifer Lyon Books. Kindle Edition. ~ Jennifer Lyon,
260:there are many pseudo-experts who have no idea that they do not know what they are doing (the illusion of validity), and that as a general proposition subjective confidence is commonly too high and often uninformative. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
261:It is impossible for any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as a sum of two like powers. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain. ~ Pierre de Fermat,
262:I am thus led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative...A novel is a printed circuit through which flows the force of a reader's own life. ~ E L Doctorow,
263:Lessons in magic from a mysterious boy who belonged to a hidden Ferisher court called the Wild — I couldn't think of anything that would horrify my parents more. Therefore, the proposition became exponentially more enticing. ~ Ann Aguirre,
264:Liberals dispute that Reagan won the Cold War on the basis of their capacity to put mocking quotation marks around the word, won. That's pretty much the full argument: Restate a factual proposition with sneering quote marks. ~ Ann Coulter,
265:In the beginning, we made the usual mistake of looking at houses we could afford. I am working on a proposition, hereafter to be known as Kerr's law, which states in essence: All the houses you can afford to buy are depressing. ~ Jean Kerr,
266:We staying out here today?” Hi rubbed his chin as if considering the proposition, his Bolton Prep blazer flipped inside-out with the lining exposed. “Mr. Terenzoni might not be willing to yell his lesson plan out the window. ~ Kathy Reichs,
267:When you default on a secured debt, the creditor takes the asset that backs up that debt. When you convert credit card debt to mortgage debt, you are securing that credit card debt with your home. That's a risky proposition. ~ Jean Chatzky,
268:The proposition that the principal articles of the Apostles' Creed did not have the same meaning for the Christians of the earliest times as they have for Christians of our time is hereby condemned and proscribed as erroneous. ~ Pope Pius X,
269:Whenever a man acts purposively, he acts under a belief in some experimental phenomenon. Consequently, the sum of the experimental phenomena that a proposition implies makes up its entire bearing upon human conduct. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce,
270:Life's an offensive proposition from beginning to end. Maybe those who can't tolerate offense ought to just go ahead and end it all, and maybe those who demand financial compensation for offense ought to have it ended for them. ~ Tom Robbins,
271:So when someone assents to a false proposition, be sure that they did not want to give their assent, since, as Plato says, ‘Every soul is deprived of the truth against its will.’47 [5] They simply mistook for true something false. ~ Epictetus,
272:The rudeness of many Americans depressed him, a rudeness based on a solid ignorance of the whole concept of manners, and on the proposition that for social purposes, all people are more or less equal and interchangeable. ~ William S Burroughs,
273:The truth is, balance is bunk. It is an unattainable pipe dream... . The quest for balance between work and life, as we’ve come to think of it, isn’t just a losing proposition; it’s a hurtful, destructive one.” Keith H. Hammonds ~ Gary Keller,
274:We stand todaybefore the awful proposition: either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; or, the victory of socialism. ~ Rosa Luxemburg,
275:An eating disorder epidemic suggests that love and disgust are being jointly marketed, as it were; that wherever the proposition might first have come from, the unacceptability of the female body has been disseminated culturally. ~ Rachel Cusk,
276:An ignorant man is always able to say yes or no immediately to any proposition. To a wise man, comparatively few things can be propounded which do not require a response with qualifications, with discriminations, with proportion. ~ Horace Mann,
277:Although these examples only scratch the surface, they illustrate the fundamental proposition that freedom is one whole, that anything that reduces freedom in one part of our lives is likely to affect freedom in the other parts. ~ Milton Friedman,
278:I wish to propose a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. ~ Bertrand Russell,
279:There will be a debate on Firing Line between Buckley and Gore Vidal on the proposition: "This nation cannot survive as long as the income of 50 percent of the population is below the median." Mr. Vidal will take the affirmative. ~ M Stanton Evans,
280:A lot of issues were on the ballots. In New York City there was Proposition 14. That would put a ceiling on the number of late-night talk shows. And California passed Proposition 21. That would change guacamole officially to guac. ~ David Letterman,
281:Nicholas is gay, isn't he," she says, her voice dripping with dejection.

I shrug, again remembering his proposition from last night. "Not necessarily. The jury's still out. There's hope for a Christmas wedding yet," I tell her. ~ L H Cosway,
282:Simplicity rules everything worth while, and whenever I have been up against a business proposition which, after taking thought, I could not reduce to simplicity, I have realized that it was hopelessly wrong and I have let it alone. ~ Daniel Yergin,
283:Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgements; ... But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest. ~ Alfred North Whitehead,
284:Surely, nothing can be more plain or even more trite common sense than the proposition that innovation [...] is at the center of practically all the phenomena, difficulties, and problems of economic life in capitalist society. ~ Joseph A Schumpeter,
285:He puked a lot now, and there was very little warning—sometimes a flutter of nausea, sometimes a brassy taste in the back of his mouth, and sometimes nothing at all; just urk and out it came, howdy-do. It made driving a risky proposition, ~ Anonymous,
286:To fight in defence of his native land is the first duty of the citizen. But to fight in defence of some one else’s native land is a different proposition. It may also be a sacred obligation, but it involves a higher conception. ~ Winston S Churchill,
287:As a lifetime proposition, happiness is a discipline, no doubt; but for moments at a time, it's a piece of luck. A piece of luck and a clue: a hint, not just of what might be, but of what already exists, in the heart of a man's heart... ~ John Burnside,
288:The highest historical probability can be adduced in support of the proposition that, if it were possible to annihilate the Bible, and with it all its influences, we should destroy with it the whole spiritual system of the moral world. ~ Edward Everett,
289:Let's begin with a basic premise: The feeling of rejection is real. When a prospect tells you no, your brain doesn't know the difference between the prospect rejecting your proposition or rejecting you. To your brain, it is one and the same. ~ Jeb Blount,
290:The orthodox believers in God are divided into two camps, one of which maintains that the existence of God is as demonstrable as any mathematical proposition, while the other asserts that his existence is not demonstrable to the intellect. ~ Annie Besant,
291:I was just a little taken aback. That—that wasn’t the proposition I was expecting, is all. Excuse me. I fear I am become incurably low-minded.” “You can’t help that, I’m sure,” Ethan said tolerantly. “Being female, and all that.” She ~ Lois McMaster Bujold,
292:A proposition of geometry does not compete with life; and a proposition of geometry is a fair and luminous parallel for a work of art. Both are reasonable, both untrue to the crude fact; both inhere in nature, neither represents it. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson,
293:A truthmaker is an entity in virtue of which the proposition it makes true is true. And it is a necessary condition of being a truthmaker (though not a sufficient one) that a truthmaker necessitates the proposition it makes true. ~ Gonzalo Rodriguez Pereyra,
294:the illusions of validity and skill are supported by a powerful professional culture. We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
295:There is something precious in our being mysteries to ourselves, in our being unable ever to see through even the person who is closest to our heart and to reckon with him as though he were a logical proposition or a problem in accounting. ~ Rudolf Bultmann,
296:A Value Proposition creates value for a Customer Segment through a distinct mix of elements catering to that segment’s needs. Values may be quantitative (e.g. price, speed of service) or qualitative (e.g. design, customer experience). ~ Alexander Osterwalder,
297:Strategy is indeed about choosing what not to do as well as what to do. A business unit needs to decide what need it aims to satisfy in what group of people and with what value proposition that distinguishes the business from its competitors. ~ Philip Kotler,
298:What you have said, Mr. President, fully satisfies me that you have given to every proposition which has been made, a kind and candid consideration. And you have now expressed the conclusion to which you have arrived, clearly and distinctly. ~ Salmon P Chase,
299:Not all Scripture is propositional, some of it is asking questions, some of it's rhetorical, but where Scripture is stating something, asserting something, making a truth claim, uttering a proposition that is claiming to be true, it is the truth. ~ D A Carson,
300:Proposition 19 already is a winner no matter what happens on election day. The mere fact of its being on the ballot has elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy in ways I could not have imagined a year ago. ~ George Soros,
301:Truth is a risky proposition. It's the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies. ~ Anne Rice,
302:You cannot evade the issue of God, whether you are talking about pigs or the binomial theory...Things can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is false, but nothing can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is true. ~ G K Chesterton,
303:The world isn't kept running because it's a paying proposition. (God doesn't make a cent on the deal.) The world goes on because a few men in every generation believe in it utterly, accept it unquestioningly; they underwrite it with their lives. ~ Henry Miller,
304:To make matters worse, he added in a deep voice that made her shiver, "I love turnips."
It was indecent that the man could make a sentence as abhorrent as "I love turnips" sound like an improper proposition.
But Dougal MacLean managed it. ~ Karen Hawkins,
305:But nearly all of the people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. ~ G K Chesterton,
306:Engineers start with technology and look for a use for it; business people start with a business proposition and then look for the technology and the people. Designers start with people, coming towards a solution from the point of view of people. ~ Ellen Lupton,
307:Asking who won a given war, someone has said, is like asking who won the San Francisco earthquake. That in war there is no victory but only varying degrees of defeat is a proposition that has gained increasing acceptance in the twentieth century. ~ Kenneth Waltz,
308:
   Sweet Mother, I feel that something is wrong and you are very displeased with me.


It is the very first proposition that is wrong, I am not displeased with you - so all that follows cannot be correct.
   ~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother,
309:It has been sometimes argued that there is no truer criterion of the vitality of any given art-period than the power of the master-spirits of that time in grotesque; and certainly in the instance of Gothic art there is no disputing the proposition. ~ Thomas Hardy,
310:They said that the Negro had no initiative; that he was not a business man, but a laborer; that he had not the brain to engineer a corporation, to own and run ships; that he had no knowledge of navigation, therefore the proposition was impossible. ~ Marcus Garvey,
311:When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn’t. What was our choice to be? ~ Alcoholics Anonymous,
312:Philosophy is not the owl of Minerva that takes flight after history has been realized in order to celebrate its happy ending; rather, philosophy is subjective proposition, desire, and praxis that are applied to the event. ~ Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire.,
313:Now it came as a searing revelation that his father had not felt safe enough to live by that same simple proposition, that he had kept his heritage hidden painfully away, a secret to be ashamed of, even in America, even from his own beloved son. ~ Daniel James Brown,
314:Being is a spiritual proposition. Gaining is a material act. Traditionally, American Indians have always attempted to be the best people they could. Part of that spiritual process was and is to give away wealth, to discard wealth in order not to gain. ~ Russell Means,
315:Branding adds spirit and a soul to what would otherwise be a robotic, automated, generic price-value proposition. If branding is ultimately about the creation of human meaning, it follows logically that it is the humans who must ultimately provide it. ~ David A Aaker,
316:There is no other proposition in economics that has more solid empirical evidence supporting it than the Efficient Market Hypothesis... In the literature of finance, accounting, and the economics of uncertainty, the EMH is accepted as a fact of life. ~ Michael Jensen,
317:If an opinion can eventually go to the determination of a practical belief, it, in so far, becomes itself a practical belief; and every proposition that is not pure metaphysical jargon and chatter must have some possible bearing upon practice. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce,
318:language voters endorsed in the ballot proposition. One key case hinging on these issues is working its way through state appellate court after a Sacramento judge ruled in November that the high-speed rail agency had failed to comply with 2008's Proposition ~ Anonymous,
319:She was almost in love with him. No, that's impossible, she thought: either you are or aren't. Love's the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it's a you-do or you- don't proposition with them all. ~ Harper Lee,
320:This, however, only shows that there is an ambiguity in the word is; a word which not only performs the function of the copula in affirmations, but has also a meaning of its own, in virtue of which it may itself be made the predicate of a proposition. ~ John Stuart Mill,
321:When considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't. Religion is one area of our lives where people imagine that some other standard of intellectual integrity applies. ~ Sam Harris,
322:I have already thought it over,' said Rubashov. 'I reject your proposition. Logically, you may be right. But I have had enough of this kind of logic. I am tired and I don't want to play this game anymore. Be kind enough to have me taken back to my cell. ~ Arthur Koestler,
323:imperialism has always been something of a losing proposition, especially in the modern international system, and our ruling class’s attempt to nation-build the world in their own image is doomed to failure and to creating one disaster after another…. ~ Thomas E Woods Jr,
324:Revelation in matters where reason cannot judge, or but probably, ought to be hearkened to. First, Whatever proposition is revealed, of whose truth our mind, by its natural faculties and notions, cannot judge, that is purely matter of faith, and above reason. ~ John Locke,
325:She was almost in love with him. No, that's impossible, she thought: either you are or you aren't. Love's the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it's a you-do or you-don't proposition with them all. ~ Harper Lee,
326:She was almost in love with him. No, that’s impossible, she thought: either you are or you aren’t. Love’s the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it’s a you-do or you-don’t proposition with them all. ~ Harper Lee,
327:Privilege encased them, surrounded them like armor. In the cast of their faces was the assumption that they would never have to take anything very seriously. For the first time in my life I saw the truth in the old proposition that the rich were better-looking. ~ Peter Straub,
328:To call any proposition certain, while there is any one who would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is not permitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree with us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without hearing the other side. ~ John Stuart Mill,
329:By freethinking I mean the use of the understanding in endeavoring to find out the meaning of any proposition whatsoever, in considering the nature of the evidence for or against, and in judging of it according to the seeming force or weakness of the evidence. ~ Anthony Collins,
330:Here is a humanist proposition for the age of Google: The processing of information is not the highest aim to which the human spirit can aspire, and neither is competitiveness in a global economy. The character of our society cannot be determined by engineers. ~ Leon Wieseltier,
331:Try to un-gerrymander these districts so that you're not packing all the Democrats into one district, so you've got districts that are competitive, so that you've got a shot at electing Democrats. But that's more a long-term proposition, if it can even be done. ~ Collin Peterson,
332:Von Noorden’s proposition, which still obtains today, is the equivalent of saying that “alcoholism is caused by chronic overdrinking” or “chronic fatigue syndrome is caused by excessive lethargy and/or deficient energy.” These propositions are true, but meaningless. ~ Gary Taubes,
333:I do not deny the power and the beauty of reductionist science, as exemplified in the axioms and theorems of abstract algebra....But I assert the equal power and beauty of constructive science as exemplified in Godel's construction of an undecidable proposition.... ~ Freeman Dyson,
334:I have carefully examined the evidences of the Christian religion, and if I was sitting as a juror upon its authenticity I would unhesitatingly give my verdict in its favor. I can prove its truth as clearly as any proposition ever submitted to the mind of man. ~ Alexander Hamilton,
335:Fourth proposition. To divide the world into a ‘real’ and an ‘apparent’ world, whether in the manner of Christianity or in the manner of Kant (which is, after all, that of a cunning Christian –) is only a suggestion of décadence – a symptom of declining life.… ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
336:He broke up with me." "Because you weren't in love with him. That's an iffy proposition, and I think he's handling with grace. A lot of teenage boys would sulk, or lurk around under your window with a boom box." "No one has a boom box anymore. That was the eighties. ~ Cassandra Clare,
337:CS Business models with a multi-sided platform pattern have a distinct structure. They have two or more customer segments, each of which has its own Value Proposition and associated Revenue Stream. Moreover, one Customer Segment cannot exist without the others. ~ Alexander Osterwalder,
338:She was almost in love with him. No, that’s impossible, she thought: either you are or you aren’t. Love’s the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it’s a you-do or you-don’t proposition with them all." (Chapter 1) ~ Harper Lee,
339:We have a priori reasons for believing that in every sentence there is some one order of words more effective than any other; and that this order is the one which presents the elements of the proposition in the succession in which they may be most readily put together. ~ Herbert Spencer,
340:I believe that the fundamental proposition is that we must recognize that the hostilities in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia are all parts of a single world conflict. We must, consequently, recognize that our interests are menaced both in Europe and in the Far East. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt,
341:I will be glad to discuss this proposition with my attorney, and that after I talk with one, we could either discuss it with him or discuss it with my attorney, if the attorney thinks it is a wise thing to do, but at the present time I have nothing more to say to you. ~ Lee Harvey Oswald,
342:I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. ~ Bertrand Russell,
343:Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. ~ Thomas B Macaulay,
344:He broke up with me."
"Because you weren't in love with him. That's an iffy proposition, and I think he's handling with grace. A lot of teenage boys would sulk, or lurk around under your window with a boom box."
"No one has a boom box anymore. That was the eighties. ~ Cassandra Clare,
345:If your opponent has you by fifty pounds, winning a fight against him is a dubious proposition, at best. If your opponent has you by eight thousand and fifty pounds, you’ve left the realm of combat and enrolled yourself in Road-kill 101. Or possibly in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. ~ Jim Butcher,
346:I am confident that Assad's days are numbered. But what we can't do is to simply suggest that, as Governor Romney at times has suggested, that giving heavy weapons, for example, to the Syrian opposition is a simple proposition that would lead us to be safer over the long term. ~ Barack Obama,
347:A willingness to engage in the give and take of argument displays a commitment to cognitive egalitarianism - the proposition that all people should be treated as intellectual equals, and that no individual can legitimately claim a privileged immunity from the burden of proof. ~ George H Smith,
348:Existentialism does not offer to the reader the consolations of an abstract evasion: existentialism proposes no evasion. On the contrary, its ethics is experienced in the truth of life, and it then appears as the only proposition of salvation which one can address to men. ~ Simone de Beauvoir,
349:The proposition of an established classification of states as slave states and free states, as insisted on by some, and into northern and southern, as maintained by others, seems to me purely imaginary, and of course the supposed equilibrium of those classes a mere conceit. ~ William H Seward,
350:In America, alas, beauty has become something you drive to, and nature an either/or proposition — either you ruthlessly subjugate it, as at Tocks Dam and a million other places, or you deify it, treat it as something holy and remote, a thing apart, as along the Appalachian Trail. ~ Bill Bryson,
351:Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgments; … But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929),
352:To do something, you have to VALUE something. It is a definitional issue. Because, to DO something, is to ACT OUT the proposition that the thing you are doing, the thing you are AIMING at, let's say, is PREFERABLE to the thing you have. And preferable means that you will do it. ~ Jordan Peterson,
353:By cracking down on these informal and seasonal movements – something that began in the early 1990s with the formation of the EU – Europe turned migration into an all-or-nothing proposition: Once you were in Europe, legally or otherwise, you stayed, because you might not get in again. ~ Anonymous,
354:But in the prevalent discussion of classes, there are illegitimate transitions to the notions of a 'nexus' and of a 'proposition'. The appeal to a class to perform the services of a proper entity is exactly analogous to an appeal to an imaginary terrier to kill a real rat. ~ Alfred North Whitehead,
355:It's a simple proposition to us: Everyone is entitled to adequate medical health care. If you call that a 'redistribution of income' -- well, so be it. I don't call it that. I call it just being fair -- giving the middle class taxpayers an even break that the wealthy have been getting. ~ Joe Biden,
356:No central banker would disagree with the proposition that inflation is primarily a monetary phenomenon. Not one of them will disagree that every inflation has been accompanied by a rapid increase in the quantity of money and every deflation by a decline in the quantity of money. ~ Milton Friedman,
357:To do something, you have to VALUE something. It is a definitional issue. Because, to DO something, is to ACT OUT the proposition that the thing you are doing, the thing you are AIMING at, let's say, is PREFERABLE to the thing you have. And preferable means that you will do it. ~ Jordan B Peterson,
358:I have often noticed that when people come to understand a mathematical proposition in some other way than that of the ordinary demonstration, they promptly say, "Oh, I see. That's how it must be." This is a sign that they explain it to themselves from within their own system. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg,
359:The winning value proposition for nutritious baby food is that which combines a great-tasting product, in a locally appropriate food form, with added convenience for the mother, under an aspirational brand. For this, as we will see next, even low- income people are ready to pay a price. ~ Anonymous,
360:Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,
361:Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices. ~ Bertrand Russell,
362:Because no one has the right to deny another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn't harm another and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8. ~ Brad Pitt,
363:This is a book about fracture. About the experiences that make up a life. About the pieces of me.

Delving into naked emotion is a terrifying proposition. Digging into our souls to look for answers that may not be there is a ledge most of us avoid.

And yet, here I am. ~ Rachel Thompson,
364:Despite all the wonderful advances that have been made, it's still dangerous for an actor to talk about that in our extremely misguided culture. Look at what happened in California with Proposition 8. Please, don't pretend that we're suddenly all wonderfully, blissfully accepted. ~ Richard Chamberlain,
365:It has been pointed out already that no knowledge of probabilities, less in degree than certainty, helps us to know what conclusions are true, and that there is no direct relation between the truth of a proposition and its probability. Probability begins and ends with probability. ~ John Maynard Keynes,
366:Nature does not teach. A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature; an experience of nature cannot validate a philosophy. Nature will not verify any theological or metaphysical proposition (or not in the manner we are now considering); she will help to show what it means. ~ C S Lewis,
367:Jesus is a person, not a proposition; however, language is the means the Spirit uses to enable the gospel to become the all-encompassing framework that allows disciples not only to think but also to situate themselves in relation to the truth, goodness, and beauty of what is in Christ. ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer,
368:Third proposition. To talk about ‘another’ world than this is quite pointless, provided that an instinct for slandering, disparaging and accusing life is not strong within us: in the latter case we revenge ourselves on life by means of the phantasmagoria of ‘another’, a ‘better’ life. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
369:Keeping high-volume procedures within general hospitals allows hospitals to subsidize the unique, low-volume specialized capabilities that are so central to the value proposition of their solution shops- being able to diagnose and embark on a therapy for anything that might be wrong. ~ Clayton M Christensen,
370:People don't show up here (at the courtroom) because they believe evolution is bad science. They show up because they believe that if they accept evolution, then they are abandoning their religious beliefs. They see it as an either/or proposition: Either evolution happened, or God loves you. ~ Eugenie Scott,
371:The proposition of Mr. Ricardo, which states that a rise in the price of labour lowers the price of a large class of commodities, has undoubtedly a very paradoxical air; but it is, nevertheless, true, and the appearance of paradox would vanish, if it were stated more naturally and correctly. ~ Thomas Malthus,
372:We reject creationism because there is no evidence to support it. By contrast, the notion that biology is at least partially the basis of gender is an empirically supportable, and even well-supported, proposition. The gender scholars reject it on ideological, not evidentiary, grounds. ~ Christina Hoff Sommers,
373:Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. ~ Vaughn Walker,
374:You cannot rationalize what is not rational to begin with - as if lying were called truthization. There is no way to obtain more truth for a proposition by bribery, flattery, or the most passionate argument - you can make more people believe the proposition, but you cannot make it more true. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky,
375:It is difficult even to attach a precise meaning to the term "scientific truth." So different is the meaning of the word "truth" according to whether we are dealing with a fact of experience, a mathematical proposition or a scientific theory. "Religious truth" conveys nothing clear to me at all. ~ Albert Einstein,
376:She believed not in divine salvation but in the proposition that we poor mortals are fully capable of saving ourselves, if conditions and inclinations are right, and the evidence of this potential is found in the smallest of gestures, like the uncertain resting of a large hand on a bony shoulder. ~ Jeffery Deaver,
377:Watch out for the other guy. Watch out for his interests. Watch his back. Forget about fifty-fifty, son. Fifty-fifty’s a losing proposition. The only winning proposition is one hundred percent. Make your win about the other person, go after what he wants. Forget win-win—focus on the other person’s win. ~ Bob Burg,
378:The shocking possibility that dumb people don't exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn't real. ~ John Taylor Gatto,
379:Three years ago, this week, a newly elected President Obama faced the American people and he said, look, if I can't turn this economy around in three years, I'll be looking at a one-term proposition, and we're here to collect! You know the results. It's been 35 months of unemployment above 8 percent. ~ Mitt Romney,
380:I’m certainly glad to be getting him back.” Which was true, but it didn’t feel anything like being happy. In fact, the more I thought about it—well, I didn’t think about it, I felt it. You can think about happiness all you want, but it won’t get you far. It’s not a thinking sort of proposition. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde,
381:An example of this is, when the simple propositions are connected by the particle or; as, either A is B or C is D; or by the particle if; as, A is B if C is D. In the former case, the proposition is called disjunctive, in the latter, conditional: the name hypothetical was originally common to both. ~ John Stuart Mill,
382:New York just expects so much from a girl—acts like it can’t stand even the idea of a wasted talent or opportunity. . . . Rome says: enjoy me. London: survive me. New York: gimme all you got. What a thrilling proposition! The chance to be “all that you might be.” Such a thrill—until it becomes a burden. ~ Zadie Smith,
383:The core of science is not controlled experiment or mathetical modeling; it is intellectual honesty. It is time we acknowledge a basic feature of human discourse: when considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't. ~ Sam Harris,
384:Whether you’re going to approach your competitors directly about taking over their buyers on a permanent profit-sharing basis or you’re going to focus on hiring away their top salespeople, you need to carefully plan your proposition, your presentation, and even the sensitivity/ empathy of your delivery. ~ Jay Abraham,
385:One can't say how one behaved or why, really. Such situations, they are far more complex than any either/or proposition. It is simplistic to produce events in pairs and lean them against each other like cards. I suppose if you a playing go or shogi, then such a thing might be helpful, but that is not life. ~ Jesse Ball,
386:All myth is an enriched pattern, a two-faced proposition, allowing its operator to say one thing and mean another, to lead a double life. Hence the notion found early in ancient thought that all poets are liars. And from the true lies of poetry trickled out a question. What really connects words and things? ~ Anne Carson,
387:More recently, the physicist Russell Stannard (one of Britain's three well-known religious scientists, as we shall see) has thrown his weight behind an initiative, funded by—of course—the Templeton Foundation, to test experimentally the proposition that praying for sick patients improves their health.36 ~ Richard Dawkins,
388:The short-lived Confederate States of America was a signal event in the history of the Western world. What secessionists set out to build was something entirely new in the history of nations: a modern proslavery and antidemocratic state, dedicated to the proposition that all men were not created equal. ~ Stephanie McCurry,
389:Keep in mind that Eric Alterman is media critic for The Nation-a hysterically left-wing magazine dedicated to the proposition that corporate America, U.S. foreign policy and the Republican Party are criminal, racist or both. The simple reality is that, for him, the Democratic Party is far too conservative. ~ Jonah Goldberg,
390:The problem is that Iran has been identified as a dangerous enemy, and the longer the media forwards that proposition - and the media is guilty, just as it was in the Iraq war - then the easier it becomes for Americans to accept that we might just have to resort to military force to remove any Iranian threat. ~ Hooman Majd,
391:It is no coincidence that the phrase “signs and wonders” is used by biblical writers. A “sign” is a visual experiential symbol pointing to truth or proving a proposition (Heb 2:4).34 So one of God’s most dramatic means of persuasion recorded in the Bible is through the signs or images of miraculous wonders.35 ~ Brian Godawa,
392:Even if the absence of evidence for a given god were not evidence of its absence, it would still be evidence that the belief in that god is unreasonable. That's the only proposition that any atheist of any kind has to demonstrate in order to win the argument. Because anything beyond that... is just having fun. ~ Scott Clifton,
393:Print works! It works as a business proposition - our print readers [of the Mother Jones] not only provide revenue in the form of subs and ads, but they are a core part of our donor community; 10 percent give us a donation on top of their subscription; that's about the same rate as NPR gets from its listeners. ~ Clara Jeffery,
394:Proofs of the Euclidean [parallel] postulate can be developed to such an extent that apparently a mere trifle remains. But a careful analysis shows that in this seeming trifle lies the crux of the matter; usually it contains either the proposition that is being proved or a postulate equivalent to it. ~ Johann Heinrich Lambert,
395:The extreme proposition on which Giacometti based all his mature work was that no reality... could ever be shared. This is why he believed it impossible for a work to be finished. This is why the content of any work is not the nature of the figure or head portrayed but the incomplete history of him staring at it. ~ John Berger,
396:It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one. ~ Alfred North Whitehead,
397:But however sanguine you might be about the proposition that we have already ravaged the natural world, which we surely have, it is another thing entirely to consider the possibility that we have only provoked it, engineering first in ignorance and then in denial a climate system that will now go to war with us ~ David Wallace Wells,
398:If Christianity should happen to be true – that is to say, if its God is the real God of the universe – then defending it may mean talking about anything and everything. Things can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is false, but nothing can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is true. ~ G K Chesterton,
399:You know what is a failure? That our audiences still believe a game as Destiny is not a risky proposition. Five hundred million dollars, assigned to a project that is an entirely unproven property years ago, with a projected dependency on non-existent internet infrastructure, for consoles that didn’t even exist back then. ~ Anonymous,
400:It must be granted that in every syllogism, considered as an argument to prove the conclusion, there is a petitio principii. When we say, All men are mortal Socrates is a man therefore Socrates is mortal; it is unanswerably urged by the adversaries of the syllogistic theory, that the proposition, Socrates is mortal. ~ John Stuart Mill,
401:Mathematics is a logical method. . . . Mathematical propositions express no thoughts. In life it is never a mathematical proposition which we need, but we use mathematical propositions only in order to infer from propositions which do not belong to mathematics to others which equally do not belong to mathematics. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
402:When a general name stands for each and every individual which it is a name of, or in other words, which it denotes, it is said by logicians to be distributed, or taken distributively. Thus, in the proposition, All men are mortal, the subject, Man, is distributed, because mortality is affirmed of each and every man. ~ John Stuart Mill,
403:I never thought I was doing anyone a favour by bringing children into the world. With people as cruel to each other as they are, it's a terrible proposition. The best of lives are sad and tragic. The best of them. My general conclusion is that it's not a nice thing to do. The world doesn't need it. The kid doesn't need it. ~ Woody Allen,
404:Second proposition. The characteristics which have been assigned to the ‘real being’ of things are the characteristics of non-being, of nothingness – the ‘real world’ has been constructed out of the contradiction to the actual world: an apparent world indeed, in so far as it is no more than a moral-optical illusion. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
405:Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then suchand such another proposition is true of that thing.... Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. ~ Bertrand Russell,
406:Big Government depends on going around the country stirring up apathy—creating the sense that problems are so big, so complex, so intractable that even attempting to think about them for yourself gives you such a splitting headache it’s easier to shrug and accept as given the proposition that only government can deal with them. ~ Mark Steyn,
407:If Canada had a soul (a doubtful proposition, Moses thought) then it wasn't to be found in Batoche or the Plains of Abraham or Fort Walsh or Charlottetown or Parliament Hill, but in The Caboose and thousands of bars like it that knit the country together from Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, to the far side of Vancouver Island. ~ Mordecai Richler,
408:But lack of evidence, if indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism. No one thinks there is good evidence for the proposition that there are an even number of stars; but also, no one thinks the right conclusion to draw is that there are an uneven number of stars. The right conclusion would instead be agnosticism. ~ Alvin Plantinga,
409:Our problem is not to trace the emergence of a world market, of a sufficiently active class of private entrepreneurs, or even (in England) of a state dedicated to the proposition that the maximization of private profit was the foundation of government policy...By the 1780s we can take the existence of all these for granted... ~ Eric Hobsbawm,
410:Once we got hit by - on 9/11 and lost 3,000 people that day, we recognized, and it was one of the key decisions President Bush made, that this is not a law enforcement problem, it is a strategic threat to the United States. It's a war. And based on that, we then adopted a whole set of policies that flowed out of that proposition. ~ Dick Cheney,
411:R u ration yet?"
"What language is that?"
"R U AWAKE"
"Much to my extreme dismay. The sun is no friend to my fragile complexion."
"Poor baby. Come to my room asap."
"It's too early to proposition me, Ellie."
"GET OVER HERE?"
"So frisky. Give me a minute to get some clothes on. Or should I not...? ~ Courtney Allison Moulton,
412:Pour mesurer l’antisémitisme exprimé par les sondés, les enquêteurs ont construit un indicateur à partir de six propositions reprenant les préjugés les plus répandus. Les répondants étaient invités à dire s’ils étaient d’accord avec chacun d’eux. Figure entre parenthèses le pourcentage d’interviewés d’accord avec chaque proposition. ~ Anonymous,
413:You can't quantify love, and if you try, you can end up focusing on misleading factors. Stuff that really has more to do with personality-the fact that some people are simply more expressive or emotional or needy in a relationship. But beyond such smokescreens, the answer is there. Love is seldom-almost never-an even proposition. ~ Emily Giffin,
414:Every proposition, true or false—so the present theory contends—ascribes a predicate to a subject, and—what is a corollary from the above—there is only one subject. The consequences of this doctrine are so strange, that I cannot believe they have been realized by those who maintain it. The theory is in fact self-contradictory. ~ Bertrand Russell,
415:Every day should be Labor Day. We have to fight for the basic proposition that apprenticeship is a wonderful ticket to the middle class. When we're fighting for things like paid leave, America is the only industrialized nation on the planet that doesn't have some form of paid leave - these are not bold ideas elsewhere in the world. ~ Thomas Perez,
416:With my designs and my ideas, I want to please myself first. I'm always very stressed about making a new proposition every season. But in a way, it's a kind of addiction. In another way, it's a crazy pressure. I try to stay quiet about the whole situation, because fashion itself can be crazy, and everyone wants a part of you. ~ Nicolas Ghesquiere,
417:To read a character I'm not sympathizing with is generally quite a good, attractive proposition because I've got somewhere to go, I've got work to do, to try to understand why they behave like they behave, to relate entirely and understand them and to be completely emotionally connected. That is much more fun 99 percent of the time. ~ Rebecca Hall,
418:The one good thing to be said about announcing yourself as a writer in the colonial Canadian fifties is that nobody told me I couldn't do it because I was a girl. They simply found the entire proposition ridiculous. Writers were dead and English, or else extremely elderly and American; they were not sixteen years old and Canadian. ~ Margaret Atwood,
419:Believing a given proposition is a matter of believing that it faithfully represents some state of the world, and this fact yields some immediate insights into the standards by which our beliefs should function. In particular, it reveals why we cannot help but value evidence and demand that propositions about the world logically cohere. ~ Sam Harris,
420:Ventilation, indeed! He had not dared to ventilate his proposition. He had used this short Session in order that he might keep his clutch fastened on power, and in doing so was indifferent alike to the Constitution, to his party, and to the country. Harder words had never been spoken in the House than were uttered on this occasion. ~ Anthony Trollope,
421:And when someone suggests you believe in a proposition, you must first examine it to see whether it is acceptable, because our reason was created by God, and whatever pleases our reason can but please divine reason, of which, for that matter, we know only what we infer from the processes of our own reason by analogy and often by negation. ~ Umberto Eco,
422:The most frightening proposition was that he had no connection to this place, that this fourth-floor office was simply where be broke down. If his presence here was random, then why not an entire world governed by randomness, with all that implied? Solve the Straggler, and you took a nibble out of the pure chaos the world had become. ~ Colson Whitehead,
423:As a father, I believe that involving children in sports at a young age is generally, a wise proposition. I believe that healthy competition is... well... healthy; that sporting events foster a spirit of teamwork that far surpasses the events themselves; and that active participation keeps children moving and is good for their self-esteem. ~ Naveen Jain,
424:Christian faith, as I understand it, is not primarily a matter of signing on for the proposition that there exists a Supreme Being, but the kind of commitment made manifest by a human being at the end of his tether, foundering in darkness, pain, and bewilderment, who nevertheless remains faithful to the promise of a transformative love. ~ Terry Eagleton,
425:I told myself, "Lincoln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate means." So I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my father's house, and stayed there till I could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what "demonstrate" means, and went back to my law studies. ~ Abraham Lincoln,
426:For example, the Bible does say this is a proposition, "There is no God." But of course the context of Psalm 14:1 enriches it a bit: "the fool has said in his heart, there is no God." So there are contextual constraints and when you finish putting in all the contextual constraints and sophisticated discussions of what inerrancy is and isn't. ~ D A Carson,
427:If one denies that, when the meaning is true, then the meant is what is so, one rejects propositional truth. If the rejection is universal, then it is the self-destructive proposition that there are no true propositions. If the rejection is limited to the dogmas, then it is just a roundabout way of saying that all the dogmas are false. ~ Bernard Lonergan,
428:You say that convention is all that really keeps you straight in this “woman proposition”; but it’s more than that, Amory; it’s the fear that what you begin you can’t stop; you would run amuck, and I know whereof I speak; it’s that half-miraculous sixth sense by which you detect evil, it’s the half-realized fear of God in your heart. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,
429:Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. There is no skepticism, no atheism but that. Could it be received into common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
430:P. T. Barnum was the great early American merchandiser of exciting secular fantasies and half-truths. His extremely successful precircus career derived from and fed a fundamental Fantasyland mindset: If some imaginary proposition is exciting, and nobody can prove it’s untrue, then it’s my right as an American to believe it’s true. Barnum’s ~ Kurt Andersen,
431:Tom, remember my last letter, when I talked about guilt? I haven’t forgotten any of those thoughts; as a matter of fact, they are still churning in my head, and I don’t know where they will eventually carry me. Since I last wrote, I did come up with one challenging proposition about guilt: that it could be a fact, and not just a feeling. ~ Frank E Peretti,
432:When philosophers use a word--"knowledge," "being," "object," "I," "proposition," "name"--and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?--What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
433:When philosophers use a word—'knowledge,' 'being,' 'object,' 'I,' 'proposition,' 'name,' and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself; is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?...What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
434:Mr. Ryland was a riddle to unfold, an attractive one at that. The lone candle flickered behind him, outlining powerful shoulders, tempting solidness she wanted to test.
"But an evening of harmless flirtation isn't out of the question."
His gaze fixed on her. "I'd welcome an evening free of complications."
Did he just proposition her? ~ Gina Conkle,
435:Mr. Ryland was a riddle to unfold, an attractive one at that. The lone candle flickered behind him, outlining powerful shoulders, tempting solidness she wanted to test.
"But an evening of harmless flirtation isn't out of the question."
His gaze fixed on her. "I'd welcome an evening free of complications."
Did he just proposition her? ~ Gina Conkle,
436:Yet what is more awesome: to believe that God created everything in six days, or to believe that the biosphere came into being on its own, with no creator, and partially lawlessly? I find the latter proposition so stunning, so worthy of awe and respect, that I am happy to accept this natural creativity in the universe as a reinvention of 'God.' ~ Stuart Kauffman,
437:Some opponents of (cochlear) implants have proposed that people make their own choice when they turn eighteen. Even putting aside the neural issues that make this impractical, it is a flawed proposition. At eighteen, you are choosing not simply between being deaf and being hearing, but between the culture you have known and the life you have not. ~ Andrew Solomon,
438:If the ethical - that is, social morality - is the highest and if there is in a person no residual incommensurability in some way such that this incommensurability is not evil then no categories are needed other than what Greek philosophy had... and what their wisdom amounts to is the beautiful proposition that basically everything is the same. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
439:That the artist places a higher value on appearance than on reality constitutes no objection to this proposition. For ‘appearance’ here signifies reality once more, only selected, strengthened, corrected.… The tragic artist is not a pessimist – it is precisely he who affirms all that is questionable and terrible in existence, he is Dionysian… ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
440:You've a pretty good nerve," said Ratchett. "Will twenty thousand dollars tempt you?" It will not." If you're holding out for more, you won't get it. I know what a thing's worth to me." I, also M. Ratchett." What's wrong with my proposition?" Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal - I do not like your face, M. Ratchett," he said. ~ Agatha Christie,
441:As a general proposition, campaigns do not linger on the vice presidential nominee. When they have, it's always meant very bad news for the ticket. Think of Spiro Agnew's foot-in-mouth disease; Tom Eagleton's medical history; the real estate holdings of Geraldine Ferraro's husband; the unbearable lightness of Dan Quayle; Sarah Palin's reading list. ~ Jeff Greenfield,
442:Remember how it’s a right-then-and-there, in-or-out, yes-or-no proposition?” “I do.” “Well, this is exactly like that. I need a yes or no right now. And before you answer, I have to be straight with you. This is beyond dangerous. If it all comes off the rails, you could be killed. If we’re caught, you could go to prison for a long time.” More silence. ~ Blake Crouch,
443:I have written on numerous occasions that there is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists. While Americans prefer to imagine that the vast majority of American Muslims are civic-minded patriots who accept wholeheartedly the parameters of American pluralism, this proposition has actually never been proven. ~ Robert Spencer,
444:If God existed (concerning which Jubal maintained neutrality) and if He wanted to be worshipped (a proposition which Jubal found improbable but nevertheless possible in the light of his own ignorance), then it seemed wildly unlikely that a God potent to shape galaxies would be swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered as “worship.” But ~ Robert A Heinlein,
445:Was she nuts? One week gone meant nine pairs—just in case I wanted to freshen up at night. And that was shorting myself a few pairs. I wasn’t going around dirty. “No. I need these.” “This may sound gross, but if you’re at a hotel, wash ‘em in the sink. And if not, wear each pair twice. Once inside-out.” My face must’ve shown my disgust with her proposition. ~ Aileen Erin,
446:at any one time, whereas the conjunctive proposition ‘Both it is day and it is night’ is false at any moment. 8. As you are careful … at the same time: E.g. by ‘strutting’ or otherwise walking in an inappropriate manner, or engaging in undignified thoughts or daydreams. 9. Don’t embrace marble statues: Outdoors, naked, in cold weather: a bizarre and showy kind ~ Epictetus,
447:The theologians also should not be irritated. For if they find that this opinion is false, then they would be free to condemn it; and if they discover that it is true, they ought to thank those who have opened the way to finding the true sense of the Scriptures and who have prevented them from falling into the grave scandal of condemning a true proposition. ~ Galileo Galilei,
448:Buddha was speaking about reality. Reality may be one, in its deepest essence, but Buddha also stated that all propositions about reality are only contingent. Reality is devoid of any intrinsic identity that can be captured by any one single proposition - that is what Buddha meant by "voidness." Therefore, Buddhism strongly discourages blind faith and fanaticism. ~ Dalai Lama,
449:He was able to avoid pedantry by regularly bringing his theories down to earth, so to speak, and tying them to practical applications. As he instructed himself in a typical notebook jotting, “When you put together the science of the motions of water, remember to include under each proposition its application, in order that this science may not be useless.”15 ~ Walter Isaacson,
450:... it is quite funny really when you think that probably I would have married him if he'd been at all clever about it. But instead of putting it to me as a sensible business proposition he would drag in all this talk about love the whole time, and I simply can't bear those showerings of sentimentality. Otherwise I should most likely have married him ages ago. ~ Nancy Mitford,
451:You can't quantify love, and if you try, you can wind up focusing on misleading factors. Stuff that has really has more to do with personality- the fact that some people are simply more expressive or emotional or needy in a relationship. But beyond such smokescreens, the answer is there. Love is seldom- almost never -even proposition. Someone always loves more. ~ Emily Giffin,
452:It is substantially a proposition,” concluded the two Northern Democrats and three Republicans, who signed the Minority Report on the bill, “to build this road and the branches on Government credit without making them the property of the Government when built. If there be any profit, the corporations may take it; if there be loss, the Government must bear it. ~ C Vann Woodward,
453:Socialism" is no more an evil word than "Christianity." Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
454:Imagine wasting all that perfectly good anger on paranoid fantasies. Not since Emily Litella got upset about "Soviet jewelry" has there been such a waste of anger. You will notice a certain theme to these Emily Litella Moments. Behind them all is a touching faith that someone, somewhere is actually in charge of what's happening - a proposition I beg leave to doubt. ~ Molly Ivins,
455:A mile from the bus route Muller met Dremmler in a pastry shop. It had four small tables, all of them occupied by pairs of men just like themselves, friends but not really, bound together only by a proposition, be it buying or selling or hedging or insuring, or investing or leasing or renting or flipping. Or making a stand against crumbling national identity. Dremmler ~ Lee Child,
456:Our dreams disturb us because they refuse to pander to our fondest notions of ourselves. The closer one looks, the more they seem to insist upon a challenging proposition: You must live truthfully. Right now. And always. Few forces in life present, with an equal sense of inevitability, the bare-knuckle facts of who we are, and the demands of what we might become. ~ Marc Ian Barasch,
457:At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. ... I had not imagined that there was anything so delicious in the world. After I had learned the fifth proposition, my brother told me that it was generally considered difficult, but I had found no difficulty whatsoever. This was the first time it had dawned on me that I might have some intelligence. ~ Bertrand Russell,
458:What one believes happens after death dictates much of what one believes about life, and this is why faith-based religion, in presuming to fill in the blanks in our knowledge of the hereafter, does such heavy lifting for those who fall under its power. A single proposition – you will not die – once believed, determines a response to life that would be otherwise unthinkable. ~ Sam Harris,
459:Man is full of desires: he loves only those who can satisfy them all. "This man is a good mathematician," someone will say. But I have no concern for mathematics; he would take me for a proposition. "That one is a good soldier." He would take me for a besieged town. I need, that is to say, a decent man who can accommodate himself to all my desires in a general sort of way. ~ Blaise Pascal,
460:Yes, we can promote best practices, processes, and protocols—but the real magic is having employees who understand that their jobs are about improving the quality of people’s lives and managers who understand that the quality of our employees’ lives is part of that value proposition. That’s why Sodexo stands out in an industry that has traditionally competed fiercely on costs. ~ Anonymous,
461:The Greek excellence in mathematics was largely a direct consequence of their passion for knowledge for its own sake, rather than merely for practical purposes. A story has it that when a student who learned one geometrical proposition with Euclid asked, "But what do I gain from this?" Euclid told his slave to give the boy a coin, so that the student would see an actual profit. ~ Mario Livio,
462:If we have a Democratic Senate I think the Republican Party will wake up to the reality that their opposition to comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship is a losing proposition. That Donald Trump's inflammatory rhetoric and derogatory comments do not really work in a national election. And I think we'll have a better chance to actually get something done. ~ Hillary Clinton,
463:It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards. And if one thinks over that proposition it becomes more and more evident that life can never really be understood in time because at no particular moment can I find the necessary resting-place from which to understand it. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
464:In a society where rationality has ruled so long, the church frequently fails to see that in forsaking the weekly pursuit of the transcendent, we have given up the only ground that was uniquely ours in this world. In attempting to make the church something that can attract and add value to secular mind-sets, we have turned our backs on our one true proposition - transcendence. ~ James MacDonald,
465:And, baby, I can’t put my hands on you…” he pressed his hips to her lower back, the hard ridge of his erection branding her, “…and not strip us both to our skin and fuck you until you’re screaming in pleasure.” His warm mouth brushed her neck. “No fear, just pleasure,”

Excerpt From: Lyon, Jennifer. “The Proposition.” iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright. ~ Jennifer Lyon,
466:It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards. And if one thinks over that proposition it becomes more and more evident that life can never really be understood in time because at no particular moment can I find the necessary resting-place from which to understand it. There ~ Sarah Bakewell,
467:There is a plain distinction to be made betwixt pleasure and happiness. For tho' there can be no happiness without pleasure--yet the converse of the proposition will not hold true.--We are so made, that from the common gratifications of our appetites, and the impressions of a thousand objects, we snatch the one, like a transient gleam, without being suffered to taste the other. ~ Laurence Sterne,
468:Whenever a new discovery is reported to the world, they say first, It is probably not true, Then after, when the truth of the new proposition has been demonstrated beyond question, they say, Yes, it may be true, but it is not important. Finally, when sufficient time has elapsed to fully evidence its importance, they say, Yes, surely it is important, but it is no longer new. ~ Michel de Montaigne,
469:Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the rise of science is not that the early scientists searched for natural laws, confident that they existed, but that they found them. It thus could be said that the proposition that the universe had an Intelligent Designer is the most fundamental of all scientific theories and that it has been successfully put to empirical tests again and again. ~ Rodney Stark,
470:You've a pretty good nerve," said Ratchett. "Will twenty thousand dollars tempt you?"

It will not."

If you're holding out for more, you won't get it. I know what a thing's worth to me."

I, also M. Ratchett."

What's wrong with my proposition?"

Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal - I do not like your face, M. Ratchett," he said. ~ Agatha Christie,
471:This, until a better can be suggested, may serve as a substitute for the Categories of Aristotle considered as a classification of Existences. The practical application of it will appear when we commence the inquiry into the Import of Propositions; in other words, when we inquire what it is which the mind actually believes, when it gives what is called its assent to a proposition. ~ John Stuart Mill,
472:[on creative work] If you give freely there will always be more. This is a radical proposition that runs so contrary to human nature, or at least to my nature, that I personally keep trying to find loopholes in it. But it is only when I go ahead and decide to shoot my literary, creative wad on a daily basis that I get any sense of full presence, of being Zorba the Greek at the keyboard. ~ Anne Lamott,
473:If it is to be established that there is a God, then we have to have good grounds for believing that this is indeed so. Until and unless some such grounds are produced we have literally no reason at all for believing; and in that situation the only reasonable posture must be that of either the negative atheist or the agnostic. So the onus of proof has to rest on the proposition of theism. ~ Antony Flew,
474:Humans aren't inherently good- a ludicrous proposition. Instinctively, people are barbarians. Cannibals, even. They eat each other alive, get off on torture, inflicting pain. This is not the image of the Gospel God. If God is love, and God is infinite, love would by definition be infinite. But love, for most, is a means to an end, and even in its purest form, it is fleeting. Not infinite. ~ Ellen Hopkins,
475:The truth that is variously enacted by such agents is not an idea or a proposition. It is rather a habit of life that simply (!) refuses the totalizing claims of power. The governor, on behalf of the empire, will continue to ask, “What is truth?” And the apostles will continue to give answer, uncommonly unintimidated: “‘We must obey God rather than any human authority’” (Acts 5:29).14 ~ Walter Brueggemann,
476:The evidence is overwhelming that Planet Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft. In other words, SOME UFOs are alien spacecraft. Most are not. It's clear from the Opinion Polls and my own experience, that indeed most people accept the notion that SOME UFOs are alien spacecraft. The greater the education, the MORE likely to accept this proposition ~ Stanton T Friedman,
477:When something baffled him he found that if he kept on worrying it, he got no further, and lost his sense of proportion in the process. So when he came to a dead stop he indulged in what he called “shutting his eyes” for a little, and when he “opened” them again he habitually found a new light on things that revealed unexpected angles and made the old problem a totally new proposition. There ~ Josephine Tey,
478:I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing--for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it's impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing. ~ Joyce Carol Oates,
479:The rate of growth of the relevant population is much greater than the rate of growth in funds, though funds have gone up very nicely. But we have been producing students at a rapid rate; they're competing for funds and therefore they're more frustrated. I think there's a certain sense of weariness in the intellectual realm, it's not in any way peculiar to economics, it's a general proposition. ~ Kenneth Arrow,
480:American Protestants do not have to believe in God because they believe in belief. That is why we have never been able to produce interesting atheists in America. The god most Americans say they believe in is just not interesting enough to deny. Thus the only kind of atheism that counts in America is to call into question the proposition that everyone has a right to life, liberty, and happiness.[54] ~ Anonymous,
481:Logic is not the science of Belief, but the science of Proof, or Evidence. In so far as belief professes to be founded on proof, the office of logic is to supply a test for ascertaining whether or not the belief is well grounded. With the claims which any proposition has to belief on the evidence of consciousness—that is, without evidence in the proper sense of the word—logic has nothing to do. ~ John Stuart Mill,
482:Then I will tell you something. I do not believe in it. Forty years among men has consistently taught me that they are not amenable to common sense. Show them the red tail of a comet, fill them with black terror, and they will all come running out of their houses and break their legs. But tell them one sensible proposition and support it with seven reasons, and they will simply laugh in your face ~ Bertolt Brecht,
483:Frederick Douglass saw the same connection. When his master heard that young Frederick was reading well, he was furious, saying, “Learning will spoil the best nigger in the world. If he learns to read the Bible it will forever unfit him to be a slave.” Douglass recalled that he “instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom. ~ Fareed Zakaria,
484:Then I will tell you something. I do not believe in it. Forty years among men has consistently taught me that they are not amenable to commonsense. Show them the red tail of a comet, fill them with black terror, and they will all come running out of their houses and break their legs. But tell them one sensible proposition, and support it with seven reasons, and they will simply laugh in your face. ~ Bertolt Brecht,
485:Going through intense change with an ignorant and apathetic citizenry, driven by a corporate agenda, is a really, really scary proposition. But going into it with an educated and empowered citizenry that feels it can determine the course of its society and can hold its corporations and governments accountable has a lot of power and potential to it. To me, that's what makes activism so important. ~ Tim DeChristopher,
486:I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing. ~ Isaac Asimov,
487:Well you can see that I'm still in motion. It happens that you share the music with the audience. That is the best happiness an artist can have. I'm not alone on stage but with a group of musicians. So the more the music is successful, the more the audience feel happy about the music. It's the responsiblity of an artist to make his fans happy. That is proposition. I'm always talking about proposition. ~ Manu Dibango,
488:I got a lousy proposition for you,” I said, and paused until each asked me to go on. “By the time we get off the phone, you’re going to think I’m a lousy businessman. You’re going to think I can’t budget or plan. You’re going to think Chris Voss is a big talker. His first big project ever out of the FBI, he screws it up completely. He doesn’t know how to run an operation. And he might even have lied to me. ~ Chris Voss,
489:So you don’t want to work for me then?” She barely heard him as she continued. “I mean, it’s not fair to proposition your students, we depend on you for our—” Her brain halted, then sputtered to life again as what he’d said settled in. “You want me to come work for you?” His arrogant smirk slid back into place. “Well, that was until you mentioned propositioning. If I have a choice, I’ll take propositioning. ~ Anonymous,
490:The thing that I've run up against is that it's always been an either-or proposition, especially in Hollywood. You're either young and glamorous and you're going to get the lead and get the man at the end of the picture, or it's the opposite: you're a character actress, you're not attractive enough for the other role, and so you're playing the friend or the killer or the lesbian or the doctor or whatever. ~ Kathy Bates,
491:Atheism being a proposition as unnatural as monstrous, difficult also and hard to establish in the human understanding, how arrogant soever, there are men enough seen, out of vanity and pride, to be the authors of extraordinary and reforming opinions, and outwardly to affect the profession of them; who, if they are such fools, have, nevertheless, not the power to plant them in their own conscience. ~ Michel de Montaigne,
492:The Value Proposition is the reason why customers turn to one company over another. It solves a customer problem or satisfies a customer need. Each Value Proposition consists of a selected bundle of products and/or services that caters to the requirements of a specific Customer Segment. In this sense, the Value Proposition is an aggregation, or bundle, of benefits that a company offers customers. ~ Alexander Osterwalder,
493:Unity of discourse requires, then, not only singleness of a dominant subject, but also singleness of practical impression. To secure the former, see to it that the whole discussion may admit of reduction to a single proposition. To secure the latter, let the preacher hold before him, through the whole preparation of the sermon, the one practical effect intended to be produced upon the hearer’s will. ~ Robert Lewis Dabney,
494:Demi's linguistic quirk is essentially and definingly female. It just is. Drawing in breath to denounce this proposition, women will often come out with something like, "Up you!" or "Ballshit!" For I am referring to Demi's use of the conflated or mangled catchphrase--Demi's speech-bargains: she wanted two for the price of one. The result was expressive, and you usually knew what she meant, given the context. ~ Martin Amis,
495:Every work of art reaches man in his inner powers. It reaches him more profoundly and insidiously than any rational proposition, either cogent demonstration or sophistry. For it strikes him with two terrible weapons, Intuition and Beauty, and at the single root in him of all his energies... Art and Poetry awaken the dreams of man, and his longings, and reveal to him some of the abysses he has in himself. ~ Jacques Maritain,
496:The actual existence of the subject of the proposition is therefore only apparently, not really, implied in the predication, if an essential one: we may say, A ghost is a disembodied spirit, without believing in ghosts. But an accidental, or non-essential, affirmation, does imply the real existence of the subject, because in the case of a non-existent subject there is nothing for the proposition to assert. ~ John Stuart Mill,
497:Looking out of my window this lovely spring morning I see an azalea in full bloom. No, no! I do not see that; though that is the only way I can describe what I see. That is a proposition, a sentence, a fact; but what I perceive is not proposition, sentence, fact, but only an image which I make intelligible in part by means of a statement of fact. This statement is abstract; but what I see is concrete. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce,
498:Liberals are supposed to believe in protecting minority views, even when they disapprove of those views. Instead an online mob of presumably “liberal” people tweeted about Eich’s donation,23 many calling him a bigot and homophobe for supporting Prop 8. Remember, this proposition passed the same year Senator Barack Obama sat in Rick Warren’s church to explain his religious based opposition to same-sex marriage. ~ Kirsten Powers,
499:God is intelligent; but in what manner? Man is intelligent by the act of reasoning, but the supreme intelligence lies under no necessity to reason. He requires neither premise nor consequences; nor even the simple form of a proposition. His knowledge is purely intuitive. He beholds equally what is and what will be. All truths are to Him as one idea, as all places are but one point, and all times one moment. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau,
500:My faith in the expertise of physicists like Richard Feynman, for instance, permits me to endorse—and, if it comes to it, bet heavily on the truth of—a proposition that I don't understand. So far, my faith is not unlike religious faith, but I am not in the slightest bit motivated to go to my death rather than recant the formulas of physics. Watch: E doesn't equal mc2, it doesn't, it doesn't! I was lying, so there! ~ Daniel Dennett,
501:My faith in the expertise of physicists like Richard Feynman, for instance, permits me to endorse—and, if it comes to it, bet heavily on the truth of—a proposition that I don't understand. So far, my faith is not unlike religious faith, but I am not in the slightest bit motivated to go to my death rather than recant the formulas of physics. Watch: E doesn't equal mc2, it doesn't, it doesn't! I was lying, so there! ~ Daniel C Dennett,
502:That is what is meant by the proposition omne ens est verum (everything that is, is true)—though we have almost ceased to understand it—and by the complementary proposition that being and truth are interchangeable concepts. (What does truth mean, where things are concerned, the truth of things? “A thing is true” means: it is known and knowable, known to the absolute spirit, knowable to the spirit that is not absolute. ~ Josef Pieper,
503:I've never been to the Oscars, but if I was ever invited to the Oscars, I would have this weird paranoia of terrorism. It just feels like The Poseidon Adventure, everyone in their tuxes. Somehow, I feel like the whole time I would be looking for where the nearest exit was, and in a cold sweat about some kind of man-made disaster, like a terrorist strike or something. It seems like such a scary, claustrophobic proposition. ~ Mike White,
504:Liberals compare Jerry Falwell to the Taliban, but then are furious with George Bush for not being Jesus Christ. Evidently, what a president is supposed to do when the girls are scared is develop complete omniscience and omnipotence. Thus, the media repeatedly expound upon the proposition that what Bush should have done in response to the anthrax mailings is: Instantly produce the culprits and put an end to this madness! ~ Ann Coulter,
505:Over the Christmas period, I spent time with both Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, and you listen to stories and tales of how hard it can be when it's really hard, and I think we easily all talk ourselves into the proposition that it's never been as hard as this. Well it's been hard in the past. It's been really hard. So you keep doing it and, the more you do it, the more you gain strength and confidence that you can do it. ~ Julia Gillard,
506:[People] have seen the credit market seize up. They're worried about money market funds, although the latest proposition from government should take care of that. They've seen eight percent of the bank deposits in the United States get moved very skillfully, I might say, within the last couple of weeks from institutions that they thought were fine a few months ago to other institutions. They are not wrong to be worried. ~ Warren Buffett,
507:We don't know what may happen next,' said Nikolai. 'Usually a thrilling proposition, less so when a demon may taken over my consciousness and try to rule Ravka by gnawing on my subjects.' How did the words come so easily--even as he contemplated losing his mind and his will? Because they always had. And he needed them. He needed to build a wall of words and wit and reason to keep the beast at bay, to remember who he was. ~ Leigh Bardugo,
508:I write with two things in mind. I want to be right with my fellow economists. After all, I've made my life as a professional economist, so I'm careful that my economics is as it should be. But I have long felt that there's no economic proposition that can't be stated in clear, accessible language. So I try to be right with my fellow economists, but I try to have an audience of any interested, intelligent person. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith,
509:Your hearing is fine. That’s for sure. What’s the longest word in the Gettysburg Address?” “Which symptom is that?” “Thinking.” He thought. “There are three. All with eleven letters. Proposition, battlefield, and consecrated.” “Now recite the first sentence. Like you were an actor on a stage.” “Lincoln was coming down with smallpox at the time. Did you know that?” “That’s not it.” “I know. That was for extra credit on memory. ~ Lee Child,
510:Disruptive technologies bring to a market a very different value proposition than had been available previously. Generally, disruptive technologies underperform established products in mainstream markets. But they have other features that a few fringe (and generally new) customers value. Products based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more convenient to use. There ~ Clayton M Christensen,
511:Regardless of how superior your product, service, or proposition is, I assure you that there will be something you don't anticipate or correctly plan. Economic changes, legal matters, competition, resistance to converting, too new of a product, banks freezing up, market uncertainty, technology changes, people problems . . . more people problems, elections, war, strikes—these are just a few of the potential “unexpected events. ~ Grant Cardone,
512:I won't close down a business of subnormal profitability merely to add a fraction of a point to our corporate returns. I also feel it inappropriate for even an exceptionally profitable company to fund an operation once it appears to have unending losses in prospect. Adam Smith would disagree with my first proposition and Karl Marx would disagree with my second; the middle ground is the only position that leaves me comfortable. ~ Warren Buffett,
513:Anarchism urges man to think, to investigate, to analyze every proposition; but that the brain capacity of the average reader be not taxed too much, I also shall begin with a definition, and then elaborate on the latter. ANARCHISM:—The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary. ~ Emma Goldman,
514:But if men would give heed to the nature of substance they would doubt less concerning the Proposition that Existence appertains to the nature of substance: rather they would reckon it an axiom above all others, and hold it among common opinions. For then by substance they would understand that which is in itself, and through itself is conceived, or rather that whose knowledge does not depend on the knowledge of any other thing. ~ Baruch Spinoza,
515:Wagstaff was a trim little man in a dark-blue uniform with an armband embroidered with the words CIVIL DEFENSE.

"Thank you, Headmaster, and good morning, young gentlemen. Yesterday, as I'm sure you'll remember, I spoke to you about the ways you can help your parents prepare their homes against the possibility of nuclear attack."

Clem grinned, noting Tash Harmsworth's scowl. Tash was a bugger for an incorrect proposition. ~ Mal Peet,
516:It’s a tiresome proposition, having to take up the work of the Enlightenment all over again, but it’s happened on your watch. You ought to have sent up a balloon now and then to get a read on the prevailing cognitive conditions, the Thinks watching out for the Think-Nots. Now you’ve gone and let the stockpiling of fallacies reach dangerous levels, and the massed weapons of illogic are threatening the survivability of the globe. ~ Rebecca Goldstein,
517:Everyone is on Facebook and age is not a determinant of whether a reporter is using Twitter as part of their newsgathering and marketing. Some of the transition is about money at this point - hiring younger reporters is cheaper. Often these reporters are more digitally savvy. But there are plenty of 50-plus journalists employers can find now who are excited about technology, not threatened. It is no longer an either/or proposition. ~ Tom Rosenstiel,
518:Science is only truly consistent with an atheistic worldview with regards to the claimed miracles of the gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Moreover, the true believers in each of these faiths are atheists regarding the specific sacred tenets of all other faiths. Christianity rejects the proposition that the Quran contains the infallible words of the creator of the universe. Muslims and Jews reject the divinity of Jesus. ~ Lawrence M Krauss,
519:It is not true that a man can believe or disbelieve what he will. But it is certain that an active desire to find any proposition true will unconsciously tend to that result by dismissing importunate suggestions which run counter to the belief, and welcoming those which favor it. The psychological law, that we only see what interests us, and only assimilate what is adapted to our condition, causes the mind to select its evidence. ~ George Henry Lewes,
520:Lies 1: There is only the present and nothing to remember. Lies 2: Time is a straight line. Lies 3: The difference between the past and the futures is that one has happened while the other has not. Lies 4: We can only be in one place at a time. Lies 5: Any proposition that contains the word 'finite' (the world, the universe, experience, ourselves...) Lies 6: Reality as something which can be agreed upon. Lies 7: Reality is truth. ~ Jeanette Winterson,
521:We begin with the proposition that capitalism is not chiefly an incentive system but an information system. We continue with the recognition, explained by the most powerful science of the epoch, that information is best defined as surprised-what we cannot predict rather than what we can. The key to economic growth is not acquisition of things by the pursuit of monetary rewards but the expansion of wealth through learning and discovery. ~ George Gilder,
522:I cannot accept the proposition that the four-hundred-year travail of the American Negro should result merely in his attainment of the present level of American civilisation. I am far from convinced that being released from the African witch doctor was worthwhile if I am now - in order to support the moral contradictions and the spiritual aridity of my life - expected to become dependent on the American psychiatrist. It is a bargain I refuse. ~ James Baldwin,
523:It is surprising that people do not believe that there is imagination in science. It is a very interesting kind of imagination, unlike that of the artist. The great difficulty is in trying to imagine something that you have never seen, that is consistent in every detail with what has already been seen, and that is different from what has been thought of; furthermore, it must be definite and not a vague proposition. That is indeed difficult. ~ Richard P Feynman,
524:Never marry a beautiful woman. Worship them if you must, go to bed with them if you can—by all means, everyone should have carnal knowledge of physical perfection at least once in their life—but when it comes to marriage, it’s a losing proposition. You will never stop feeling like a gatecrasher at your own party. Instead of feeling lucky, you will spend your life on edge, waiting for the other stiletto to fall and puncture your heart like a bullet. ~ Anonymous,
525:Our principles were revolutionary. We began as a small, weak republic. But we survived. Our example inspired others, imperfectly at times, but it inspired them nevertheless. This constitutional republic, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, prospered and grew strong. To this day, America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny. That is our purpose in the world - nothing more and nothing less. ~ Ronald Reagan,
526:philosophy is not a lexicon, it is not concerned with “word-meanings”, it does not seek a verbal substitute for the world we see, it does not transform it into something said, it does not install itself in the order of the said or of the written as does the logician in the proposition, the poet in the word, or the musician in the music. It is the things themselves, from the depths of their silence, that it wishes to bring to expression. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty,
527:The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. ~ Friedrich Engels,
528:The strength to kill is not essential for self-defense; one ought to have the strength to die. When a man is fully ready to die, he will not even desire to offer violence. Indeed, I may put it down as a self-evident proposition that the desire to kill is in inverse proportion to the desire to die. And history is replete with instances of men who by dying with courage and compassion on their lips converted the hearts of their violent opponents. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
529:I do not wish to be misunderstood upon this subject of slavery in this country. I suppose it may long exist, and perhaps the best way for it to come to an end peaceably is for it to exist for a length of time. But I say that the spread and strengthening and perpetuation of it is an entirely different proposition. There we should in every way resist it as a wrong, treating it as a wrong, with the fixed idea that it must and will come to an end. ~ Abraham Lincoln,
530:If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable. ~ G K Chesterton,
531:It is impossible to build sound constitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of Constitutional history... The establishment clause has been expressly freighted with Jefferson's misleading metaphor for nearly forty years... There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the framers intended to build a wall of separation... The recent court decisions are in no way based on either the language or intent of the framers. ~ William Rehnquist,
532:Yes, bottle up your negative emotions in a neurotically unhealthy way. For my sake. Just off and on until spring. Your springtime emotions I like a lot."

I took a long swig of beer.

"I don't know, Timothy. I have to tell you, this is a bolt out of the blue. Your proposition is not something I ever dreamed I'd be faced with when we began sharing hearth and home and Vaseline jar. I'm going to have to give this one a lot of thought. ~ Richard Stevenson,
533:Holmes laid out a continental drift theory that was in its fundamentals the theory that prevails today. It was still a radical proposition for the time and widely criticized, particularly in the United States, where resistance to drift lasted longer than elsewhere. One reviewer there fretted, without any evident sense of irony, that Holmes presented his arguments so clearly and compellingly that students might actually come to believe them. Elsewhere, ~ Bill Bryson,
534:Never marry a beautiful woman. Worship them if you must, go to bed with them if you can—by all means, everyone should have carnal knowledge of physical perfection at least once in their life—but when it comes to marriage, it’s a losing proposition. You will never stop feeling like a gatecrasher at your own party. Instead of feeling lucky, you will spend your life on edge, waiting for the other stiletto to fall and puncture your heart like a bullet. ~ Jonathan Tropper,
535:Our beliefs about traditional marriage date from agrarian cultures, where you made everything you ate or wore or used, where large extended families helped get this huge amount of work done so nobody starved, and where marriage was a working proposition. When we talk about “traditional family values,” this is the family we are talking about: an extended family of grandparents and aunts and cousins, an organization to accomplish the work of staying alive. ~ Dossie Easton,
536:Thus if instead of saying, that in war the weaker have always recourse to negotiation, we should say, that they have always recourse to conquest, the custom, which we have acquired of attributing certain relations to ideas, still follows the words, and makes us immediately perceive the absurdity of that proposition; in the same manner as one particular idea may serve us in reasoning concerning other ideas, however different from it in several circumstances. ~ David Hume,
537:another tradition to politics, a tradition (of politics) that stretched from the days of the country’s founding to the glory of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done. ~ Barack Obama,
538:Minds fettered by this doctrine no longer inquire concerning a proposition whether it is attested by sufficient evidence, but whether it accords with Scripture; they do not search for facts as such, but for facts that will bear out their doctrine. It is easy to see that this mental habit blunts not only the perception of truth, but the sense of truthfulness, and that the man whose faith drives him into fallacies treads close upon the precipice of falsehood. ~ George Eliot,
539:Truth then seems to me, in the proper import of the word, to signify nothing but the joining or separating of Signs, as the Things signified by them do agree or disagree one with another. The joining or separating of signs here meant, is what by another name we call proposition. So that truth properly belongs only to propositions: whereof there are two sorts, viz. mental and verbal; as there are two sorts of signs commonly made use of, viz. ideas and words. ~ John Locke,
540:It is an undeniable fact that the universe is only knowable to us through the human minds ability to perceive reality. If all human knowledge is rooted in consciousness, perhaps we are viewing not the real universe based on limitations of the brain. This proposition leads to the conclusion that the apparent evolution of the cosmos since the Big Bang has been totally dependent upon human consciousness. We create reality in our own image as a collective dream. ~ Deepak Chopra,
541:NM: My Lord, it is not a question of form, it is a question of democracy. If democracy would be best expressed by a one-party system then I would examine the proposition very carefully. But if a democracy could best be expressed by a multiparty system, then I would examine that carefully. In this country, for example, we have a multiparty system at present, but so far as the non-Europeans are concerned, this is the most vicious despotism that you could think of. ~ Anonymous,
542:There are just four kinds of bets. There are good bets, bad bets, bets that you win, and bets that you lose. Winning a bad bet can be the most dangerous outcome of all, because a success of that kind can encourage you to take more bad bets in the future, when the odds will be running against you. You can also lose a good bet no matter how sound the underlying proposition, but if you keep placing good bets, over time, the law of averages will be working for you. ~ Larry Hite,
543:This may hurt,” he whispered. “It does, your first time.”
Kelsea stared up at him, this man who had done nothing for months but guard her from danger, and realized that the vast majority of her books had been misleading. They painted love as an all-or-nothing proposition. What she felt for Pen wasn’t close to what she felt for the Fetch … but it was love, somehow, all the same, and she placed a hand against his cheek.
“You won’t hurt me, Pen. I’m tough. ~ Erika Johansen,
544:That is why she cannot be regarded as lying; for she does not presume that she knows the truth, and therefore she cannot be deliberately promulgating a proposition that she presumes to be false: Her statement is grounded neither in a belief that it is true, not, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth - this indifference to how things really are - that I regard as the essence of bullshit. ~ Harry G Frankfurt,
545:Shaw does not merely decorate a proposition, but makes his way from point to point through new and difficult territory. This explains why Shaw must either be taken whole or left alone. He must be disassembled and put together again with nothing left out, under pain of incomprehension; for his politics, his art, and his religion - to say nothing of the shape of his sentences - are unique expressions of this enormously enlarged and yet concentrated consciousness. ~ Jacques Barzun,
546:The 1960s was probably the first time in history that young people were recognized as a big group of consumers and as a commercial proposition for Madison Avenue. Advertising played a major role in creating the ethos of that era - the idea that, "Here it is, and you can have it now." I know that many kids thought that the ethos of the 1960s was due to their own peculiar virtues, but, in fact, it had a lot to do with the realities of the marketplace and commerce. ~ Doris Lessing,
547:Minds fettered by Evangelical doctrine no longer inquire concerning a proposition whether it is attested by sufficient evidence, but whether it accords with Scripture; they do not search for facts as such, but for facts that will bear out their doctrine. It is easy to see that this mental habit blunts not only the perception of truth, but the sense of truthfulness, and that the man whose faith drives him into fallacies treads close upon the precipice of falsehood. ~ George Eliot,
548:Finally, the illusions of validity and skill are supported by a powerful professional culture. We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers. Given the professional culture of the financial community, it is not surprising that large numbers of individuals in that world believe themselves to be among the chosen few who can do what they believe others cannot. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
549:Finally, the illusions of validity and skill are supported by a powerful professional culture. We know that people can maintain an unshakeable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers. Given the professional culture of the financial community, it is not surprising that large numbers of individuals in that world believe themselves to be among the chosen few who can do what they believe others cannot. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
550:GULL (musing) : The law of probability, it has been oddly asserted, is something to do with the proposition that if six monkeys (he has surprised himself) ... if six monkeys were .. .
ROS: Game?
GULL: Were they?
ROS: Are you?
GULL (understanding): Game. (Flips a coin.) The law of averages, if I have got this right, means that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air for long enough they would land on their tails about as often as they would land on their ~ Tom Stoppard,
551:In deference to such spectacular carnage it is perhaps perverse to dwell upon one person's death, but we are creatures so constituted that the passing of one friend or one acquaintance has a profounder effect that that of 100,000 strangers. If there is any metaphorical truth in the Jewish proverb that he who saves one life saves the whole world, then there is equal metaphorical truth in the proposition that when one person dies, the whole world dies with them. ~ Louis de Berni res,
552:The book, as it stands, seems to me to be one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read, with scarcely a sound proposition in it beginning with page 45 [Hayek provided historical background up to page 45; after that came his theoretical model], and yet it remains a book of some interest, which is likely to leave its mark on the mind of the reader. It is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in bedlam. ~ John Maynard Keynes,
553:I am not prepared to deny or assert any proposition which concerns myself; but certainly this solitary struggle with platitudinous atoms, called men and women by courtesy, leads me to wish for my wife again. How did I ever hit on the only woman in the world who fits my cravings and never sounds hollow anywhere? Social chemistry-the mutual attraction of equivalent human molecules-is a science yet to be created, for the fact is my daily study and only satisfaction in life. ~ Henry Adams,
554:What I want to say is that we still don't know each other, that we're still discovering each other, and of course because it's no longer the beginning it isn't always, or even mostly, a romantic proposition--the not knowing, the wanting to know--but there is the wanting. Certainly there are times when I think maybe it's one-sided, that he knows just about all of me that he cares to, and that I'm the one who's still deciphering, which can be its own source of resentment. ~ Adam Haslett,
555:L’objet de ce discours est de montrer quel est le véritable sens des SS. pères et du Concile de Trente dans ces aproles : « Les commandemens ne sont pas impossibles aux justes : » cette proposition est susceptible de deux sens. Le premier, qu’il n’est pas impossible que les justes accomplissent les commandemens ; le second, que les commandemens sont toujours possibles à tous les justes, de ce plein et dernier pouvoir auquel il ne manque rien de la part de Dieu, pour agir. ~ Blaise Pascal,
556:One way multi-sided platforms solve this problem is by subsidizing a Customer Segment. Though a platform operator incurs costs by serving all customer groups, it often decides to lure one segment to the platform with an inexpensive or free Value Proposition in order to subsequently attract users of the platform’s “other side.” One difficulty multi-sided platform operators face is understanding which side to subsidize and how to price correctly to attract customers. ~ Alexander Osterwalder,
557:Lies 1: There is only the present and nothing to remember.

Lies 2: Time is a straight line.

Lies 3: The difference between the past and the future is that one has happened while the other has not.

Lies 4: We can only be in one place at a time.

Lies 5: Any proposition that contains the word 'finite' (the world, the universe, experience, ourselves...)

Lies 6: Reality as something which can be agreed upon.

Lies 7: Reality is truth. ~ Jeanette Winterson,
558:What the real world is: that is a very difficult problem,' the man called Leader said as he lay on his stomach. 'What it is, is a metaphysical proposition. But this is the real world. There is no doubt about that. The pain one feels in this world is real pain. Deaths caused in this world are real deaths. Blood shed in this world is real blood. This is no imitation world, no imaginary world, no metaphysical world. I guarantee you that. But this is not the 1984 that you know. ~ Haruki Murakami,
559:It is going to be necessary that everything that happens in a finite volume of space and time would have to be analyzable with a finite number of logical operations. The present theory of physics is not that way, apparently. It allows space to go down into infinitesimal distances, wavelengths to get infinitely great, terms to be summed in infinite order, and so forth; and therefore, if this proposition [that physics is computer-simulatable] is right, physical law is wrong. ~ Richard P Feynman,
560:It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards. A proposition which, the more it is subjected to careful thought, the more it ends up concluding precisely that life at any given moment cannot really ever be fully understood; exactly because there is no single moment where time stops completely in order for me to take position [to do this]: going backwards. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
561:every country, it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest, that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question, had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of the people. ~ Milton Friedman,
562:In addition, since they were committed to reasoning about God, the Jews were quick to embrace the Greek concern for valid reasoning. What emerged was an image of God as not only eternal and immutable but also as conscious, concerned, and rational. The early Christians fully accepted this image of God. They also added and emphasized the proposition that our knowledge of God and of his creation is progressive. Faith in both reason and progress were essential to the rise of the West. ~ Rodney Stark,
563:According to the International Institute for Environment and Development, the annual amount spent globally on advertising aimed at increasing consumption topped $430 billion in 1998.Consumer capitalism is dedicated to the proposition that production is good in itself, no matter what is produced. The net effect is the massive production of absurd, empty and useless items which are nevertheless utterly serious since we earn our living from them, and dedicate our leisure time to them. ~ Jacques Ellul,
564:The finger-wagging admonition, “Rape more gently,” is oxymoronic. Rape is the opposite of gentle, the opposite of moral. This is how many anarchists view the proposition that the existing system of political violence should be reformed somehow from within, rather than fundamentally opposed on moral terms, as an absolute evil, based on coercion and brutality, particularly towards children – with the inevitable consequence that its only salvation can come from being utterly abolished. ~ Stefan Molyneux,
565:Satan must have been pretty simple, even according to the New Testament, or he wouldn't have led Christ up on a high mountain and offered him the world if he would fall down and worship him. That was a manifestly absurd proposition, because Christ, as the Son of God, already owned the world; and besides, what Satan showed him was only a few rocky acres of Palestine. It is just as if some one should try to buy Rockefeller, the owner of all the Standard Oil Company, with a gallon of kerosene. ~ Mark Twain,
566:There's a dark side to each and every human soul. We wish we were Obi-Wan Kenobi, and for the most part we are, but there's a little Darth Vader in all of us. Thing is, this ain't no either or proposition. We're talking about dialectics, the good and the bad merging into us. You can run but you can't hide. My experience? Face the darkness, stare it down. Own it. As brother Nietzsche said, being human is a complicated gig. Give that old dark night of the soul a hug! Howl the eternal yes! ~ Stuart Stevens,
567:Rossetti makes the remark somewhere, bitterly but with great truth, that the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank. The converse of this proposition is also true; and it is certain that this gratitude produced, in such men as we are here considering, the most purely joyful moments that have been known to man. The great painter boasted that he mixed all his colors with brains, and the great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. ~ G K Chesterton,
568:This is a great country, in no small part because it is the best country ever devised in which to be a public crank. Never has a nation so dedicated itself to the proposition that not only should people hold nutty ideas, but they should cultivate them, treasure them, shine them up, and put them right up there on the mantelpiece. This is still the best country ever in which to peddle complete public lunacy. In fact, it’s the only country to enshrine that right in its founding documents. ~ Charles P Pierce,
569:Each one of you has a Promised Land, a heart’s desire, but you have been so enslaved by the Egyptians (your negative thoughts), it seems very far away, and too good to be true. You consider trusting God a very risky proposition. The wilderness might prove worse than the Egyptians. And how do you know your Promised Land really exists? The reasoning mind will always back up the Egyptians. But sooner or later, something says, “Go forward!” It is usually circumstances—you are driven to it. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn,
570:If one agrees with Carl Schmitt's proposition that the ultimate, defining prerogative of sovereign is the right to exempt, then one must accept that the true carrier of sovereign power in the society of consumers is the commodity market; it is there, at the meeting place of sellers and buyers, that selecting and setting apart the damned from the saved, insiders from outsiders, the included from the excluded (or, more to the point, right-and-proper consumers from flawed ones) is daily performed. ~ Zygmunt Bauman,
571:The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time ~ Bob Dylan,
572:Ever since Richard Nixon walloped George McGovern in the presidential election of 1972, political pundits have treated as a truism the proposition that liberals are out of step with the rest of the nation, and therefore all but unelectable outside the precincts of the Northeast -- give or take a college town here or a ski resort there. During the course of every presidential election for the past forty years now, Republicans have sought to wield the word liberal as if it were a six-gauge shotgun. ~ Eric Alterman,
573:If the human mind can understand the universe, it means the human mind is fundamentally of the same order as the divine mind. If the human mind is of the same order as the divine mind, then everything that appeared rational to God as he constructed the universe, it's “geometry,” can also be made to appear rational to the human understanding, and so if we search and think hard enough, we can find a rational explanation and underpinning for everything. This is the fundamental proposition of science. ~ Robert Zubrin,
574:The Bayesian definition of evidence favoring a hypothesis is evidence which we are more likely to see if the hypothesis is true than if it is false. Observing that a syllogism is logically valid can never be evidence favoring any empirical proposition, because the syllogism will be logically valid whether that proposition is true or false. Syllogisms are valid in all possible worlds, and therefore, observing their validity never tells us anything about which possible world we actually live in. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky,
575:The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here.
You could be dead for a long time ~ Bob Dylan,
576:Ideals are very often formed in the effort to escape from the hard task of dealing with facts, which is the function of science and art. There is no process by which to reach an ideal. There are no tests by which to verify it. It is therefore impossible to frame a proposition about an ideal which can be proved or disproved. It follows that the use of ideals is to be strictly limited to proper cases, and that the attempt to use ideals in social discussion does not deserve serious consideration. ~ William Graham Sumner,
577:The dissemination of the individual's opinions on matters of public interest is for us, in the historic words of the Declaration of Independence, an 'unalienable right' that 'governments are instituted among men to secure.' History shows us that the Founders were not always convinced that unlimited discussion of public issues would be 'for the benefit of all of us' but that they firmly adhered to the proposition that the 'true liberty of the press' permitted 'every man to publish his opinion'. ~ John Marshall Harlan II,
578:The nature of mathematical demonstration is totally different from all other, and the difference consists in this—that, instead of showing the contrary of the proposition asserted to be only improbable, it proves it at once to be absurd and impossible. This is done by showing that the contrary of the proposition which is asserted is in direct contradiction to some extremely evident fact, of the truth of which our eyes and hands convince us. ~ Augustus De Morgan, On the Study and Difficulties of Mathematics (1831) p. 2.,
579:As he was discussing this with Sarao, it occurred to me that a large part of a city librarian’s job is to be a property manager. Szabo is responsible for seventy-three large structures that are spread across the 503 square miles of the city of Los Angeles. To even visit each one of the branches is a major proposition. Szabo’s days seesaw between big thoughts on the future of global information systems and minutiae such as requisitioning a city gardener to trim the weeds around the Washington Irving library. ~ Susan Orlean,
580:The abstract idea of a man represents men of all sizes and all qualities; which it is concluded it cannot do, but either by representing at once all possible sizes and all possible qualities, or by, representing no particular one at all. Now it having been esteemed absurd to defend the former proposition, as implying an infinite capacity in the mind, it has been commonly inferred in favour of the latter: and our abstract ideas have been supposed to represent no particular degree either of quantity or quality. ~ David Hume,
581:There are many who believe in God, and who are perfectly orthodox in their conception of God, but after all God is to them only an intellectual theological proposition. It is the work of the [pg 051] Holy Spirit to make God something vastly more than a theological notion, no matter how orthodox; He is the Spirit of the living God , and it is His work to make God a living God to us, a Being whom we know, with whom we have personal acquaintance, a Being more real to us than the most intimate human friend we have. ~ R A Torrey,
582:Ophelia, I’m sure you’ve had plenty of time to consider my proposition by now. My children aren’t like me. They’re young and fragile, and they miss their mother. They need proper mentorship, as well as someone to call their friend. Neither Connor nor Amie have ever been to The Causeway. They know nothing of the world outside of New York and the home they shared here with their mother and me. If you would assist them (and me) during this huge transition stage, I would be eternally grateful. Yours, Ronan Fletcher ~ Callie Hart,
583:The...deeply disillusioning truth about democracy is that it is designed at its core to be spiritually empty...the defining proposition of liberal democracy is that it mandates means (elections, parliaments, markets) but not ends. Democracy leaves the goals of life entirely up to the individual. Where the totalitarian state decrees life's purposes – Deng's Four Modernizations, Castro's Rectification Campaigns, and the generic exhortation about “building socialism” – democracy leaves a naked public square. ~ Charles Krauthammer,
584:In Plato's time, dialectics was a debating technique subject to precise rules. A "thesis" was proposed-an interrogative proposition such as: Can virtue be taught? One of the two interlocutors attacked the thesis; the other defended it. The former attacked by interrogating-that is, he asked the defender skillfully chosen questions with the aim of forcing him to admit the contradictory of the thesis he wanted to defend. The interrogator had no thesis, and this was why Socrates was in the habit of playing that role. ~ Pierre Hadot,
585:There must necessarily be agreement between a reason coming from God and a revelation coming from God.46 Let us say, then, that faith teaches truths which seem contrary to reason; let us not say that it teaches propositions contrary to reason. The rustic thinks it contrary to reason that the sun should be larger than the earth. But this proposition seems reasonable to the scientist.47 Let us rest assured that apparent incompatibility between faith and reason is similarly reconciled in the infinite wisdom of God. ~ tienne Gilson,
586:To make our position clearer, we may formulate it in another way. Let us call a proposition which records an actual or possible observation an experiential proposition. Then we may say that it is the mark of a genuine factual proposition, not that it should be equivalent to an experiential proposition, or any finite number of experiential propositions, but simply that some experiential propositions can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises without being deducible from those other premises alone. ~ A J Ayer,
587:The only logical meaning of necessity seems to be derived from implication. A proposition is more or less necessary according as the class of propositions for which it is a premiss is greater or smaller.* In this sense the propositions of logic have the greatest necessity, and those of geometry have a high degree of necessity. But this sense of necessity yields no valid argument from our inability to imagine holes in space to the conclusion that there cannot really be any space at all except in our imaginations. ~ Bertrand Russell,
588:If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as "worship. ~ Robert A Heinlein,
589:There are many who believe in God, and who are perfectly orthodox in their conception of God, but after all God is to them only an intellectual theological proposition. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to make God something vastly more than a theological notion, no matter how orthodox; He is the Spirit of the living God, and it is His work to make God a living God to us, a Being whom we know, with whom we have personal acquaintance, a Being more real to us than the most intimate human friend we have. Have you a real God? ~ R A Torrey,
590:If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshipped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as “worship. ~ Robert A Heinlein,
591:Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is [exists]. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. . . There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to gain. ~ Ian Stewart,
592:Subject: This is a work environment and this is harassment

Mr. Zaccadelli,

I am writing to inform you that your proposition has been rejected. Due to both the fact that we are coworkers, as well as roommates, I would find it inappropriate to “visit the stacks” with you. I will reject all further offers at this time. If, in the future, I decide to entertain such an offer, I will inform you via correspondence.

Respectfully (not) yours,

Miss Taylor Caldwell

P.S. Stop fucking emailing me. ~ Chelsea M Cameron,
593:If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable. It is this achievement of my creed that I shall chiefly pursue in these pages. ~ G K Chesterton,
594:Our opposition will never understand the Democratic Party. Our Party is--to the unpracticed eyes of the old Republican Tories--a mysterious contraption that usually seems to be moving in a thousand directions. What they don't know is what hurts them. For all that movement in the Democratic Party is caused by the internal combustion of creative ferment, of ideas, of people vigorously committed to the proposition that change and social progress are not only to be desired; they are necessities of twentieth-century America. ~ Hubert H Humphrey,
595:There is nothing surprising in the fact that we may not be able to speak of God; for, if speaking is equivalent to stating a well-constructed proposition, then by definition that which is defined as ineffable, inconceivable, and unnameable escapes all speech. The surprising thing, therefore, is not our difficulty in speaking of God but indeed our difficulty in keeping silent. For in fact, with regard to God, overwhelmingly, we speak. In a sense we speak only about that, and much too much, with neither modesty nor precaution. ~ Jean Luc Marion,
596:The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them. ~ Charles Darwin,
597:Galen , in the third section of his book, "The Use of the Limbs," says correctly that it would be in vain to expect to see living beings formed of the blood of menstruous women and the semen virile, who will not die, will never feel pain, or will move perpetually, or shine like the sun. This dictum of Galen is part of the following more general proposition: Whatever is formed of matter receives the most perfect form possible in that species of matter; in each individual case the defects are in accordance with that individual matter. ~ Maimonides,
598:The wondrous power of flattery in passados at woman is a perception so universal as to be remarked upon by many people almost as automatically as they repeat a proverb, or say that they are Christians and the like, without thinking much of the enormous corollaries which spring from the proposition. Still less is it acted upon for the good of the complemental being alluded to. With the majority such an opinion is shelved with all those trite aphorisms which require some catastrophe to bring their tremendous meanings thoroughly home. ~ Thomas Hardy,
599:In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of decent living. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt,
600:The traditional gender ideals of the strong-silent man who plays his cards close to his chest and the mysterious woman who disguises her feelings with coyness go so far as to make a virtue of being unavailable and secretive. But wholehearted intimacy can develop only where two people are equally forthcoming and self-revelatory. To take the risk of loving, we must become vulnerable enough to test the radical proposition that knowledge of another and self-revelation will ultimately increase rather than decrease love. It is an awe-ful risk. ~ Sam Keen,
601:Let it not, therefore, be said that the Sovereign is not subject to the laws of his State; since the contrary is a true proposition of the right of nations, which flattery has sometimes attacked but good princes have always defended as the tutelary divinity of their dominions. How much more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato, that the perfect felicity of a kingdom consists in the obedience of subjects to their prince, and of the prince to the laws, and in the laws being just and constantly directed to the public good! ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau,
602:Rousseau confessed to Mr. Hume, and Mr. Hume repeated the conversation to Mr. Burke, that the secret of which he availed himself in his writings to excite the attention of mankind, was the employment of paradoxes. When a proposition is so expressed as to bear the appearance of absurdity, but by certain reasonings and explanations is made to assume the semblance of truth, the inexperienced hearers are, in general, wonderfully delighted, give credit to the author for the highest ingenuity, and congratulate themselves on a surprising discovery. ~ James Mill,
603:You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.” “A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.” “You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,
604:It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what Agnosticism asserts; and, in my opinion, it is all that is essential to Agnosticism. That which Agnostics deny and repudiate, as immoral, is the contrary doctrine, that there are propositions which men ought to believe without logically satisfactory evidence; and that reprobation ought to attach to the profession of disbelief in such inadequately supported propositions. ~ Thomas Huxley,
605:The only people in any enterprise who ever describe anyone except the people who buy the enterprise’s products and services as “customers” are IT personnel. The only people in the enterprise who ever talk about “aligning with the business” are IT personnel. (Maybe the head of sales has talked about aligning her function with a new strategy or a new value proposition, or the head of manufacturing has talked about aligning with new key performance indicators—but aligning with the business?) That view can’t be good for IT. It is a legacy of the ~ Richard Hunter,
606:The old and oft-repeated proposition "Totum est majus sua parte" [the whole is larger than the part] may be applied without proof only in the case of entities that are based upon whole and part; then and only then is it an undeniable consequence of the concepts "totum" and "pars". Unfortunately, however, this "axiom" is used innumerably often without any basis and in neglect of the necessary distinction between "reality" and "quantity", on the one hand, and "number" and "set", on the other, precisely in the sense in which it is generally false. ~ Georg Cantor,
607:The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific. ~ Edmund Burke,
608:In the first place a philosophical proposition must be general. It must not deal specially with things on the surface of the earth, or within the solar system, or with any other portion of space and time. . . . This brings us to a second characteristic of philosophical propositions, namely that they must be a priori. A philosophical proposition must be such as can neither be proved nor disproved by empirical evidence. . . . Philosophy, if what has been said is correct, becomes indistinguishable from logic as that word has now come to be used. ~ Bertrand Russell,
609:There'd been studies over the years supporting the proposition that groups composed exclusively of women usually made intelligent decisions, that exclusively male groups did a bit less well, and that mixed groups did most poorly of all, by a substantial margin. It appeared that, when women were present, testosterone got the upper hand and men took greater risks than they might otherwise. Correspondingly, women in the mixed group tended to revert to roles, becoming more passive, and going along with whatever misjudgment the males might perpetrate. ~ Jack McDevitt,
610:About Thomas Hobbes: He was 40 years old before he looked on geometry; which happened accidentally. Being in a gentleman's library, Euclid's Elements lay open, and "twas the 47 El. libri I" [Pythagoras' Theorem]. He read the proposition "By God", sayd he, "this is impossible:" So he reads the demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a proposition; which proposition he read. That referred him back to another, which he also read. Et sic deinceps, that at last he was demonstratively convinced of that truth. This made him in love with geometry. ~ John Aubrey,
611:The answer to the question, 'What should I believe, and why should I believe it?' is generally a scientific one. Believe a proposition because it is well supported by theory and evidence; believe it because it has been experimentally verified; believe it because a generation of smart people have tried their best to falsify it and failed; believe it because it is true (or seems so). This is a norm of cognition as well as the core of any scientific mission statement. As far as our understanding of the world is concerned--there are no facts without values. ~ Sam Harris,
612:You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.”

“A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.”

“You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,
613:This is Tantra's proposition, that mind is nothing but subtle matter; it can be changed. And once you have a different mind you have a different world, because you look through the mind. The world you are seeing, you are seeing because of a particular mind. Change the mind, and when you look there is a different world. And if there is no mind...that is the ultimate for Tantra, to bring about a state where there is no mind. Then look at the world without a mediator. When the mediator is not, you are encountering the real, because no one is between you and the real. ~ Osho,
614:I think ultimately what you really want is a few people within any label that are into the band enough to really work on it every day for a long time and to actually try a little bit. But obviously, the major labels have more money to spend, so if they feel like spending it, they have bigger resources there when you need them. It doesn't always necessarily translate into them doing a better job for a band, but I think especially if you're playing the game of commercial radio and making videos and stuff like that, that's sort of an expensive proposition. ~ Adam Schlesinger,
615:It is no more appropriate to speak of a difference between the purchasing power of money in Germany and in Austria than it would be justifiable to conclude from differences between the prices charged by hotels on the peaks and in the valleys of the Alps that the objective exchange-value of money is different in the two situations and to formulate some such proposition as that the purchasing power of money varies inversely with the height above sea-level. The purchasing power of money is the same everywhere; only the commodities offered are not the same. ~ Ludwig von Mises,
616:This practice seems to be general in the Soviet Union. I suppose it is general any place where bureaus of the government operate. No one is willing to go out on any limb. No one is willing to say yes or no to a proposition. He must always go to someone higher. In this way he protects himself from criticism. Anyone who has had dealings with armies, or with governments, will recognize this story. The reaction to our cameras was invariably courteous, but very careful, and the camera did not click until the policeman was quite sure that everything was in order. ~ John Steinbeck,
617:The e-mail I sent was simple: “Dear Michael, I’m a friend of Jane’s, and she suggested I talk with you … Jane thinks we should know each other.” If I had had something specific to discuss, I would have put it right up front, but the best value proposition I had was the mutual friend who felt this would be a win-win. It’s sometimes effective to utilize several forms of communication when trying to reach an important new contact. An e-mail, letter, fax, or postcard often has a better chance of landing directly in the hands of the person you’re trying to reach. ~ Keith Ferrazzi,
618:If you would induce your hearer to adopt a given course, you must not only prove to his wisdom that it is the proper means to its end, but you must show to his heart that the end is desirable. Hence all suasive discourse, whatever its particular topic, may be reduced to two elements: that which places the proposition in the category of the true, and that which shows it in the category of the good. Both elements are essential to the oration. The latter may be present only by implication, but unless it is virtually present there is no rhetorical discourse. ~ Robert Lewis Dabney,
619:Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people. ~ Walter Lippmann,
620:The Western approach to reality is mostly through theory, and theory begins by denying reality - to talk about reality, to go around reality, to catch anything that attracts our sense-intellect and abstract it away from reality itself. Thus philosophy begins by saying that the outside world is not a basic fact, that its existence can be doubted and that every proposition in which the reality of the outside world is affirmed is not an evident proposition but one that needs to be divided, dissected and analyzed. It is to stand consciously aside and try to square a circle. ~ Bruce Lee,
621:Certitude leads to violence. This is a proposition that has an easy application and a difficult one. The easy application is to ideoologues, dogmatists, and bullies--people who think that their rigtness justifies them in imposing on anyone who does not happen to suscribe to their particular ideology, dogma or notion of turf. If the conviction of rightness is powerful enough, resistance to it will be met, sooner or later by force. There are people like this in every sphere of life, and it is natural to feel that the world would be a better place without them! ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr,
622:I rang my friend Jim Wolfensohn, who was then running a private commercial bank in New York. I said, "Come up to Vancouver", and he did. I put my proposition to him. He said, "I think it could work." I said, "Will you help us?" He said, "Yes." So, I set aside senior people in our treasury and they worked with Wolfensohn and the investment sanctions were applied. And that's what brought the regime down. The last South African Finance Minister, Barend du Plessis, went on record as saying that it was the investment sanctions that put the final nail in the coffin of apartheid. ~ Bob Hawke,
623:Computer scientist and author Douglas R. Hofstadter phrased this succinctly in his fantastic book Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid: "Provability is a weaker notion than truth." In this sense, there will never be a formal method of determining for every mathematical proposition whether it is absolutely true, any more than there is a way to determine whether a theory in physics is absolutely true. Oxford's mathematical physicist Roger Penrose is among those who believe that Godel's theorems argue powerfully for the very existence of a Platonic mathematical world. ~ Mario Livio,
624:'How a mother can look at her baby, and know that she lives beyond her husband's means, I cannot imagine.' "
"Eugene suggests that Mrs. Lammle, not being a mother, had no baby to look at."
" 'True, but the principle is the same.' "
"Boots is clear that the principle is the same. So is Buffer. It is the unfortunate destiny of Buffer to damage a cause by espousing it. The rest of the company have meekly yielded to the proposition that the principle is the same, until Buffer says that it is; when instantly a general murmur arises that the principle is not the same. ~ Charles Dickens,
625:Many women to whom I have preached the doctrine of freedom have weakly replied, 'But who is to support the children?' It seems to me that if the marriage ceremony is needed as a protection to insure the enforced support of children, then you are marrying a man who, you suspect, would under certain conditions, refuse to support his children, and it is a pretty low-down proposition. For you are marrying a man whom you already suspect of being a villain. But I have not so poor an opinion of men that I believe the greater percentage of them to be such low specimens of humanity. ~ Isadora Duncan,
626:Matthew knew that phrenology was nonsense, and yet, years later, he found himself making judgments similar to those made by his father; slippery people looked slippery; they really did. And how we become like our parents! How their scorned advice - based, we felt in our superiority, on prejudiced and muddled folk wisdom - how their opinions are subsequently borne out by our own discoveries and sense of the world, one after one. And as this happens, we realise with increasing horror that proposition which we would never have entertained before: our mothers were right! ~ Alexander McCall Smith,
627:The first effect of the mind growing cultivated is that processes once multiple get to be performed in a single act. Lazarus has called this the progressive "condensation" of thought. ... Steps really sink from sight. An advanced thinker sees the relations of his topics is such masses and so instantaneously that when he comes to explain to younger minds it is often hard ... Bowditch, who translated and annotated Laplace's Méchanique Céleste, said that whenever his author prefaced a proposition by the words "it is evident," he knew that many hours of hard study lay before him. ~ William James,
628:When the mathematician says that such and such a proposition is true of one thing, it may be interesting, and it is surely safe. But when he tries to extend his proposition to everything, though it is much more interesting, it is also much more dangerous. In the transition from one to all, from the specific to the general, mathematics has made its greatest progress, and suffered its most serious setbacks, of which the logical paradoxes constitute the most important part. For, if mathematics is to advance securely and confidently, it must first set its affairs in order at home. ~ Edward Kasner,
629:Is Jase already gonna marry you?”

I start coughing again. “Uh, No. No, George. I’m only seventeen.” As if that’s the only reason we’re not engaged.

“I’m this many.” George holds up four, slightly grubby fingers. “But Jase is seventeen and a half. You could. Then you could live in here with him. And have a big family.”

Jase strides back into the room, of course, midway through this proposition. “George. Beat it. Discovery Channel is on.”

George backs out of the room but not before saying, “His bed’s really comfortable. And he never pees in it. ~ Huntley Fitzpatrick,
630:For what is meant by saying that a government ought to educate the people? Why should they be educated? What is the education for? Clearly, to fit the people for social life - to make them good citizens. And who is to say what are good citizens? The government: there is no other judge. And who is to say how these good citizens may be made? The government: there is no other judge. Hence the proposition is convertible into this - a government ought to mold children into good citizens, using its own discretion in settling what a good citizen is and how the child may be molded into one. ~ Herbert Spencer,
631:She isn't feeling easy with any of this. She doesn't know quite what to do with Bigend's proposition, which has kicked her into one of those modes that her therapist, when she last had one, would lump under the rubric of 'old behaviors.' It consisted of saying no, but somehow not quite forcefully enough, and then continuing to listen. With the result that her 'no' could be gradually chipped away at, and turned into a 'yes' before she herself was consciously aware that this was happening. She had thought she had been getting much better around this, but now she feels it happening again. ~ William Gibson,
632:All of our knowledge derived using science stands exposed to the same test of falsifiability: it is stated in such a way that an experiment could prove it false. That none has so far gives us high confidence that a given proposition, like the theory of evolution, is probably true, and we quantify that probability repeatedly using statistics. The more often it has been tested and survived, the more likely it is to be a fully objective truth. But this sort of confidence is not an article of faith—just the opposite. It’s an article of what survives after the rigors of doubt and scrutiny. ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto,
633:And here we come to the vital distinction between the advocacy of temperance and the advocacy of prohibition. Temperance and self-control are convertible terms. Prohibition, or that which it implies, is the direct negation of the term self-control. In order to save the small percentage of men who are too weak to resist their animal desires, it aims to put chains on every man, the weak and the strong alike. And if this is proper in one respect, why not in all respects? Yet, what would one think of a proposition to keep all men locked up because a certain number have a propensity to steal? ~ Felix Mendelssohn,
634:The life of contemplation implies two levels of awareness: first, awareness of the question, and, second, awareness of the answer. Though these are two distinct and enormously different levels, yet they are in fact an awareness of the same thing. The question is, itself, the answer. And we ourselves are both. But we cannot know this until we have moved into the second kind of awareness. We awaken, not to find an answer absolutely distinct from the question, but to realize that the question is its own answer. And all is summed up in one awareness - not a proposition, but an experience: "I AM". ~ Thomas Merton,
635:The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live. Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt,
636:The proposition that we can look into another person's heart with perfect clarity strikes me as a fool's game. I don't care how well we think we should understand them, or how much we love them. All it can do is cause us pain. Examining your own heart, however, is another matter. I think it's possible to see what's in there if you work hard enough at it. So in the end maybe that’s the challenge: to look inside your own heart as perceptively and seriously as you can, and to make peace with what you find there. If we hope to truly see another person, we have to start by looking within ourselves. ~ Haruki Murakami,
637:Let me give you another example from the Bible of how illustrations work. God says to Cain, “Sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it” (Genesis 4:7). The Hebrew word used here connotes an animal that is coiled low, perhaps off in the shadows, ready to spring, rend, and kill. God does not simply say, “Sin will get you into trouble, Cain.” That would have been an abstraction. By likening sin to a dangerous, predatory animal, God is not only gripping the heart but also conveying a great deal of information about sin—much more than a mere proposition could do. ~ Timothy J Keller,
638:This spiritual light is not the suggesting of any new truths or propositions not contained in the word of God. This suggesting of new truths or doctrines to the mind, independent of any antecedent revelation of those propositions, either in word or writing, is inspiration; such as the prophets and apostles had, and such as some enthusiasts pretend to. But this spiritual light that I am speaking of, is quite a different thing from inspiration: it reveals no new doctrine, it suggests no new proposition to the mind, it teaches no new thing of God, or Christ, or another world, not taught in the Bible, ~ Jonathan Edwards,
639:It is in this sense that Pascal’s statement is unconnected to a concern with truth: she is not concerned with the truth-value of what she says. That is why she cannot be regarded as lying; for she does not presume that she knows the truth, and therefore she cannot be deliberately promulgating a proposition that she presumes to be false. Her statement is grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth — this indifference to how things really are — that I regard as of the essence of bullshit. ~ Harry G Frankfurt,
640:I cannot forbear adding to these reasonings an observation, which may, perhaps, be found of some importance. In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. ~ David Hume,
641:Is Jase already going to marry you?"
I start coughing again. "Uh. No. No, George. I'm only seventeen." As if that's the only reason we aren't engaged.
"I'm this many," George holds up four slightly grubby fingers. "Jase is seventeen and a half. You could. Then you could live in here with him. And have a big family."
Jase strides back into the room, of course, midway through this proposition. "George. Beat it. Discovery Channel is on."
George backs out of the room, but not before saying, "His bed's really comfortable. And he never pees in it."
The door closes and we both start laughing. ~ Huntley Fitzpatrick,
642:When any person harms you, or speaks badly of you, remember that he acts or speaks from a supposition of its being his duty. Now, it is not possible that he should follow what appears right to you, but what appears so to himself. Therefore, if he judges from a wrong appearance, he is the person hurt, since he too is the person deceived. For if anyone should suppose a true proposition to be false, the proposition is not hurt, but he who is deceived about it. Setting out, then, from these principles, you will meekly bear a person who reviles you, for you will say upon every occasion, "It seemed so to him."
.... ~ Epictetus,
643:The issue is the ethnocentric history that the New York task force, the Portland Baseline essayists, and other Afrocentric ideologues propose for American children. The issue is the teaching of bad history under whatever ethnic banner. Cn any historian justify the proposition that the five ethnic communities into which the New York state task force wishes to divide the country had equal influence on the development of the United States? Is it a function of schools to teach ethnic and racial pride? When does obsession with differences begin to threaten the idea of an overarching American nationality? ~ Arthur M Schlesinger Jr,
644:Conceive the condition of the human mind if all propositions whatsoever were self-evident except one, which was to become self-evident at the close of a summer’s day, but in the meantime might be the subject of question, of hypothesis, of debate. Art and philosophy, literature and science, would fasten like bees on that one proposition which had the honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their enjoyment would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual activities, no more adjust themselves to the idea of their future nullity, than the beating of our heart, or the irritability of our muscles. ~ George Eliot,
645:When Mr. Lippmann says that the founders of our free institutions were adherents of the philosophy of natural law, and that ‘the free political institutions of the Western world were conceived and established’ by men who held certain abstract beliefs, he speaks with the shortened perspective of an American way of thinking in which a manner of conducting affairs is inconceivable without an architect and without a premeditated ‘dedication to a proposition.’ But the fact is that nobody ever ‘founded these institutions.’ They are the product of innumerable human choices, over long stretches of time, but not of any human design. ~ Michael Oakeshott,
646:Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such another proposition is true of that thing. It is essential not to discuss whether the first proposition is really true, and not to mention what the anything is, of which it is supposed to be true. [...] Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. People who have been puzzled by the beginnings of mathematics will, I hope, find comfort in this definition, and will probably agree that it is accurate. ~ Bertrand Russell,
647:It seems therefore that we have a conflict between two antithetical models, morality of conscience and morality of authority. The freedom of the Christian is safeguarded by the primal proposition of the moral tradition, that the conscience is the highest norm and that one must follow it even against authority. When authority—in this case the Church’s magisterium—speaks on matters of morality, it supplies material that helps the conscience form its own judgment, but ultimately it is only conscience that has the last word. Some authors express this ultimately decisive authority of conscience by saying that conscience is infallible.1 ~ Benedict XVI,
648:The lesson Holmes took from the war can be put in a sentence. It is that certitude leads to violence. This is a proposition that has an easy application and a difficult one. The easy application is to ideologues, dogmatists, and bullies—people who think that their rightness justifies them in imposing on anyone who does not happen to subscribe to their particular ideology, dogma, or notion of turf. If the conviction of rightness is powerful enough, resistance to it will be met, sooner or later, by force. There are people like this in every sphere of life, and it is natural to feel that the world would be a better place without them. ~ Louis Menand,
649:Aomame imagined 1926 Czechoslovakia: The First World War had ended, and the country was freed from the long rule of the Hapsburg Dynasty. As they enjoyed the peaceful respite visiting central Europe, people drank Pilsner beer in cafés and manufactured handsome light machine guns. Two years earlier, in utter obscurity, Franz Kafka had left the world behind. Soon Hitler would come out of nowhere and gobble up this beautiful little country in the blink of an eye, but at the time no one knew what hardships lay in store for them. This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: “At the time, no one knew what was coming. ~ Haruki Murakami,
650:A business model describes the flow between key components of the company: •  value proposition, which the company offers (product/service, benefits) •  customer segments, such as users, and payers, or moms or teens •  distribution channels to reach customers and offer them the value proposition •  customer relationships to create demand •  revenue streams generated by the value proposition(s) •  resources needed to make the business model possible •  activities necessary to implement the business model •  partners who participate in the business and their motivations for doing so •  cost structure resulting from the business model The ~ Steve Blank,
651:Because Christ has long since acted decisively for my brother, before I could begin to act, I must leave him his freedom to be Christ's; I must meet him only as the person that he already is in Christ's eyes. This is the meaning of the proposition that we can meet others only through the meditation of Christ. Human love constructs its own image of the person, of what he is and what he should become. It takes the life of the other person into its own hands. Spiritual love recognizes the true image of the other person which he has received from Jesus Christ; the image that Jesus Christ himself embodied and would stamp upon all men. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
652:Pure mathematics consists entirely of asseverations to the extent that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such another proposition is true of anything. It is essential not to discuss whether the first proposition is really true, and not to mention what the anything is, of which it is supposed to be true ... If our hypothesis is about anything, and not about some one or more particular things, then our deductions constitute mathematics. Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. ~ Bertrand Russell,
653:In America, alas, beauty has become something you drive to, and nature an either/or proposition - either you ruthlessly subjugate it, as at Tocks Dam and a million other places, or you deify it, treat it as something holy and remote, a thing apart, as along the Appalachian Trail. Seldom would it occur to anyone on either side that people and nature could coexist to their mutual benefit - that, say, a more graceful bridge across the Delaware might actually set off the grandeur around it, or that the AT might be more interesting and rewarding if it wasn't all wilderness, if from time to time it purposely took you past grazing cows and tilled fields. ~ Bill Bryson,
654:In America, alas, beauty has become something you drive to, and nature an either/or proposition--either you ruthlessly subjugate it, as at Tocks Dam and a million other places, or you deify it, treat it as something holy and remote, a thing apart, as along the Appalachian Trail. Seldom would it occur to anyone on either side that people and nature could coexist to their mutual benefit--that, say, a more graceful bridge across the Delaware River might actually set off the grandeur around it, or that the AT might be more interesting and rewarding if it wasn't all wilderness, if from time to time it purposely took you past grazing cows and till fields. ~ Bill Bryson,
655:Russell is reputed at a dinner party once to have said, ‘Oh, it is useless talking about inconsistent things, from an inconsistent proposition you can prove anything you like.’ Well, it is very easy to show this by mathematical means. But, as usual, Russell was much cleverer than this. Somebody at the dinner table said, 'Oh, come on!’ He said, 'Well, name an inconsistent proposition,’ and the man said, 'Well, what shall we say, 2 = 1.’ 'All right,’ said Russell, 'what do you want me to prove?’ The man said, 'I want you to prove that you’re the pope.’ 'Why,’ said Russell, 'the pope and I are two, but two equals one, therefore the pope and I are one. ~ Jacob Bronowski,
656:In the theory of well-ordered series and compact series, we have followed Cantor closely, except in dealing with Zermelo's theorem (*257—8), and in cases where Cantor's work tacitly assumes the multiplicative axiom. Thus what novelty there is, is in the main negative. In particular, the multiplicative axiom is required in all known proofs of the fundamental proposition that the limit of a progression of ordinals of the second class {i.e. applicable to series whose fields have ^{o terms) is an ordinal of the second class (cf *265). In consequence of this fact, a very large part of the recognized theory of transfinite ordinals must be considered doubtful. ~ Alfred North Whitehead,
657:As a monarch who should care more for the outlying colonies he knows on the map or through the report of his vicegerents, than for the trunk of his empire under his eyes at home, are we not more concerned about the shadowy life that we have in the hearts of others, and that portion in their thoughts and fancies which, in a certain far-away sense, belongs to us, than about the real knot of our identity - that central metropolis of self, of which alone we are immediately aware - or the diligent service of arteries and veins and infinitesimal activity of ganglia, which we know (as we know a proposition in Euclid) to be the source and substance of the whole? ~ Robert Louis Stevenson,
658:The Whale
The Whale is found in seas and oceans,
Indulging there in fishlike motions,
But Science shows that Whales are mammals,
Like Jersey cows, and goats, and camels.
When undisturbed, the Whale will browse
Like camels, goats, and Jersey cows,
On food that satisfies its tongue,
Thus making milk to feed its young.
Asking no costly hay and oats,
Like camels, Jersey cows, and goats,
The Whale, prolific milk producer,
Should be our cheapest lactic juicer.
Our milk should all come from the sea,
But who, I ask, would want to be—
And here the proposition fails—
The milkmaid to a herd of Whales?
~ Ellis Parker Butler,
659:That is a logic which Freud attacks, by the way, the two-proposition self-cancelling structure. Freud considered this structure a revelation of rationalization. Someone is accused of stealing a horse, to which he replies, ‘I don’t steal horses and anyhow you have a crummy horse.’ If you ponder the reasoning in this you can see the actual thought-process behind it. The second statement does not reinforce the first. It only looks like it does. In terms of our perpetual theological disputations – brought on by Fat’s supposed encounter with the divine – the two-proposition self-cancelling structure would appear like this: 1) God does not exist. 2) And anyhow he’s stupid. ~ Philip K Dick,
660:God shall have a starring role in my history of the world. How could it be otherwise? If He exists, then He is responsible for the whole marvellous appalling narrative. If He does not, then the very proposition that He might have killed more people and exercised more minds than anything else. He dominates the stage. In His name has been devised the rack, the thumbscrew, the Iron Maiden, the stake; for Him have people been crucified, flayed alive, fried, boiled, flattened; He has generated the Crusades, the pogroms, the Inquisition and more wars than I can number. But for Him there would not be the St Mathews Passion, the works of Michelangelo and Chartres Cathedral. ~ Penelope Lively,
661:My name is Francis Crawford, and my brother and I studied at St Barbe.’

‘I know that,’ said Moses. He took the ring, and stood, the broad grin stamped on his features. ‘It is true what you did to all the Professors’ boots?’

Lymond stared at him. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yes. I’m afraid it is.’

‘Is it true about the mathematical proposition you placed before Orontius Finnaeus that spelt …’

‘I don’t know how you heard about it,’ said M. de Sevigny. ‘Perhaps you had better not tell me what else you know about my misspent youth.’

Moses said, ‘When the ladies of the rue Glatigny were invited …?’

‘That,’ said M. de Sevigny, ‘is what I meant. ~ Dorothy Dunnett,
662:We humans almost universally have a false self-image of our species. We think that monstrous, wicked policies must be, can only be, conceived and directed and carried out by monsters, wicked or evil people, or highly aberrant, clinically “disturbed” people. People not like “us.” That is mistaken. Those who have created a continuing nuclear threat to the existence of humanity have been normal, ordinary politicians, analysts, and military strategists. To them and to their subordinates, Hannah Arendt’s controversial proposition regarding the “banality of evil” I believe applies, though it might better have been stated as the “banality of evildoing, and of most evildoers. ~ Daniel Ellsberg,
663:You happened to find the Tezumen one day and decided, I think I recall your words correctly, that they were ‘a bunch of Stone-Age no-hopers sitting around in a swamp being no trouble to anyone’, am I right? Whereupon you entered the mind of one of their high priests—I believe at that time they worshipped a small stick—drove him insane and inspired the tribes to unite, terrorise their neighbours and bring forth upon the continent a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men should be taken to the top of ceremonial pyramids and be chopped up with stone knives.” The King pulled his notes towards him. “Oh yes, some of them were also to be flayed alive,” he added. Quezovercoatl ~ Terry Pratchett,
664:Come to see the devil in his lair, have you?" he asked.
She came closer, her expression intent and oddly fearless. "You're not the devil. You're only a man. A very f-flawed one."
For the first time in days Sebastian felt a faint urge to smile. A flicker of reluctant interest stirred in him. "Just because the tail and horns aren't visible, child, doesn't mean you should discount the possibility. The devil comes in many guises."
"Then I'm here to make a Faustian bargain." Her speech was very slow, as if she had to think over every word before she spoke. "I have a proposition for you, my lord."
And she drew closer to the hearth, emerging from the darkness that surrounded them both. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
665:Since The Wealth of Nations appeared more than two centuries ago, the case for free trade has been stated thousands of times, but perhaps never with more direct simplicity and force than it was stated in that volume. In general Smith rested his case on one fundamental proposition: “In every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest.” “The proposition is so very manifest,” Smith continued, “that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question, had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common-sense of mankind.” From ~ Henry Hazlitt,
666:The core of the doctrine consists in the proposition that the supply of money and the demand for it both affect its value. This proposition is probably a sufficiently good hypothesis to explain big changes in prices; but it is far from containing a complete theory of the value of money. It describes one cause of changes in prices; it is nevertheless inadequate for dealing with the problem exhaustively. By itself it does not comprise a theory of the value of money; it needs the basis of a general value theory. One after another, the doctrine of supply and demand, the cost-of-production theory, and the subjective theory of value have had to provide the foundations for the Quantity Theory. ~ Ludwig von Mises,
667:The proposition has... been laid down in the most general terms, "All evils are negations." Thus for man death is evil; death is his non-existence. Illness, poverty, and ignorance are evils for man; all these are privations of properties. ...The destruction of other things is likewise nothing but the absence of their form. After these propositions, it must be admitted as a fact that it cannot be said of God that He directly creates evil, or He has the direct intention to produce evil; this is impossible. His works are all perfectly good. He only produces existence, and all existence is good; whilst evils are of a negative character, and cannot be acted upon. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190),
668:ample confidence to flirt with her bridegroom from across the crowded room. Whether she could maintain such command over herself in six or eight hours was quite another proposition. How easy she is in company. Everyone seems to love her. As I do. Well, perhaps not quite as I do... Darcy glanced over at Jane, who sat in state in an armchair with Bingley standing at her side. They looked golden together with their honey-coloured hair. Jane’s serenity greeted everyone who approached with the same smile and blush, and one might surmise Jane could still not believe such happiness was to be hers. However, she seemed a little nervous, and Darcy could guess why. Bingley fussed over her, touching her ~ Linda Beutler,
669:The truth is that so long as we hold both sides of the proposition together they contain nothing inconsistent with right belief, but as soon as one is divorced from the other, it is bound to prove a stumbling block. "Only those who believe obey" is what we say to that part of a believer's soul which obeys, and "only those who obey believe" is what we say to that part of the soul of the obedient which believes. If the first half of the proposition stands alone, the believer is exposed to the danger of cheap grace, which is another word for damnation. If the second half stands alone, the believer is exposed to the danger of salvation through works, which is also another word for damnation. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
670:Solving society’s most intractable problems begins with understanding what actually moves the needle. This allows resources and creativity to be focused where they have the most impact. Requests to support a social purpose are now regularly expected to include a solid demonstration of effectiveness. It may be a donor inspecting a nonprofit on a website like Charity Navigator, an impact investor evaluating a potential loan recipient, a citizen inspecting where his or her tax dollars go, or an investor evaluating socially responsible stocks. How impact is articulated may vary, but providing compelling evidence of results is now a make-or-break proposition for organizations seeking financial support. ~ William D Eggers,
671:Now (obviously) a sentence’s truth—even when we hold the sentence’s meaning fixed—depends on which world we are considering. “Brown is Prime Minister” is true in the actual world but, since Brown need not have been Prime Minister, there are countless worlds in which “Brown is Prime Minister” is false: in those worlds, Brown did not succeed Tony Blair, or never went into politics, or never even existed. And in some other worlds, someone else is Prime Minister — David Cameron, P. F. Strawson, me, Madonna, or Daffy Duck. In still others, there is no such office as Prime Minister, or not even a Britain; and so on and so forth. So a given sentence or proposition varies its truth-value from world to world. ~ William G Lycan,
672:The teacher picks a science issue that has political traction at the time, such as climate disruption, vaccines and autism, GM food or the like, and phrases it as an antiscience proposition that students will argue for, using rhetorical arguments, or argue against, using scientific arguments. The trick is that the teacher does not determine who will argue for or against the motion until the day of the debate, by a coin toss. This way, all students have to research both sides of the debate. In so doing, they quickly learn the difference between the knowledge-based scientific arguments against the antiscience proposition, and the non-scientific, emotionally persuasive rhetorical arguments in favor. ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto,
673:Cohen testified that there was no 'direct relationship' linking heart disease to dietary fats, and that he had been able to induce the same blood-vessel complications seen in heart disease merely by feeding sugar to his laboratory rats. Peter Cleave testified to his belief that the problem extended to all refined carbohydrates. 'I don't hold the cholesterol view for a moment,' Cleave said, noting that mankind had been eating saturated fats for hundreds of thousands of years. 'For a modern disease to be related to an old-fashioned food is one of the most ludicrous things I have ever heard in my life... but, when it comes to the dreadful sweet things that are served up... that is a very different proposition. ~ Gary Taubes,
674:Mr Norrell determined to establish himself in London with all possible haste. "You must get a house, Childermass," he said. "Get me a house that says to those that visit it that magic is a respectable profession - no less than Law and a great deal more so than Medicine."
Childermass inquired drily if Mr Norrell wished him to seek out architecture expressive of the proposition that magic was as respectable as the Church?
Mr Norrell (who knew there were such things as jokes in the world or people would not write about them in books, but who had never actually been introduced to a joke or shaken its hand) considered a while before replying at last that no, he did not think they could quite claim that. ~ Susanna Clarke,
675:Galen, in the third section of his book, "The Use of the Limbs," says correctly that it would be in vain to expect to see living beings formed of the blood of menstruous women and the semen virile, who will not die, will never feel pain, or will move perpetually, or shine like the sun. This dictum of Galen is part of the following more general proposition:—Whatever is formed of matter receives the most perfect form possible in that species of matter; in each individual case the defects are in accordance with that individual matter.    Compare Gottfried Leibniz argument for the "best of all possible worlds" in his Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190),
676:My name is Arthur and I was born in the Ardennes, or so I have been told, but I cannot be at all sure that the assertion is correct, particularly since, as you have divined, I do not in the least accept that the universe can be broken down into distinct and separate locations. I would say simply 'I was born,' if even this proposition did not mistakenly present the fact it expresses as an action completed in the past, instead of a state where time is boundless. The verb was created in such a way that all of its modes are a function of time, and I am convinced that syntax in itself anoints man as a slave to this concept, since he can only conceive thought through syntax, and his brain is essentially no more than a grammar. ~ Louis Aragon,
677:We have already examined one of the objections that have been brought against the Quantity Theory; the objection that it only holds good ceteris paribus. No more tenable as an objection against the determinateness of our conclusions is reference to the possibility that an additional quantity of money may be hoarded. This argument has played a prominent role in the history of monetary theory; it was one of the sharpest weapons in the armoury of the opponents of the Quantity Theory. Among the arguments of the opponents of the Currency Theory it immediately follows the proposition relating to the elasticity of cash-economizing methods of payment, to which it also bears a close relation as far as its content is concerned. ~ Ludwig von Mises,
678:There is nobody in the commonwealth of learning who does not profess himself a lover of truth: and there is not a rational creature that would not take it amiss to be thought otherwise of. And yet, for all this, one may truly say, that there are very few lovers of truth, for truth’s sake, even amongst those who persuade themselves that they are so. How a man may know whether he be so in earnest, is worth inquiry: and I think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. The not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not the truth in the love of it; loves not truth for truth’s sake, but for some other bye-end. ~ John Locke,
679:Come to see the devil in his lair, have you?” he asked.
She came closer, her expression intent and oddly fearless. “You’re not the devil. You’re only a man. A very fl-flawed one.”
For the first time in days Sebastian felt a faint urge to smile. A flicker of reluctant interest stirred in him. “Just because the tail and horns aren’t visible, child, doesn’t mean you should discount the possibility. The devil comes in many guises.”
“Then I’m here to make a Faustian bargain.” Her speech was very slow, as if she had to think over every word before she spoke. “I have a proposition for you, my lord.”
And she drew closer to the hearth, emerging from the darkness that surrounded them both.

-Sebastian St. Vincent & Evie ~ Lisa Kleypas,
680:Google Fiber was launched to connect homes in Austin, Kansas City, and Provo (Utah) with internet service that’s one hundred times faster than broadband. Google never intended to become an Internet Service Provider. Rather, this is about forcing the established providers in each market—Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, Verizon, Charter—to lower their prices and increase their bandwidth. In developing countries, a similar strategy is in play. Google is helping to build out fiber backbones for entire cities, such as Kampala, Uganda. Where the ground or the local government proves tricky, there is Project Loon. Laying a massive backbone would be an expensive proposition for a rural community, hence those giant floating balloons. ~ Amy Webb,
681:The older theories, which started from an erroneous conception of the social demand for money, could never arrive at a solution of this problem. Their sole contribution is limited to paraphrases of the proposition that an increase in the stock of money at the disposal of the community while the demand for it rClnains the same decreases the objective exchange-value of money, and that an increase of the demand with a constant available stock has the contrary effect, and so on. By a flash of genius, the formulators of the Quantity Theory had already recognized this. We cannot by any means call it an advance when the formula giving the amount of the demand for money (Volume of Transactions + Velocity of Circulation) was reduced to its elements. ~ Ludwig von Mises,
682:Like the best of the arts, pro football worked on multiple levels. For the loyalists, there was the fortune of the home team. For neutral or casual fans, there was action, skill, suspense, and violence. For gamblers, the wagering proposition. For those with a deeper interest, the game could exist on a larger canvas—as a morality play; a cultural metaphor; a crucible of values in which teamwork, sacrifice, and dedication were rewarded, while selfishness, cowardice, and sloth were harshly punished. What those who were contemptuous of sports misunderstood was not merely that a middle-class sports fan might revere football to the same degree that an inveterate theatergoer revered Shakespeare, but that he might do so for many of the same reasons. ~ Michael MacCambridge,
683:As much as possible, connect your offer to the direct benefits customers will receive. Like the Alaska coupon books, a compelling offer pays for itself by making a clear value proposition. What people want and what they say they want are not always the same thing; your job is to figure out the difference. When developing an offer, think carefully about the objections and then respond to them in advance. Provide a nudge to customers by getting them to make a decision. The difference between a good offer and a great offer is urgency (also known as timeliness): Why should people act now? Offer reassurance and acknowledgment immediately after someone buys something or hires you. Then find a small but meaningful way to go above and beyond their expectations. ~ Anonymous,
684:You Americans are a very singular people," he later recalled to one of his friends. "I went with my automaton all over my own country—the Germans wondered and said nothing. In France they exclaimed, Magnifique! Merveilleux! Superbe! The English set themselves to prove—one that it could be, and another that it could not be, a mere mechanism acting without a man inside. But I had not been long in your country, before a Yankee came to see me and said, 'Mr Maelzel, would you like another thing like that? I can make you one for five hundred dollars.' I laughed at his proposition. A few months afterwards, the same Yankee came to see me again, and this time he said, 'Mr Maelzel, would you like to buy another thing like that? I have one already made for you. ~ Tom Standage,
685:Have a look at the results when Australians are asked if they agree or disagree with the statement: ‘It is better for the family if the husband is the principal breadwinner outside the home and the wife has primary responsibility for the home and children.’ In 1986, just over 55 per cent of men agreed with that proposition. That proportion swan-dived down to about 30 per cent by 2001, but by 2005, it had gone up again, to 41.4 per cent. Women subscribe to that view less enthusiastically than men on the whole, but they too have waxed and waned over the last 30 years. In 1986, 33 per cent of them thought it was better for men to work and women to keep house. By 2001, that had dipped to 19 per cent. But by 2005, it had bobbed back up to 36.4 per cent.17 ~ Annabel Crabb,
686:Come on, you winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander J. Christ Dowie, that's yanked to glory most half this planet from 'Frisco Beach to Vladivostok. The Deity ain't no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that he's on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He's the grandest thing yet and don't you forget it. Shout salvation in king Jesus. You'll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch in it for you, my friend, in his backpocket. Just you try it on. ~ James Joyce,
687:Now that the day for his final demolishment had arrived, the necessity that he should be demolished — finished away at once, out of sight and out of mind — had not been softened, or, as it were, half hidden, by any ambiguous phrase. “You have had your cake, and eaten it — eaten it greedily. Is not that sufficient for you? Would you eat your cake twice? Would you have a succession of cakes? No, my friend; there is no succession of these cakes for those who eat them greedily. Your proposition is not a fair one, and we who have the whip-hand of you will not listen to it. Be good enough to vanish. Permit yourself to be swept quietly into the dunghill. All that there was about you of value has departed from you; and allow me to say that you are now — rubbish. ~ Anthony Trollope,
688:Let’s look at what the competition is peddling. What the competition would have you believe is that the universe sprang from nothing, in a single moment, for no reason. Well, now, whatever you think about that theory—in the interests of being awake, please notice that that is the limit case for credulity! Do you know what I mean by that? I mean that, if you can believe that, you can believe anything! That is the most improbable proposition the human mind can conceive of. I challenge you to top it. You know, I mean—I know the Scientologists think God is a clam on another planet, but I don’t think that tops this idea that the universe sprang from nothing in a single moment for no reason. That is article of faith number one. ~ Terence McKenna, Dreaming Awake at the End of Time,
689:To distract himself, he formulated a proposition. A philosophical proposition? Maybe, but tending towards "weak thought"--exhausted thought, in fact. He even gave this proposition a title: "The Civilization of Today and the Ceremony of Access." What did it mean? It meant that, today, to enter any place whatsoever--an airport, a bank, a jeweler's or watchmaker's shop--you had to submit to a specific ceremony of control. Why ceremony? Because it served no concrete purpose. A thief, a hijacker, a terrorist--if they really want to enter--will find a way. The ceremony doesn't even serve to protect the people on the other side of the entrance. So whom does it serve? It serves the very person about to enter, to make him think that, once inside, he can feel safe. ~ Andrea Camilleri,
690:How much more so when it comes to the deep truths of the Christian faith. God loves you; you matter to him. That is a fact, stated as a proposition. I imagine most of you have heard it any number of times. Why, then, aren’t we the happiest people on earth? It hasn’t reached our hearts. Facts stay lodged in the mind, for the most part. They don’t speak at the level we need to hear. Proposition speaks to the mind, but when you tell a story, you speak to the heart. We’ve been telling each other stories since the beginning of time. It is our way of communicating the timeless truths, passing them down. And that’s why when Jesus comes to town, he speaks in a way that will get past all our intellectual defenses and disarm our hearts. He tells a certain kind of story. ~ John Eldredge,
691:So that I do not see how those who make revelation alone the sole object of faith can say, That it is a matter of faith, and not of reason, to believe that such or such a proposition, to be found in such or such a book, is of divine inspiration; unless it be revealed that that proposition, or all in that book, was communicated by divine inspiration. Without such a revelation, the believing, or not believing, that proposition, or book, to be of divine authority, can never be matter of faith, but matter of reason; and such as I must come to an assent to only by the use of my reason, which can never require or enable me to believe that which is contrary to itself: it being impossible for reason ever to procure any assent to that which to itself appears unreasonable. ~ John Locke,
692:modern capitalist societies, however richly endowed, dedicate themselves to the proposition of scarcity. Inadequacy of economic means is the first principle of the world’s wealthiest peoples.” The shortage is due not to how much material wealth there actually is, but to the way in which it is exchanged or circulated. The market system artificially creates scarcity by blocking the flow between the source and the consumer. Grain may rot in the warehouse while hungry people starve because they cannot pay for it. The result is famine for some and diseases of excess for others. The very earth that sustains us is being destroyed to fuel injustice. An economy that grants personhood to corporations but denies it to the more-than-human beings: this is a Windigo economy. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer,
693:Did that make him a bad man? Perhaps, though if so then arguably all men were bad. A proposition his wife would probably agree with, as would most of the women Holse had known, from his poor mother onwards. That was not his fault either, though. Most men – most women, too, no doubt – lived and died under the general weight of the drives and needs, expectations and demands they experienced from within and without, beaten this way and that by longings for sex, love, admiration, comfort, importance and wealth and whatever else was their particular fancy, as well as being at the same time channelled into whatever furrows were deemed appropriate for them by those on high.

In life you hoped to do what you could but mostly you did what you were told and that was the end of it. ~ Iain M Banks,
694:The first effect of the mind growing cultivated is that processes once multiple get to be performed in a single act. Lazarus has called this the progressive 'condensation' of thought. ... Steps really sink from sight. An advanced thinker sees the relations of his topics is such masses and so instantaneously that when he comes to explain to younger minds it is often hard ... Bowditch, who translated and annotated Laplace's Méchanique Céleste, said that whenever his author prefaced a proposition by the words 'it is evident,' he knew that many hours of hard study lay before him. ~ William James,
695:A crowd of fifteen thousand had assembled in front of the speaker’s platform, which faced the unfinished cemetery’s temporary graves and the famous battlefield beyond. Edward Everett spoke for two hours as many in the crowd grew restless and wandered off to explore the battleground. Finally it was Lincoln’s turn. He rose from his seat, took two bits of paper from his pocket, put on his spectacles, and in his reedy voice said: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” A photographer in the crowd fiddled with his camera, preparing to take a picture of the president as he spoke. But before he could get the camera ready, the speech was finished. ~ Russell Freedman,
696:Fox would say, let any man open his eyes to the world he lives in, and he’ll become an Outsider immediately. He will begin by thinking he sees ‘too deep and too much’; he will end by realizing that you cannot see too deep and too much.

This is obviously another way of saying (with Novalis) ‘All men could be men of genius if they weren’t so lazy’: a doubtful and difficult proposition, fraught with difficulties. Because the answer is that it may have been true for Novalis, and for Nietzsche; it may happen to be true for me and for you because we both happen to be men of genius; but to say it is always true for everybody is a different thing. And the same goes for salvation and holiness. If salvation means self-knowledge, then it looks as if most men are predestinately damned. ~ Colin Wilson,
697:Look, you are my father and I love you. I will always love you. But that love is not an all or nothing proposition. Brianna is my wife. Will and Gianni are my sons. You are all my family, but if you push me, Father, if you force me to choose between you and them you will not like the choice I make. You are never to treat William the way you did today, ever. Am I making myself clear?” “Is that a threat, Alessandro?” Bernardo asked, his voice cold. Bree felt her body stiffen with nervous tension. Her heart was racing, both with nervousness and joy that Alessandro was
drawing a line in the sand with his father and that he was sticking up for them over Bernardo. “Remember, Father, you raised me. You raised me to be a Dardano. That’s who I am and I’m sure you know exactly what that means. ~ E Jamie,
698:Captain West advanced to meet me, and before our outstretched hands touched, before his face broke from repose to greeting and the lips moved to speech, I got the first astonishing impact of his personality. Long, lean, in his face a touch of race I as yet could only sense, he was as cool as the day was cold, as poised as a king or emperor, as remote as the farthest fixed star, as neutral as a proposition of Euclid. And then, just ere our hands met, a twinkle of--oh--such distant and controlled geniality quickened the many tiny wrinkles in the corner of the eyes; the clear blue of the eyes was suffused by an almost colourful warmth; the face, too, seemed similarly to suffuse; the thin lips, harsh-set the instant before, were as gracious as Bernhardt's when she moulds sound into speech. ~ Jack London,
699:A conversation between Adso and William -
You understand, Adso, I must believe that my proposition works, because I learned it by experience; but to believe it I must assume there are universal laws. Yet I cannot speak of them, because the very concept that universal laws and an established order exist would imply that God is their prisoner, whereas God is something absolutely free, so that if He wanted, with a single act of His will He could make the world different."
"And so, if I understand you correctly, you act, and you know why you act, but you don't know know why you know that you know what you do?"
I must say with pride that William gave me a look of admiration. "Perhaps that's it. In any case, this tells you why I feel so uncertain of my truth, even if I believe in it. ~ Umberto Eco,
700:Just as there are those who accept every UFO report at face value, there are also those who dismiss the idea of alien visitation out of hand and with great passion. It is, they say, unnecessary to examine the evidence, and “unscientific” even to contemplate the issue. I once helped to organize a public debate at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science between proponent and opponent scientists of the proposition that some UFOs were spaceships; whereupon a distinguished physicist, whose judgment in many other matters I respected, threatened to sic the Vice President of the United States on me if I persisted in this madness. (Nevertheless, the debate was held and published, the issues were a little better clarified, and I did not hear from Spiro T. Agnew.) ~ Carl Sagan,
701:What are you going to say to Mr. Rohan?” she asked hesitantly, putting the spectacles on. “I don’t know yet. But for the next two days, until the damned ball is over, I’m going to put some distance between us. Because our relationship seems to have become a bit too flammable for either of us to manage. Afterward, however, you and I are going to talk. No evasions, no lies.” “Why?” she asked through dry lips. “We have to make some decisions.” What kind of decisions? Was he planning to dismiss her? Or was some kind of indecent proposition in the making? “Perhaps I should leave Hampshire,” she said with difficulty. Leo’s eyes glinted dangerously. Taking her head in his hands, he bent down to whisper in her ear, in what could have been either a promise or a threat. “Anywhere you go, I’ll find you. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
702:Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principals of uncertainty. Phenomena that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday, I believe I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who we
imagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. That each point of intersection, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction. Proposition, I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey. Is this possible? I just met her and yet, I feel like something important has happened to me. ~ David Mitchell,
703:Thomas Jefferson presciently warned against such immoral collective behavior: “We believe—or we act as if we believed—that although an individual father cannot alienate the labor of his son, the aggregate body of fathers may alienate the labor of all their sons, of their posterity, in the aggregate, and oblige them to pay for all the enterprises, just or unjust, profitable or ruinous, into which our vices, our passions or our personal interests may lead us. But I trust that this proposition needs only to be looked at by an American to be seen in its true point of view, and that we shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life of the majority. ~ Mark R Levin,
704:Did the latter[The Messenger] have a predecessor, who envisaged
revelation as taking place by direct contact with a divine being rather than by
a book being sent down (whether as a whole or in instalments), who claimed
to have enjoyed such contact himself and who objected to the pagan angels—
not because they violated the dividing line between God and created beings
but rather because they were female? We do not hear of such a predecessor
elsewhere in the Quran, but we do learn that the Messenger had competitors in
his own time, at least in Yathrib (2:79, where they share his concept of revelation
as a book), so there is nothing implausible about the proposition that there
were preachers before him too, including some whose preaching anticipated
features of his own. ~ Patricia Crone,
705:A copy of Skeptic magazine ostentatiously tucked under his arm, the Darwin fish on the bumper of his car proudly signals his group identification with other members of the herd of “independent thinkers.” He “knows” that there is no God, and he isn’t sure whether even the thoughts he thinks he’s having are real or not. But he is pretty sure that his “selfish genes” and/or his “memes” in some way manipulate his every action, and quite certain that there’s nothing questionable per se about “marrying” another man, strangling an unwanted disabled infant, or sodomizing a goat or a corpse (if that’s “what you’re into”). Despite his hatred of religion, he thinks global warming a greater danger than Islamic terrorism, and whether “meat is murder” is a proposition he thinks eminently worthy of consideration. ~ Edward Feser,
706:An easy direct calculation shows that d dt exp[!g(t)][$(t) ! a] = 0, so, indeed, exp[!g(t)][$(t) ! a] = $(0) ! a. Taking t = 1, exp[!2"in($; a)][$(1) ! a] = $(0) ! a, or, exp[!2"in($; a)] = 1, which implies that n($; a) is indeed integral. The function is obviously continuous, and being integer, it is constant on connected components. Clearly also, it tends to 0 as a tends to +, so it is identically 0 on the unbounded component. ! The next result is an immediate corollary of the invariance of path integrals of analytic functions under homotopy.Proposition. If $0 and $1 are paths which are homotopic in C \ {a} for some point a, then n($0; a) = n($1; a). Cauchy’s Integral Formula. Let $ a piecewise smooth curve in a region G which is null homotopic there, and let f be an analytic function on G. Then n($; a) ~ Anonymous,
707:There’s a difference between proving a proposition and accepting a proposition. We might be able to prove Christianity is true beyond reasonable doubt, but only you can choose to accept it. Please consider this question to see if you are open to acceptance: If someone could provide reasonable answers to the most significant questions and objections you have about Christianity—reasonable to the point that Christianity seems true beyond a reasonable doubt—would you then become a Christian? Think about that for a moment. If your honest answer is no, then your resistance to Christianity is emotional or volitional, not merely intellectual. No amount of evidence will convince you because evidence is not what’s in your way—you are. In the end, only you know if you are truly open to the evidence for Christianity. ~ Norman L Geisler,
708:There had been a great deal riding on Toy Story, of course, and since making a film is an extremely complicated proposition, our production leaders had felt tremendous pressure to control the process—not just the budgets and schedules but the flow of information. If people went willy-nilly to anybody with their issues, they believed, the whole project could spiral out of control. So, to keep things on track, it was made clear to everyone from the get-go: If you have something to say, it needs to be communicated through your direct manager. If an animator wanted to talk to a modeler, for example, they were required to go through “proper channels.” The artists and technical people experienced this everything-goes-through-me mentality as irritating and obstructionist. I think of it as well-intentioned micromanaging. Because ~ Ed Catmull,
709:Hans W. Frei argues that the Enlightenment period was liable for a significant portion of the eclipse of the biblical narratives. In place of the biblical narrative as the hermeneutical source and target came “the single meaning of a grammatically and logically sound propositional statement.”125 Grondin insightfully writes, regarding this emphasis on proposition, “For hermeneutics, by contrast, the proposition is something secondary and derivative.”126 The road from university to diversity traded story for proposition, mystery for the exactness of rules, and a deductive slant for one that was largely inductive. Thus, Western biblical hermeneutics followed the Enlightenment-influenced trail that saw hermeneutics as the study of right principles or as the laying out of rules governing the discipline of interpretation. ~ Michael Matthews,
710:The proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures. The proposition that the earth is not the center of the world, nor immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal action, is also absurd, philosophically false, and, theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith. Therefore…invoking the most holy name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of His Most Glorious Virgin Mother Mary, We pronounce this Our final sentence…: We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo…have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, that is of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that ~ Joseph Campbell,
711:When you lay down a proposition which is forthwith controverted, it is of course optional with you to take up the cudgels in its defence. If you are deeply convinced of its truth, you will perhaps be content to leave it to take care of itself; or, at all events, you will not go out of your way to push its fortunes; for you will reflect that in the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons. In the long run, we say; it will meanwhile cost you an occasional pang to see your cherished theory turned into a football by the critics. A football is not, as such, a very respectable object, and the more numerous the players, the more ridiculous it becomes. Unless, therefore, you are very confident of your ability to rescue it from the chaos of kicks, you will best consult its interests by not mingling in the game. ~ Henry James,
712:How grossly are they mistaken in imagining slavery to be disallowed by the Alcoran! Are not the two precepts, to quote no more, Masters treat your slaves with kindness: Slaves serve your masters with cheerfulness and fidelity, clear proofs to the contrary? Nor can the plundering of infidels be in that sacred book forbidden, since it is well known from it, that God has given the world and all that it contains to his faithful Mussulmen, who are to enjoy it of right as fast as they can conquer it. Let us then hear no more of this detestable proposition, the manumission of christian slaves, the adoption of which would, by depreciating our lands and houses, and thereby depriving so many good citizens of their properties, create universal discontent, and provoke insurrections, to the endangering of government, and producing general confusion. ~ Benjamin Franklin,
713:Soul can’t exist unless you have active, meaningful dialogue with stakeholders: employees, customers, the community, suppliers, and investors. When you launch a business, your job as the entrepreneur is to say, ‘Here’s a value proposition that I believe in. Here’s where I’m coming from. This is my point of view.’ At first, it’s a monologue. Gradually it becomes a dialogue and then a real conversation. Like breaking in a baseball glove. You can’t will a baseball glove to be broken in; you have to use it. Well, you have to use a new business, too. You have to break it in. If you move on to the next thing too quickly, it will never develop its soul. Look what happens when a new restaurant opens. Everyone rushes in to see it, and it’s invariably awkward because it hasn’t yet developed soul. That takes time to emerge, and you have to work at it constantly. ~ Anonymous,
714:Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such another proposition is true of that thing. It is essential not to discuss whether the first proposition is really true, and not to mention what the anything is, of which it is supposed to be true … If our hypothesis is about anything, and not about some one or more particular things, then our deductions constitute mathematics. Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. People who have been puzzled by the beginnings of mathematics will, I hope, find comfort in this definition, and will probably agree that it is accurate. ~ Bertrand Russell, Recent Work on the Principles of Mathematics, published in International Monthly, vol. 4 (1901).,
715:The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason & right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it's protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
716:The great educational value of the war against Christendom lies in the absolute truthlessness of the priest. Such purity is rare enough. The 'man of God' is entirely incapable of honesty, and only arises at the point where truth is defaced beyond all legibility. Lies are his entire metabolism, the air he breathes, his bread and his wine. He cannot comment upon the weather without a secret agenda of deceit. No word, gesture, or perception is slight enough to escape his extravagant reflex of falsification, and of the lies in circulation he will instinctively seize on the grossest, the most obscene and oppressive travesty. Any proposition passing the lips of a priest is necessarily totally false, excepting only insidiouses whose message is momentarily misunderstood. It is impossible to deny him without discovering some buried fragment or reality. ~ Nick Land,
717:Right now, too many of us seem to approach liberal causes and conversations mainly by looking for ways to show other progressives where they are wrong. Too many of us can deconstruct everything but can’t reconstruct anything and make it work. Too many of us know how to run a protest against the adults on our campuses but don’t know how to run a program for children in our neighborhoods. Too many of us are great at opposition but awful at proposition. Too many of us know just enough critical theory to critique everything but don’t have the practical skills to make anything function at the level of our high standards. Too many of us know how to march against an elected official but not how to elect one. Too many of us know how to call people out but don’t know how to lift people up. And this reality creates internal dangers as real as anything we face externally. ~ Van Jones,
718:It’s decided, then,” he murmured. “I accept your proposition. There’s much more to discuss, of course, but we’ll have two days until we reach Gretna Green.” He rose from the chair and stretched, his smile lingering as he noticed the way her gaze slid quickly over his body. “I’ll have the carriage readied and have the valet pack my clothes. We’ll leave within the hour. Incidentally, if you decide to back out of our agreement at any time during our journey, I will strangle you.”
She shot him a sardonic glance. “You w-wouldn’t be so nervous about that if you hadn’t tried this with an unwilling victim l-last week.”
“Touché. Then we may describe you as a willing victim?”
“An eager one,” Evangeline said shortly, looking as though she wanted to be off at once.
“My favorite kind,” he remarked, and bowed politely before he strode from the library. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
719:Who is the best marshal they have?'

The sheriff thought on it for a minute. He said, 'I would have to weigh that proposition. There is near about two hundred of them. I reckon William Waters is the best tracker. He is a half-breed Comanche and it is something to see, watching him cut for sign. The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn. He is a pitiless man, double-tough, and fear don't enter into his thinking. He loves to pull a cork. Now L.T. Quinn, he brings his prisoners in alive. He may let one get by now and then but he believes even the worst of men is entitled to a fair shake. Also the court does not pay any fees for dead men. Quinn is a good peace officer and a lay preacher to boot. He will not plant evidence or abuse a prisoner. He is straight as a string. Yes, I will say Quinn is about the best they have.'

I said, 'Where can I find this Rooster? ~ Charles Portis,
720:I have been writing my whole life: stories and plays and sketches and scripts and poems and jokes. Most feel alive. And fluid. Breathing organisms made better by the people who come into contact with them. But this book has nearly killed me. Because, you see, a book? A book has a cover. They call it a jacket and that jacket keeps the inside warm so that the words stay permanent and everyone can read your genius thoughts over and over again for years to come. Once a book is published it can’t be changed, which is a stressful proposition for this improviser who relies on her charm. I’ve been told that I am “better in the room” and “prettier in person.” Both these things are not helpful when writing a book. I am looking forward to a lively book-on-tape session with the hope that Kathleen Turner agrees to play me when I talk about some of my darker periods. One can dream. ~ Amy Poehler,
721:I missed you,” she said softly, her breath against his cheek making his body harden everywhere.
“You too.”
“It’s terrible to be this infatuated.”
“I agree.”
“I haven’t felt this alive in years.”
“Me either.”
“Screw the interview,” she said breathlessly. “Let’s make out.”
He saw stars. Literally. Stars. How was this possibly his life? Beautiful women did not show up on the doorsteps of disabled vets and proposition them.
“Are you an alien?” he asked.
“Not that I know of.”
“Are we on Candid Camera?”
She took a quick look around the room. “You never know, but my guess is no.”
“Is someone paying you a vast sum of money to make me feel like this?”
She bit her lower lip, as if deep in thought. “Not that I recall, but if a million dollars suddenly hits my account, I’ll give you half.”
“You must be for real. Fine. You win. Let’s go make out. ~ Katy Regnery,
722:I’m calling for my friend Jeff Arnold, the founder of WebMD, who has a new, very powerful way to distribute digital content. With some of the new products you’ll be launching this quarter, it could make for the perfect partnership. I’ll be in New York next week. Let’s get together. Or, if getting together this trip isn’t convenient, I’ll make room in my schedule for whenever it’s more convenient for you.” In fifteen seconds, I used my four rules for what I call warm calling: (1) Convey credibility by mentioning a familiar person or institution—in this case, John, Jeff, and WebMD. (2) State your value proposition: Jeff’s new product would help Serge sell his new products. (3) Impart urgency and convenience by being prepared to do whatever it takes whenever it takes to meet the other person on his or her own terms. (4) Be prepared to offer a compromise that secures a definite follow-up at a minimum. ~ Keith Ferrazzi,
723:A string of ones and zeroes was not a difficult thing for Bill Gates to distribute, once he’d thought of the idea. The hard part was selling it—reassuring customers that they were actually getting something in return for their money. Anyone who has ever bought a piece of software in a store has had the curiously deflating experience of taking the bright shrink-wrapped box home, tearing it open, finding that it’s ninety-five percent air, throwing away all the little cards, party favors, and bits of trash, and loading the disk into the computer. The end result (after you’ve lost the disk) is nothing except some images on a computer screen, and some capabilities that weren’t there before. Sometimes you don’t even have that—you have a string of error messages instead. But your money is definitely gone. Now we are almost accustomed to this, but twenty years ago it was a very dicey business proposition. ~ Neal Stephenson,
724:The moral conscience that so many thoughtless people have offended against and many more have rejected, is something that exists and has always existed. It was not an invention of the philosophers of the Quartenary, when the soul was little more than a muddled proposition. With the passing of time, as well as then social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny. Add to this general observation, the particular circumstance that in simple spirits, the remorse caused by committing some evil act often becomes confused with ancestral fears of every kind, and the result will be that the punishment of the prevaricator ends up being, without mercy or pity, twice what he deserved. ~ Jos Saramago,
725:The ordinary logic is also jealous of the explanation of negation as relation, because seeming to take away the principle of contradiction. Plato, as far as we know, is the first philosopher who distinctly enunciated this principle; and though we need not suppose him to have been always consistent with himself, there is no real inconsistency between his explanation of the negative and the principle of contradiction. Neither the Platonic notion of the negative as the principle of difference, nor the Hegelian identity of Being and Not-being, at all touch the principle of contradiction. For what is asserted about Being and Not-Being only relates to our most abstract notions, and in no way interferes with the principle of contradiction employed in the concrete. Because Not-being is identified with Other, or Being with Not-being, this does not make the proposition 'Some have not eaten' any the less a contradiction of 'All have eaten. ~ Plato,
726:If you're a company, my advice is to remember that you can't have it both ways. You can't treat your customers like family one moment and then treat them impersonally-or, even worse, as a nuisance or a competitor-a moment later when this becomes more convenient or profitable. This is not how social relationships work. If you want a social relationship, go for it, but remember that you have to maintain it under all circumstances.

On the other hand, if you think you may have to play tough from time to time-charging extra for additional services or rapping knuckles swiftly to keep the consumers in line-you might not want to waste money in the first place on making your company the fuzzy feel-good choice. In that case, stick to a simple value proposition: state what you give and what you expect in return. Since you're not setting up any social norms or expectations, you also can't violate any-after all, it's just business. ~ Dan Ariely,
727:Depression characterized by the 'threat-to' orientation lodges itself in one side of the proposition. Doing so does not eliminate doubt, it only places it in the world. The world has become doubtful; what I doubt is my capacity to continue living in such a world. I doubt whether I can make it given how things are. I experience a kind of shrinking, or diminution of my self; but what remains clear - what I am most wanting to hold clear - is who it is that is doing the doubting, who 'I' am. As it seems to 'me,' what 'I' doubt is whether, in the face of the way the world has become, 'I' can keep myself together, my self together. From the point of view of our paradigm, that which 'I' say means: I doubt whether I can keep it together, this balance. What is being doubted, really, from our point of view, is the capacity to continue knowing, which, phenomenologically, from the view of the self, entails the capacity to continue being. ~ Robert Kegan,
728:slowly, slowly pulling up. Or grabbing hold of Debby’s arm, vise-like, for an Indian rub and what starts as a joke gets more and more frantic, him rubbing until he draws speckles of blood, his teeth grinding. She could see him getting that same look Runner got when he was around the kids: jacked up and tense. “Dad needs to leave.” “Geez, Patty, not even a hi before you toss me out? Come on, let’s talk, I got a business proposition for you.” “I’m in no position to make a business deal, Runner,” she said. “I’m broke.” “You’re never as broke as you say,” he said with a leer, and twisted his baseball cap backward on stringy hair. He’d meant it to sound jokey, but it came out menacing, as if she’d better not be broke if she knew what was good for her. He dumped the girls off him and walked over to her, standing too close as always, beer sweat sticking his longjohn shirt to his chest. “Didn’t you just sell the tiller, Patty? Vern Evelee told ~ Gillian Flynn,
729:As a writer, I prided myself on seeing and describing the world as it was, not as I wanted it or thought it was supposed to be. I had made my living writing hard-boiled fiction about tough, cynical men and femmes fatales swept up in ugly underworlds of crime, sex, and murder. Would I suddenly be reduced to penning saccharine fluff about some little girl who lost her pet bunny but Jesus brought it back again? “Oh, God,” I prayed fervently more than once, “whatever happens, don’t let me become a Christian novelist!” Even that prospect, terrible as it was, was only a part of the greater danger. If I became a Christian, would I lose my freedom of thought? Would I sacrifice my ability to question every proposition and examine every belief to the bone? Would I lose my realism and my tragic sensibility? Would I descend into that smiley-faced religious idiocy that mistakes the good health and prosperity of the moment for the supernatural favor of God? ~ Andrew Klavan,
730:In Jesus, God has put up a "Gone Fishing" sign on the religion shop. He has done the whole job in Jesus once and for all and simply invited us to believe it - to trust the bizarre, unprovable proposition that in him, every last person on earth is already home free without a single religious exertion: no fasting till your knees fold, no prayers you have to get right or else, no standing on your head with your right thumb in your left ear and reciting the correct creed - no nothing. . . . The entire show has been set to rights in the Mystery of Christ - even though nobody can see a single improvement. Yes, it's crazy. And yes, it's wild, and outrageous, and vulgar. And any God who would do such a thing is a God who has no taste. And worst of all, it doesn't sell worth beans. But it is good news - the only permanently good news there is - and therefore I find it absolutely captivating.

- as quoted in All Is Grace, by Brennan Manning. ~ Robert Farrar Capon,
731:I am going to make you what you may perhaps consider rather a singular proposition. It is this, that if you don’t like me, say so at once, and we will part now, before we have time to know anything more of each other, and I will endeavour not to cross your path again unless you seek me out. But if on the contrary, you do like me,—if you find something in my humour or turn of mind congenial to your own disposition, give me your promise that you will be my friend and comrade for a while, say for a few months at any rate. I can take you into the best society, and introduce you to the prettiest women in Europe as well as the most brilliant men. I know them all, and I believe I can be useful to you. But if there is the smallest aversion to me lurking in the depths of your nature”—here he paused,—then resumed with extraordinary solemnity—“in God’s name give it full way and let me go,—because I swear to you in all sober earnest that I am not what I seem! ~ Marie Corelli,
732:Gradually, the concrete enigma I labored at disturbed me less than the generic enigma of a sentence written by a god. What type of sentence (I asked myself) will an absolute mind construct? I considered that even in the human languages there is no proposition that does not imply the entire universe: to say "the tiger" is to say the tigers that begot it, the deer and turtles devoured by it, the grass on which the deer fed, the earth that was mother to the grass, the heaven that gave birth to the earth. I considered that in the language of a god every word would enunciate that infinite concatenation of facts, and not in an implicit but in an explicit manner, and not progressively but instantaneously. In time, the notion of a divine sentence seemed puerile or blasphemous. A god, I reflected, ought to utter only a single word and in that word absolute fullness. No word uttered by him can be inferior to the universe or less than the sum total of time. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,
733:The said Ivan Dovgochkun, son of Nikifor, when I went to him with a friendly proposition, called me publicly by an epithet insulting and injurious to my honor, namely, a goose, whereas it is known to the whole district of Mirgorod, that I never was named after that disgusting animal, and have no intention of ever being named after it. And the proof of my noble extraction is, that, in the baptismal register to be found in the Church of the Three Bishops, the day of my birth, and likewise the fact of my baptism, are inscribed. But a goose, as is well known to every one who has any knowledge of science, cannot be inscribed in the baptismal register; for a goose is not a man, but a fowl: which, likewise, is sufficiently well known, even to persons who have not been to a seminary. But the evil-minded nobleman, being privy to all these facts, for no other purpose than to offer a deadly insult to my rank and calling, affronted me with the aforesaid foul word. ~ Nikolai Gogol,
734:Internet of Things Foundry” in Dallas, an innovation shop full of network engineers. They invited customers in with this proposition, explained Vice Chairman Ralph de la Vega: “Tell us what problem you want us to solve, and we commit that within two weeks we’ll give you a prototype solution for you that works on a real live network … Every time we do this, it results in a contract.” So, for instance, the global shipping giant Maersk needed a sensor that it could affix to every shipping container it owns, enabling the company to track its containers anywhere in the world. The sensor had to affix to two hundred thousand cargo refrigerator containers, it had to be able to measure their humidity, temperature, and whether they had suffered any damage, and it had to broadcast that data to their headquarters, and—this was the real catch—the sensor had to operate without batteries and be able to last ten years, because they couldn’t be changing them all the ~ Thomas L Friedman,
735:For if the Absolute has predicates, then there are predicates; but the proposition “there are predicates” is not one which the present theory can admit. We cannot escape by saying that the predicates merely qualify the Absolute; for the Absolute cannot be qualified by nothing, so that the proposition “there are predicates” is logically prior to the proposition “the Absolute has predicates”. Thus the theory itself demands, as its logical prius, a proposition without a subject and a predicate; moreover this proposition involves diversity, for even if there be only one predicate, this must be different from the one subject. Again, since there is a predicate, the predicate is an entity, and its predicability of the Absolute is a relation between it and the Absolute. Thus the very proposition which was to be non-relational turns out to be, after all, relational, and to express a relation which current philosophical language would describe as purely external. ~ Bertrand Russell,
736:We call for a long term strategy, consisting of harassing and collecting information on all those who support repression, to disrupt all the technical ways which permit it to be armed, to move, to feed itself, and more. These objectives encompass a diversity of tactics that correspond to the resources and limitations of groups and individuals. Noise demos outside police stations and barracks, verbal harassment of patrols, suing the police for injuries, sabotage, street demos; it’s the simultaneous usage of all these tactics that will help us to establish a favorable “rapport de force” against the police, in our neighborhoods and in our struggles. A call-out is coming soon to organize demos in front of police weapons manufacturers. A list of strategic places will also appear soon. This is a strategic proposition that we are addressing to all those that are assembling, agitating, and organizing so that the backlash against this latest police murder spreads and grows. ~ Anonymous,
737:You have an approximate symmetry, so you calculate a set of consequences supposing it to be perfect. When compared with experiment, it does not agree. Of course – the symmetry you are supposed to expect is approximate, so if the agreement is pretty good you say, ‘Nice!’, while if the agreement is very poor you say, ‘Well, this particular thing must be especially sensitive to the failure of the symmetry’. Now you may laugh, but we have to make progress in that way. When a subject is first new, and these particles are new to us, this jockeying around, this ‘feeling’ way of guessing at the results, is the beginning of any science. The same thing is true of the symmetry proposition in physics as is true of psychology, so do not laugh too hard. It is necessary in the beginning to be very careful. It is easy to fall into the deep end by this kind of vague theory. It is hard to prove it wrong, and it takes a certain skill and experience not to walk off the plank in the game. ~ Anonymous,
738:The big advantage with price-simplifying is that it is often possible to build a huge mass market and a business system that cannot be imitated and out-scaled easily – at least not after the early days – which effectively shuts out all rivals. The price-simplifier is likely to end up with much higher volume than the proposition-simplifier, for the latter relies on the customer’s willingness to pay a premium for a demonstrably superior product. The rub for proposition-simplifiers is that they need to keep ahead of their rivals through constant innovation and new product development – otherwise, they will lose market share and suffer falling margins. Yet they may be able to build an extremely valuable, loyal following and brand among the middle to top of any given market. The price-simplifier must price down the experience curve, passing on cost savings and keeping margins tightly constrained. In contrast, the proposition-simplifier can – sometimes – hang on to fat net margins: up ~ Richard Koch,
739:These neighborhoods went on for miles—just street after foot-wearying street of trophy homes, with big gates beside broad drives, patios adorned with Grecian urns on ornate plinths, and garages for fleets of cars. It was a stunning demonstration of the proposition that money and taste don’t always, or even often, go together. These were the houses of lottery winners, of retailers of the sort who appear in their own television commercials, of people for whom the words “Peppermint Grove” in an address would not be an embarrassment. I would not suggest for a moment that Australia’s nouveaux riches are more distant from refinement than the people of other lands, but the absence of a distinctive architectural vernacular in Australia does mean that people can take their styles from a wider range of sources—principally drive-in banks, casinos, upmarket nursing homes, and ski lodges. To see it massed over a spread of miles as in the western suburbs of Perth is certainly an absorbing experience. ~ Bill Bryson,
740:There is need, then, besides this first and fundamental rule the Word of God, of another, a second rule, by which the first may be rightly and duly proposed, applied and declared. And in order that we may not be subject to hesitation and uncertainty, it is necessary not only that the first rule, namely, the Word of God, but also the second, which proposes and applies this rule, be absolutely infallible; otherwise we shall always remain in suspense and in doubt as to whether we are not being badly directed and supported in our faith and belief, not now by any defect in the first rule but by error and defect in the proposition and application thereof. Certainly the danger is equal, either of getting out of rule for want of a right rule or getting out of rule for want of a regular and right application of the rule itself. But this infallibility which is required as well in the rule as in its proper application can have its source only in God, the living and original fountain of all truth. ~ Francis de Sales,
741:Listen, Daniel.” She could hear the tension in her voice. “I—I made a mistake. I’ve been torturing myself with this all weekend. The last thing I wanted to do was put you on the spot or make you feel uncomfortable or like you had to—” “Yes.” “—Step in and save the day, and I never wanted you to feel—” “Yes, Jade.” “—Taken advantage of, because our friendship means—” Jade heard his words belatedly. She frowned, taking the pause to breathe because somehow she’d forgotten to do that. “What?” she asked. “I said yes.” His lips twitched a little as his eyes caught hers. “This makes three times now.” Her breath caught as she stared into his eyes, wondering if she misunderstood. If wishful thinking misconstrued his words. Had she asked a question while she’d been rambling? “Yes?” He hiked a brow. “It was a yes or no question, right?” Now she was really confused. Maybe she had asked something. She reviewed her words, but it was all a blur. “The proposition? Friday? Ringing a bell?” “You mean . . . yes? ~ Denise Hunter,
742:There is need, then, besides this first and fundamental rule the Word of God, of another, a second rule, by which the first may be rightly and duly proposed, applied and declared. And in order that we may not be subject to hesitation and uncertainty, it is necessary not only that the first rule, namely, the Word of God, but also the second, which proposes and applies this rule, be absolutely infallible; otherwise we shall always remain in suspense and in doubt as to whether we are not being badly directed and supported in our faith and belief, not now by any defect in the first rule but by error and defect in the proposition and application thereof. Certainly the danger is equal, either of getting out of rule for want of a right rule or getting out of rule for want of a regular and right application of the rule itself. But this infallibility which is required as well in the rule as in its proper application can have its source only in God, the living and original fountain of all truth. ~ Saint Francis de Sales,
743:Gradually, the concrete enigma I labored at disturbed me less than the generic enigma of a sentence written by a god. What type of sentence (I asked myself) will an absolute mind construct? I considered that even in the human languages there is no proposition that does not imply the entire universe: to say "the tiger" is to say the tigers that begot it, the deer and turtles devoured by it, the grass on which the deer fed, the earth that was mother to the grass, the heaven that gave birth to the earth. I considered that in the language of a god every word would enunciate that infinite concatenation of facts, and not in an implicit but in an explicit manner, and not progressively but instantaneously. In time, the notion of a divine sentence seemed puerile or blasphemous. A god, I reflected, ought to utter only a single word and in that word absolute fullness. No word uttered by him can be inferior to the universe or less than the sum total of time.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings,
744:Many humanists and artists recoil from the proposition that cultural evolution has hitherto been shaped by unconscious impersonal forces. The determined nature of the past fills them with apprehension as to the possibility of an equally determined future. But their fears are misplaced. It is only through an awareness of the determined nature of the past that we can hope to make the future less dependent on unconscious and impersonal forces. In the birth of a science of culture others profess to see the death of moral initiative. For my part, I cannot see how a lack of intelligence concerning the lawful processes that have operated so far can be the platform on which to rear a civilized future. And so in the birth of a science of culture I find the beginning not the end of moral initiative. Let the protectors of historical spontaneity beware : if the processes of cultural evolution are what I have discerned, they are morally negligent to urge others to think and act as if such processes did not exist. ~ Marvin Harris,
745:today we read of Don Quixote with a bitter taste in the mouth, it is
almost an ordeal, which would make us seem very strange and incomprehensible
to the author and his contemporaries, – they read it with a clear
conscience as the funniest of books, it made them nearly laugh themselves
to death).To see suffering does you good, to make suffer, better still – that
On the Genealogy of Morality
42
48 See below, Supplementary material, pp. 153–4.
49 See below, Supplementary material, pp. 137–9, pp. 140–1, pp. 143–4.
50 Don Quixote, Book II, chs 31–7.
is a hard proposition, but an ancient, powerful, human-all-too-human
proposition to which, by the way, even the apes might subscribe: as people
say, in thinking up bizarre cruelties they anticipate and, as it were, act out
a ‘demonstration’ of what man will do. No cruelty, no feast: that is what
the oldest and longest period in human history teaches us – and punishment,
too, has such very strong festive aspects! – ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
746:In Roosevelt’s view, the international system was in constant flux. Ambition, self-interest, and war were not simply the products of foolish misconceptions of which Americans could disabuse traditional rulers; they were a natural human condition that required purposeful American engagement in international affairs. International society was like a frontier settlement without an effective police force: In new and wild communities where there is violence, an honest man must protect himself; and until other means of securing his safety are devised, it is both foolish and wicked to persuade him to surrender his arms while the men who are dangerous to the community retain theirs. This essentially Hobbesian analysis delivered in, of all occasions, a Nobel Peace Prize lecture, marked America’s departure from the proposition that neutrality and pacific intent were adequate to serve the peace. For Roosevelt, if a nation was unable or unwilling to act to defend its own interests, it could not expect others to respect them. ~ Henry Kissinger,
747:the human understanding, when any proposition has been once laid down (either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure it affords), forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation: and although most cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet either does not observe, or despises them, or it gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions. It was well answered by him who was shown in a temple the votive tablets suspended by such as had escaped the peril of shipwreck, and was pressed as to whether he would then recognize the power of the gods... "But where are the portraits of those that have perished in spite of their vows?" All superstition is much the same, whether it be that of astrology, dreams, omens, retributive judgment, or the like, in all of which the deluded believers observe events which are fulfilled, but neglect and pass over their failure, though it be much more common. ~ Will Durant,
748:For another thing, people's notions of the really big scriptural Subject can be quite beside the point. Suppose, by way of illustration, they were to decide that the Bible is a book about God. Harmless enough,
you think? Look at how many difficulties even so apparently correct a statement can give them - and how many otherwise open scriptural doors it forces them to close. Such a position can easily lead them to expect that on every page they will find the subject of God addressed - or if it is not, that they will find there some other subject that is at least worthy of him (as they understand worthiness, of course). But that is a tricky proposition. In the Gospel of John, we read, "No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son [many texts read God], who is in the bosom of the Father, he has said the last word about him" (1:18). Only Jesus, apparently, is the full revelation of what God is and does; any notions we come up with are always partial, frequently misleading, and sometimes completely off the mark. ~ Robert Farrar Capon,
749:In their ‘attempt to state explicitly and systematically that body of assumptions which constitutes psychoanalytic metapsychology’, Rapaport and Gill classify assumptions according to certain points of view. They identify five such viewpoints, each of which requires that whatever psychoanalytic explanation of a psychological phenomenon is offered must include propositions of a certain sort. The five viewpoints and the sort of proposition each demands are held to be the following: The Dynamic: This point of view demands propositions concerning the psychological forces involved in a phenomenon. The Economic: This demands propositions concerning the psychological energy involved in a phenomenon. The Structural: This demands propositions concerning the abiding psychological configurations (structures) involved in a phenomenon. The Genetic: This demands propositions concerning the psychological origin and development of a phenomenon. The Adaptive: This demands propositions concerning the relationship of a phenomenon to the environment. ~ John Bowlby,
750:the human understanding, when any proposition has been once laid down (either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure it affords), forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation: and although most cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet either does not observe, or despises them, or it gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions. It was well answered by him who was shown in a temple the votive tablets suspended by such as had escaped the peril of shipwreck, and was pressed as to whether he would then recognize the power of the gods . . . . “But where are the portraits of those that have perished in spite of their vows?” All superstition is much the same, whether it be that of astrology, dreams, omens, retributive judgment, or the like, in all of which the deluded believers observe events which are fulfilled, but neglect and pass over their failure, though it be much more common. ~ Will Durant,
751:If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to the garden of Eden. For the obstinate reminder continued to recur: only the supernatural has taken a sane view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved. ~ G K Chesterton,
752:The original Man and Woman, existing in unbroken unity with their Creator, did not appear conscious (and certainly not self-conscious). Their eyes were not open. But, in their perfection, they were also less, not more, than their post-Fall counterparts. Their goodness was something bestowed, rather than deserved or earned. They exercised no choice. God knows, that’s easier. But maybe it’s not better than, for example, goodness genuinely earned. Maybe, even in some cosmic sense (assuming that consciousness itself is a phenomenon of cosmic significance), free choice matters. Who can speak with certainty about such things? I am unwilling to take these questions off the table, however, merely because they are difficult. So, here’s a proposition: perhaps it is not simply the emergence of self-consciousness and the rise of our moral knowledge of Death and the Fall that besets us and makes us doubt our own worth. Perhaps it is instead our unwillingness—reflected in Adam’s shamed hiding—to walk with God, despite our fragility and propensity for evil. ~ Jordan Peterson,
753:The original Man and Woman, existing in unbroken unity with their Creator, did not appear conscious (and certainly not self-conscious). Their eyes were not open. But, in their perfection, they were also less, not more, than their post-Fall counterparts. Their goodness was something bestowed, rather than deserved or earned. They exercised no choice. God knows, that’s easier. But maybe it’s not better than, for example, goodness genuinely earned. Maybe, even in some cosmic sense (assuming that consciousness itself is a phenomenon of cosmic significance), free choice matters. Who can speak with certainty about such things? I am unwilling to take these questions off the table, however, merely because they are difficult. So, here’s a proposition: perhaps it is not simply the emergence of self-consciousness and the rise of our moral knowledge of Death and the Fall that besets us and makes us doubt our own worth. Perhaps it is instead our unwillingness—reflected in Adam’s shamed hiding—to walk with God, despite our fragility and propensity for evil. ~ Jordan B Peterson,
754:Didn’t anyone ever tell you that a lady never deserts her partner before the dance is over?”
“It’s over!” Elizabeth said in a choked whisper, and they both knew she referred to more than just the dancing. “I’m not nearly the greenhand you must take me for,” she warning, frowning darkly at his frilled shirtfront. A ruby winked back at her from the folds of his white neckcloth.
“I give you my word,” he said quietly, “not to force myself upon you tomorrow.”
Oddly, Elizabeth believed him, but even so she knew she could never keep such an assignation.
“I give you my word as a gentleman,” he said again.
“If you were a gentleman, you’d never make me such a proposition,” Elizabeth said, trying to ignore the dull ache of disappointment in her chest.
“Now there’s an unarguable piece of logic,” he replied grimly. “On the other hand, it’s the only choice open to us.”
“It’s no choice at all. We shouldn’t even be out here.”
“I’ll wait for you at the cottage until noon tomorrow.”
“I won’t be there.”
“I’ll wait until noon,” he insisted. ~ Judith McNaught,
755:He’s a dumb ass,” Emilio said to me. “I’m almost finished.”
The second he was out of earshot, Marcus sauntered back up to the bench with stiff, rehearsed swag. Definitely a mirror practicer, that one.
“Why you messin’ with Emilio? What’s up with you and me?” He wiped his hand on his black tank top and held it out, presumably for me to take, at which point we’d presumably climb aboard his moped and ride off into the sunset. Before I could shatter his dreams, Samuel smacked his hand away.
“Keep it movin’,” Samuel said. He nudged him back toward the bikes, but the guy was unfazed.
“She likes me.”
“She thinks you stupid,” Samuel said. “And she right.” Marcus cocked an eyebrow and licked his lips, more dazzling mirror work, and leaned in for another proposition. “When you’re ready to graduate from a boy to a man, you call me.”
“How about I call when you’re ready to graduate from a boy to a man?”
The other guys howled, and just when I decided this game might be kind of fun, Emilio was at the bench, tugging a shirt over his head. “Vamos, princesa. ~ Sarah Ockler,
756:How far beyond your mother do you hope to get? You are not going to be a different woman entirely, so just be a slightly altered version of her, and relax. You don't have to have all of what she had. Why not live something else instead? Live the pattern which is the repeating, which was your mother and her mother before her, live it a little bit differently this time. A life is just a proposition you ask by living it "Could a life be lived like this too?" Then your life will end. So let the soul that passed down from your mothers try out this new life in you. There is no living your life forever. It's just once - a trial of a life. Then it will end. So give the soul that passed down from your mothers a chance to try out life in you. As a custodian for the soul passed down through your mothers, you might make it a little easier this time around. Treat it nicely because it's had a hard time. This is the first time in generations it can rest. Or decide with true liberty what it will do. So why not treat it with real tenderness? It has been through so much already, why not let it rest? ~ Sheila Heti,
757:Dogmatic belief in the central axioms of Christianity (that Christ’s crucifixion redeemed the world; that salvation was reserved for the hereafter; that salvation could not be achieved through works) had three mutually reinforcing consequences: First, devaluation of the significance of earthly life, as only the hereafter mattered. This also meant that it had become acceptable to overlook and shirk responsibility for the suffering that existed in the here-and-now; Second, passive acceptance of the status quo, because salvation could not be earned in any case through effort in this life (a consequence that Marx also derided, with his proposition that religion was the opiate of the masses); and, finally, third, the right of the believer to reject any real moral burden (outside of the stated belief in salvation through Christ), because the Son of God had already done all the important work. It was for such reasons that Dostoevsky, who was a great influence on Nietzsche, also criticized institutional Christianity (although he arguably managed it in a more ambiguous but also more sophisticated manner). ~ Jordan Peterson,
758:Dogmatic belief in the central axioms of Christianity (that Christ’s crucifixion redeemed the world; that salvation was reserved for the hereafter; that salvation could not be achieved through works) had three mutually reinforcing consequences: First, devaluation of the significance of earthly life, as only the hereafter mattered. This also meant that it had become acceptable to overlook and shirk responsibility for the suffering that existed in the here-and-now; Second, passive acceptance of the status quo, because salvation could not be earned in any case through effort in this life (a consequence that Marx also derided, with his proposition that religion was the opiate of the masses); and, finally, third, the right of the believer to reject any real moral burden (outside of the stated belief in salvation through Christ), because the Son of God had already done all the important work. It was for such reasons that Dostoevsky, who was a great influence on Nietzsche, also criticized institutional Christianity (although he arguably managed it in a more ambiguous but also more sophisticated manner). ~ Jordan B Peterson,
759:Here In Bed
Here in bed behind a brick wall
I can make order and meaning,
but how do I begin? How do I
emerge without panic
to the sounds and mass
of people in the street?
Are they human who stare
as I pass by, as if sizing me up
for a mugging or a filthy proposition,
and am I human to have to be
frightened and on guard?
It's people I'm afraid of, afraid
of my own kind, knowing their angers
and schemes and violent needs, knowing
through knowledge of myself
that I have learned to resist,
but when I can't I have seen
the havoc I have made.
It's this, knowing their desperate motives,
as I have known mine, I'm afraid of
in them. I hide upon a bed
behind a brick wall and listen
to engines roaring up and down
the street and to voices shouting
to one another and find no meaning
or order in them, as there is none
in me when I am free of self-restraint.
The bed is my victory over fear.
The bed returns me to my self
as I was young and dreaming
of the beauty of the trees
and faces of people.
~ David Ignatow,
760:There is a theoretical framework that explains ethnocentrism. As the Belgian authority on ethnic relations Pierre L. van den Berghe put it more than 25 years ago, “The degree of cooperation between organisms can be expected to be a direct function of the proportion of the genes they share; conversely, the degree of conflict between them is an inverse function of the proportion of shared genes.”
Van den Berghe used the word “organisms” because he found this principle true in animals as well as people. When there is great genetic distance between strangers—in the case of humans, when they are of different races—conflicts are sharper.
It is easy to understand the first part of van den Berghe’s proposition. People everywhere make great sacrifices for their families. The evolutionary explanation is that everyone shares more copies of his distinctive genes with close kin than with strangers. All forms of life can be viewed as striving to pass on their genes to future generations. Each individual therefore has a “genetic interest” in close relatives, which helps explain solidarity and cooperation within families. ~ Jared Taylor,
761:Now, for the preacher, the chief of these secondary sources is the testimony of the sacred Scriptures. Their authority as our rule of faith is inferred immediately from their inspired character; for if God is perfect truth, as must be assumed, or else all search for truth anywhere is preposterous; and if the Bible is God’s word, then it is infallible, and of course authoritative over the soul. But is the inspiration of the Bible self-evident to its readers? I answer, it is not immediately self-evident – that is to say, the proposition, “The Bible is inspired,” is not axiomatic – but it is readily found to be true upon bringing the internal and external evidences of it under the light of our self-consciousness, our mental and our moral intuitions. This is but saying that God, in revealing himself to man, has clothed his revelation with an amount of reasonable and moral evidence adapted to the creature’s nature, and sufficient, when inspected, to produce a perfect conviction. Thereupon the word of God assumes its place as of plenary authority over the soul in the department of which it professes to teach, that of our religious beliefs, duties, and redemption. ~ Robert Lewis Dabney,
762:Those who say that intellectual belief in Christ is of no value not only fall into the errors exposed above, but they also in some instances fail to distinguish assent from understanding. When they attack “mere assent” they probably mean – though it is rash to guess what some people mean – that salvation is not obtained by knowing the propositions in the Bible and understanding their meaning. Obviously this is true. Many intelligent men know very well what the Bible says; they understand it far better than many Christians; but they are not saved and they are not Christians. The reason is that though they understand, they do not believe. They know what the Bible says, but they do not assent to it. But because understanding and believing are both intellectual acts, those who think carelessly identify them. The distinction between knowing the meaning of a proposition and believing it seems to be too subtle, and therefore some preachers conclude that “mere belief” is of no value. This conclusion is fallaciously drawn. Just because one intellectual act – the understanding of what words mean – is less than faith, it does not follow that faith or belief is not intellectual. ~ Anonymous,
763:Both the ferial and the festal cuisine, therefore, must be seen as styles of unabashed eating. Neither attempts to do anything to food other than render it delectable. Their distinction is grounded, not in sordid dietetic tricks, but in a choice between honest frugality or generous expense. Both aim only at excellence; accordingly, neither is suitable for dieting. Should a true man want to lose weight, let him fast. Let him sit down to nothing but coffee and conversation, if religion or reason bid him to do so; only let him not try to eat his cake without having it. Any cake he could do that with would be a pretty spooky proposition - a little golden calf with dietetic icing, and no taste at all worth having.

Let us fast, then - whenever we see fit, and as strenuously as we should. But having gotten that exercise out of the way, let us eat. Festally, first of all, for life without occasions is not worth living. But ferially, too, for life is so much more than occasions, and its grand ordinariness must never go unsavored. But both ways let us eat with a glad good will, and with a conscience formed by considerations of excellence, not by fear of Ghosts. ~ Robert Farrar Capon,
764:He, however, rejoiced greatly that this earliest opportunity had been afforded to him of explaining the intentions of the Government with which he had the honour of being connected. In answer to this there arose a perfect torrent of almost vituperative antagonism from the opposite side of the House. Did the Right Honourable gentleman dare to say that the question had been ventilated in the country, when it had never been broached by him or any of his followers till after the general election had been completed? Was it not notorious to the country that the first hint of it had been given when the Right Honourable gentleman was elected for East Barsetshire, and was it not equally notorious that that election had been so arranged that the marvellous proposition of the Right Honourable gentleman should not be known even to his own party till there remained no possibility of the expression of any condemnation from the hustings? It might be that the Right Honourable could so rule his own followers in that House as to carry them with him even in a matter so absolutely opposite to their own most cherished convictions. It certainly seemed that he had succeeded in doing so for the present. ~ Anthony Trollope,
765:The combination of loss aversion and narrow framing is a costly curse. Individual investors can avoid that curse, achieving the emotional benefits of broad framing while also saving time and agony, by reducing the frequency with which they check how well their investments are doing. Closely following daily fluctuations is a losing proposition, because the pain of the frequent small losses exceeds the pleasure of the equally frequent small gains. Once a quarter is enough, and may be more than enough for individual investors. In addition to improving the emotional quality of life, the deliberate avoidance of exposure to short-term outcomes improves the quality of both decisions and outcomes. The typical short-term reaction to bad news is increased loss aversion. Investors who get aggregated feedback receive such news much less often and are likely to be less risk averse and to end up richer. You are also less prone to useless churning of your portfolio if you don’t know how every stock in it is doing every day (or every week or even every month). A commitment not to change one’s position for several periods (the equivalent of “locking in” an investment) improves financial performance. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
766:The 'Vestiges of Creation' appeared in 1844. In the tenth and much improved edition (1853) the anonymous author [Robert Chambers] says (p. 155): ---'The proposition determined on after much consideration is, that the several series of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most recent, are, under the providence of God, the results, first, of an impulse {teleologic] which has been imparted to the forms of life, advancing them, in definite times, by generation, through grades of organisation terminating in the highest dicotyledons and vertebrata, these grades being few in number, and generally marked by intervals of organic character, which we find to be a practical difficulty in ascertaining affinities;
second, of another impulse [teleonomic] connected with the vital forces, tending, in the course of generations, to modify organic structures in accordance with external circumstances, as food, the nature of the habitat, and the meteoric [n.b.] agencies, these being the 'adaptations' of the natural theologian." The author apparently believes that organisation progresses by sudden [quantum] leaps, but the effects produced by the conditions of life are gradual. ~ Charles Darwin,
767:INTERVIEWER

Why don’t you write tragedy?

BARTHELME

I’m fated to deal in mixtures, slumgullions, which preclude tragedy, which require a pure line. It’s a habit of mind, a perversity. Tom Hess used to tell a story, maybe from Lewis Carroll, I don’t remember, about an enraged mob storming the palace shouting “More taxes! Less bread!” As soon as I hear a proposition I immediately consider its opposite. A double-minded man—makes for mixtures.

INTERVIEWER

Apparently the Yiddish theater, to which Kafka was very addicted, includes as a typical bit of comedy two clowns, more or less identical, who appear even in sad scenes—the parting of two lovers, for instance—and behave comically as the audience is weeping. This shows up especially in The Castle.

BARTHELME

The assistants.

INTERVIEWER

And the audience doesn’t know what to do.

BARTHELME

The confusing signals, the impurity of the signal, gives you verisimilitude. As when you attend a funeral and notice, against your will, that it’s being poorly done. [...] I think of the line from the German writer Heimito von Doderer: “At first you break windows. Then you become a window yourself. ~ Donald Barthelme,
768:Thomas Jefferson presciently warned against such immoral collective behavior: “We believe—or we act as if we believed—that although an individual father cannot alienate the labor of his son, the aggregate body of fathers may alienate the labor of all their sons, of their posterity, in the aggregate, and oblige them to pay for all the enterprises, just or unjust, profitable or ruinous, into which our vices, our passions or our personal interests may lead us. But I trust that this proposition needs only to be looked at by an American to be seen in its true point of view, and that we shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life of the majority.”23 A few years later, Jefferson expressed even more trepidation: “[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [the war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression. ~ Mark R Levin,
769:Finally, it was now widely recognised that Marx’s own theory, insofar as he formulated it in a systematic manner, lacked homogeneity in at least one important respect. Thus, it might be held that it consisted both of an analysis of capitalism and its tendencies, and simultaneously of a historic hope, expressed with enormous prophetic passion and in terms of a philosophy derived from Hegel, of the perennial human desire for a perfect society, which is to be achieved through the proletariat. In Marx’s own intellectual development, the second of these preceded the first, and cannot be intellectually derived from it. In other words there is a qualitative difference between e.g. the proposition that capitalism by its nature generates insuperable contradictions which must inevitably produce the conditions of its supersession as soon as ‘centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with capitalist development’, and the proposition that the post-capitalist society will lead to the end of human alienation and the full development of all individuals’ human faculties. They belong to different forms of discourse, though both may eventually prove to be true. ~ Eric Hobsbawm,
770:It is not unusual for us to feel that life is too much for us. And it is not unusual to feel that we really should be up to it; that there may be too much to cope with — too many demands — but that we should have the wherewithal to deal with it. Faced with the stresses and strains of everyday life it is easy now for people to feel that they are failing; and what they are failing at, one way or another, is managing the ordinary excesses that we are all beset by: too much frustration, too much bad feeling, too little love, too little success, and so on. One of the things people most frequently say in psychoanalysis is, ‘Perhaps I am overreacting, but . . .’; and one of the commonest complaints today is about feeling too much or feeling too little. I want to suggest that we are simply too much for ourselves, but that this too-muchness is telling us something important… My proposition is that it is impossible to overreact. That when we call our reactions overreactions what we mean is just that they are stronger than we would like them to be. In other words, we sometimes call ourselves and other people excessive as a way of invalidating or tempering the truths we tell ourselves or that other people tell us. It is impossible to overreact. ~ Adam Phillips,
771:lack, or loutish and crass kollective is a program dedicated to the proposition that vulgarity and bad taste are an inalienable right. the lackies, as they are sometimes called, meet if they feel like it at program headquarters, which is known as La Gaucherie. La Gaucherie is densely furnished with seven thousand always-in-operation console color televisions, nine hundred constantly blaring quadrophonic stereos, shag rugs in six hundred and seventy-eight decorator colors, and am eclectic mix of Mediterranean-style dining room sets, fun sofas, interesting wall hangings, and modular seating systems. These members not otherwise occupied practicing the electric guitar or writing articles for Playgirl sit around in unduly comfortable positions expressing their honest feelings and opinions in loud tones of voice. Male lackies are encouraged to leave unbuttoned the first five buttons of their shirts unless they have unusually pale skin and hairy chests, in which case they are required to do so. Female members are encouraged to encourage them. Both sexes participate in a form of meditation that consists of breathing deeply of musk oil while wearing synthetic fabrics. The eventual goal of this discipline is to reach the state of mind known as Los Angeles. ~ Fran Lebowitz,
772:The danger wasn’t over.
Rolling her around so that she floated on her back, he swam her to shore. A much easier proposition than on the way out. Reaching the safety of the beach, he lifted her in his arms, wrenching her from the steel jaws of the sea that had tried to claim her.
He carried her a few feet up the beach and set her down carefully, kneeling beside her.
“Flora.” He shook her shoulders gently. “Wake up.”
She looked so still. So horribly still. “Flora.” He shook her gently, his chest squeezing painfully.
“Please wake up. I need you to wake up.” I need you.
Her eyes fluttered again and then—blissfully—opened. And he found himself looking into the achingly
familiar fathomless depths. He felt a rush of relief so strong, he could have wept. Instead he kissed her.
He knew there wasn’t time, that he had to get her back, but he couldn’t help it. He needed to know that she was alive.
His mouth covered hers in a searing kiss, as if he could warm the cold from her lips with the heat of his passion. He kissed her with a raw desperation born of fear. With all the intensity of the emotions she’d exposed inside him. He told her with his lips what he couldn’t admit to himself.
In that one brief instant, he told her so much. ~ Monica McCarty,
773:Two other issues are contributing to tension in Sino-American relations. China rejects the proposition that international order is fostered by the spread of liberal democracy and that the international community has an obligation to bring this about, and especially to achieve its perception of human rights by international action. The United States may be able to adjust the application of its views on human rights in relation to strategic priorities. But in light of its history and the convictions of its people, America can never abandon these principles altogether. On the Chinese side, the dominant elite view on this subject was expressed by Deng Xiaoping: Actually, national sovereignty is far more important than human rights, but the Group of Seven (or Eight) often infringe upon the sovereignty of poor, weak countries of the Third World. Their talk about human rights, freedom and democracy is designed only to safeguard the interests of the strong, rich countries, which take advantage of their strength to bully weak countries, and which pursue hegemony and practice power politics. No formal compromise is possible between these views; to keep the disagreement from spiraling into conflict is one of the principal obligations of the leaders of both sides. ~ Henry Kissinger,
774:It will be seen that there are various stages in the removal from acquaintance with particulars: there is Bismarck to people who knew him; Bismarck to those who only know of him through history; the man with the iron mask; the longest-lived of men. These are progressively further removed from acquaintance with particulars; the first comes as near to acquaintance as is possible in regard to another person; in the second, we shall still be said to know 'who Bismarck was'; in the third, we do not know who was the man with the iron mask, though we can know many propositions about him which are not logically deducible from the fact that he wore an iron mask; in the fourth, finally, we know nothing beyond what is logically deducible from the definition of the man. There is a similar hierarchy in the region of universals. Many universals, like many particulars, are only known to us by description. But here, as in the case of particulars, knowledge concerning what is known by description is ultimately reducible to knowledge concerning what is known by acquaintance.
The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted. ~ Bertrand Russell,
775:The obvious difficulty that has prevented the study of European culture becoming a part of the regular curriculum of studies is its vastness and its complexity. The great advantage of classical education was the fact that it involved the study of only two languages and two literatures and histories. But European culture has produced about twenty vernacular literatures, and its history is spread out among an even larger number of political communities. At first sight it is an unmanageable proposition and we can understand how educationalists have so often come to acquiesce in a cultural nationalism which at least saved them from being overwhelmed by a multiplicity of strange tongues and unknown literatures. But the true method, it seems to me, is rather to find the consitutive factors of the European community and to make them the basis of our study.
This means reversing the traditional nationalist approach which concentrated the student's attention on the distinctive characteristics of the national cultures and disregarded or passed lightly over the features that they shared in common. It means also that we should have to devote much more attention to the religious development, since it was in religion that Europe found its original basis of unity. ~ Christopher Henry Dawson,
776:In this way the emancipated people of Athens became a tyrant; and their government, the pioneer of European freedom, stands condemned with a terrible unanimity by all the wisest of the ancients.[16] In a recent, magisterial work on justice, Yale professor Nicholas Wolterstorff has argued the same proposition on philosophical grounds.[17] Our whole Western concept of justice, founded on the idea of human rights, is built on religious foundations and cannot survive without them. If we become a secular society, there is no long-term future for either rights or justice. This is his conclusion: Our Judaic and Christian heritage neither denies nor overlooks the flaws of humankind; some strands in the heritage appear even to revel in them. But in the face of all the empirical evidence, it nonetheless declares that all of us have great and equal worth; the worth of being made in the image of God and of being loved redemptively by God. It adds that God holds us accountable for how we treat each other – and for how we treat God. It is this framework of conviction that gave rise to our moral subculture of rights. If this framework erodes, I think we must expect that our moral subculture of rights will also eventually erode and that we will slide back into our tribalisms.[18 ~ Jonathan Sacks,
777:Uncertain? Yes. But it is the only way to make progress. Although it is uncertain, it is necessary to make science useful. Science is only useful if it tells you about some experiment that has not been done; it is no good if it only tells you what just went on. It is necessary to extend the ideas beyond where they have been tested. For example, in the law of gravitation, which was developed to understand the motion of planets, it would have been no use if Newton had simply said, ‘I now understand the planets’, and had not felt able to try to compare it with the earth’s pull on the moon, and for later men to say ‘Maybe what holds the galaxies together is gravitation’. We must try that. You could say, ‘When you get to the size of the galaxies, since you know nothing about it, anything can happen’. I know, but there is no science in accepting this type of limitation. There is no ultimate understanding of the galaxies. On the other hand, if you assume that the entire behaviour is due only to known laws, this assumption is very limited and definite and easily broken by experiment. What we are looking for is just such hypotheses, very definite and easy to compare with experiment. The fact is that the way the galaxies behave so far does not seem to be against the proposition. ~ Anonymous,
778:If human nature were not base, but thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other aim than the discovery of truth; we should not in the least care whether the truth proved to be in favour of the opinion which we had begun by expressing, or of the opinion of our adversary. That we should regard as a matter of no moment, or, at any rate, of very secondary consequence; but, as things are, it is the main concern. Our innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our intellectual powers, will not suffer us to allow that our first position was wrong and our adversary’s right. The way out of this difficulty would be simply to take the trouble always to form a correct judgment. For this a man would have to think before he spoke. But, with most men, innate vanity is accompanied by loquacity and innate dishonesty. They speak before they think; and even though they may afterwards perceive that they are wrong, and that what they assert is false, they want it to seem thecontrary. The interest in truth, which may be presumed to have been their only motive when they stated the proposition alleged to be true, now gives way to the interests of vanity: and so, for the sake of vanity, what is true must seem false, and what is false must seem true. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
779:What’s the matter, love?” “I…” Amelia approached him hesitantly. “I’m afraid you won’t let me have what I want.” His slow smile robbed her of breath. “I have yet to refuse you anything. I’m not likely to start now.” Amelia stopped before him, her skirts crowded between his parted knees. The clean, salty, evergreen scent of him drifted to her nostrils. “I have a proposition for you,” she said, trying for a businesslike tone. “A very sensible one. You see—” She paused to clear her throat. “I’ve been thinking about your problem.” “What problem?” Cam played lightly with the folds of her skirts, watching her face alertly. “Your good-luck curse. I know how to get rid of it. You should marry into a family with very, very bad luck. A family with expensive problems. And then you won’t have to be embarrassed about having so much money, because it will flow out nearly as fast as it comes in.” “Very sensible.” Cam took her shaking hand in his, pressed it between his warm palms. And touched his foot to her rapidly tapping one. “Hummingbird,” he whispered, “you don’t have to be nervous with me.” Gathering her courage, Amelia blurted out, “I want your ring. I want never to take it off again. I want to be your romni forever”—she paused with a quick, abashed smile—“ whatever that is.” “My bride. My wife. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
780:While Alpha Males are often gifted with superior physical attributes—size, strength, speed, good looks—selected by evolution over the eons by the strongest surviving and, essentially, getting all the girls, the Beta Male gene has survived not by meeting and overcoming adversity, but by anticipating and avoiding it. That is, when the Alpha Males were out charging after mastodons, the Beta Males could imagine in advance that attacking what was essentially an angry, woolly bulldozer with a pointy stick might be a losing proposition, so they hung back at camp to console the grieving widows. When Alpha Males set out to conquer neighboring tribes, to count coups and take heads, Beta Males could see in advance that in the event of a victory, the influx of female slaves was going to leave a surplus of mateless women cast out for younger trophy models, with nothing to do but salt down the heads and file the uncounted coups, and some would find solace in the arms of any Beta Male smart enough to survive. In the case of defeat, well, there was that widows thing again. The Beta Male is seldom the strongest or the fastest, but because he can anticipate danger, he far outnumbers his Alpha Male competition. The world is led by Alpha Males, but the machinery of the world turns on the bearings of the Beta Male. ~ Christopher Moore,
781:If we are part of nature, then we are synonymous with it at the metaphysical level, every bit as much as the first all-but-inorganic animalcules that ever formed a chain of themselves in the blow hole of a primordial sea vent. There is no magic rod that comes down three hundred thousand years ago and divides our essence from the material world that produced us. This means that we cannot speak in essential terms of nature—neither of its brutality nor of its beauty—and hope to say anything true, if what we say isn’t true of ourselves.

The importance of that proposition becomes clear only when it’s reversed: What’s true of us is true of nature. If we are conscious, as our species seems to have become, then nature is conscious. Nature became conscious in us, perhaps in order to observe itself. It may be holding us out and turning us around like a crab does its eyeball. Whatever the reason, that thing out there, with the black holes and the nebulae and whatnot, is conscious. One cannot look in the mirror and rationally deny this. It experiences love and desire, or thinks it does. The idea is enough to render the Judeo-Christian cosmos sort of quaint. As far as Rafinesque was concerned, it was just hard science. That part is mysterious. “She lives her life not as men or birds,” said Rafinesque, “but as a world. ~ John Jeremiah Sullivan,
782:Our object, however, is not to transfer ourselves to other planets but to get the best out of this one; but we shall not get the best out of this one until we realize that the power which will enable us to do so is so absolutely universal and fundamental that its application in this world is precisely the same as in any other, and that is why I have stated it as a general proposition applicable to all worlds. The principle being thus universal there is no reason why we should postpone its application till we find ourselves in another world, and the best place and time to begin are Here and Now. The starting point is not in time or locality, but in the mode of Thought; and if we realize that this Point of Origination is Spirit's power to produce something out of nothing, and that it does this in accordance with the natural order of substance of the particular world in which it is working, then the spiritual ego in ourselves, as proceeding direct from the Universal Spirit, should be able first, to so harmoniously combine the working of spiritual and physical laws in its own body as to keep it in perfect health, secondly to carry this process further and renew the body, thus eradicating the effects of old age, and thirdly to carry the process still further and perpetuate this renewed body as long as the individual might desire. ~ Thomas Troward,
783:That only leaves the third contender to discourage,” Alex said happily. “Who is he, and what do we know of him? Do I know him?”
It was the moment Elizabeth had been dreading. “You never heard of him until a few weeks ago, when you returned.”
“What?” she asked, nonplussed.
Elizabeth drew a steadying breath and nervously rubbed her hands against the sides of her blue skirts. “I think,” she said slowly, “I ought to tell you exactly what happened a year and a half ago-with Ian Thornton.”
“There’s no need to ever tell me if it will cause you unhappiness to speak of it. And right now, we surely ought to be thinking of the third man-“
“The third man,” Elizabeth interrupted tightly, “is Ian Thornton.”
“Dear God!” Alex gasped in horror. “Why? I mean-“
“I don’t know why,” Elizabeth admitted with angry confusion. “He accepted my uncle’s proposition. So it is either some sort of complete misunderstanding or it is his idea of a joke, and neither makes much sense-“
“A joke! He ruined you. He must be a complete monster to find it amusing now.”
“The last time I saw him, he did not find the situation amusing, believe me,” Elizabeth said, and, sitting down, she told the whole story, trying desperately to keep her emotions under control so that she would be able to think clearly when she and Alex finalized their plans. ~ Judith McNaught,
784:[Beware of] the fallacy of misplaced concreteness [mistaking an abstraction for concrete reality, for actuality]

In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by its submission to permanence.

Error is the price we pay for progress.

In the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.

Creativity is the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctively. It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity.

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, "Seek simplicity and distrust it."

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

[From various of Whitehead's books, not only PR] ~ Alfred North Whitehead,
785:And yet we are a resilient people, caretakers of a blessed nation. It has become a commonplace that we always rise to the occasion in this country. That is still true. And we surprise ourselves, never knowing with exact certainty from whence our next leader or hero will come—good reason to respect and defend one another as Americans, as fellow countrymen dedicated to a great proposition.

Allow me a few simple illustrations. If you were sitting in a saloon in 1860, and someone told you that while he did not know who would win that year's presidential election, the next elected president after him was right then a little known leather tanner in Galena, Illinois, he would be laughed out of the saloon. But then came Ulysses S. Grant. If you were sitting at Franklin D. Roosevelt's inauguration, in 1933, and someone told you the next president was a little-known judge in Jackson County, Missouri, he would have been made to look the fool. But then came Harry S. Truman. If you were a political consultant in California in 1950 watching the bitter Senate race between Richard Nixon and Helen Gahagan Douglas (where Nixon labeled Douglas "the pink lady"), and you said that actor Ronald Reagan (who was then campaigning for Douglas) would someday be a Republican president and would crush the Soviet Union, your career would have been over. ~ William J Bennett,
786:CONFUSION 2: HOW TO COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY WITH YOUR CUSTOMER The next step in the Customer Satisfaction Process is to decide how to magnify the characteristics of your business that are most likely to appeal to your category of Customer. That begins with what marketing people call your Positioning Strategy. What do I mean by positioning your business? You position your business with words. A few well-chosen words to tell your Customers exactly what they want to hear. In marketing lingo, those words are called your USP, or Unique Selling Proposition. For example, if you are targeting Tactile Customers (people), your USP could be: “Superior Contracting, where the feelings of people really count!” If you are targeting Experimental Customers (new things), your USP could be: “Superior Contracting, where living on the edge is a way of life!” In other words, when they choose to do business with your company, they can count on your job being unique, original, on the cutting edge. Do you get it? Do you see how the ordinary things most Contractors do to get Customers can be done in a significantly more effective way? Once you understand the essential principles of marketing The E-Myth Way, the strategies by which you attract customers can make an enormous difference in your market share. When applied to your business, your Positioning Strategy becomes the foundation of what we at E-Myth call your Lead Generation System. ~ Michael E Gerber,
787:It is true, no doubt, that this principle of the necessary unity of apperception is itself an identical and therefore an analytic proposition; but it shows, nevertheless, the necessity of a synthesis of the manifold given in an intuition, a synthesis without which it would be impossible to think the thoroughgoing identity of self-consciousness. For through the *I*, as a simple representation, nothing manifold is given; only in intuition, which is distinct from this representation, can a manifold be given, and then, through *combination*, be thought in one consciousness. An understanding in which through self-consciousness all the manifold would be given at the same time would be one that *intuits*; our understanding can do nothing but *think*, and must seek intuition in the senses. I am conscious, therefore, of the identical self with respect to the manifold of the representations that are given to me in an intuition, because I call them one and all *my* representations, as constituting *one* intuition. This means that I am conscious *a priori* of a necessary synthesis of them, which is called the original synthetic unity of apperception, and under which all representations given to me must stand, but under which they must also be brought by means of a synthesis.”

—from Critique of Pure Reason . Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Marcus Weigelt, based on the translation by Max Müller, pp. 128-129 ~ Immanuel Kant,
788:Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. ~ Abraham Lincoln,
789:Nous pouvons encore préciser la signification du dédoublement du point par polarisation, telle que nous venons de l’exposer, en nous plaçant au point de vue proprement « ontologique » ; et, pour rendre la chose plus aisément compréhensible, nous pouvons envisager tout d’abord l’application du point de vue logique et même simplement grammatical. En effet, nous avons ici trois éléments, les deux points et leur distance, et il est facile de se rendre compte que ces trois éléments correspondent très exactement à ceux d’une proposition : les deux points représentent les deux termes de celle-ci, et leur distance, exprimant la relation qui existe entre eux, joue le rôle de la « copule », c’est-à-dire de l’élément qui relie les deux termes l’un à l’autre. Si nous considérons la proposition sous sa forme la plus habituelle et en même temps la plus générale, celle de la proposition attributive, dans laquelle la « copule » est le verbe « être »[1], nous voyons qu’elle exprime une identité, au moins sous un certain rapport, entre le sujet et l’attribut ; et ceci correspond au fait que les deux points ne sont en réalité que le dédoublement d’un seul et même point, se posant pour ainsi dire en face de lui-même comme nous l’avons expliqué.

[1] Toutes les autres formes de propositions qu’envisagent certains logiciens peuvent toujours se ramener à la forme attributive parce que le rapport exprimé par celle-ci a un caractère plus fondamental que tous les autres. ~ Ren Gu non,
790:WHAT: Every single company and organization on the planet knows WHAT they do. This is true no matter how big or small, no matter what industry. Everyone is easily able to describe the products or services a company sells or the job function they have within that system. WHATs are easy to identify. HOW: Some companies and people know HOW they do WHAT they do. Whether you call them a “differentiating value proposition,” “proprietary process” or “unique selling proposition,” HOWs are often given to explain how something is different or better. Not as obvious as WHATs, many think these are the differentiating or motivating factors in a decision. It would be false to assume that’s all that is required. There is one missing detail: WHY: Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. When I say WHY, I don’t mean to make money—that’s a result. By WHY I mean what is your purpose, cause or belief? WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care? When most organizations or people think, act or communicate they do so from the outside in, from WHAT to WHY. And for good reason—they go from clearest thing to the fuzziest thing. We say WHAT we do, we sometimes say HOW we do it, but we rarely say WHY we do WHAT we do. But not the inspired companies. Not the inspired leaders. Every single one of them, regardless of their size or their industry, thinks, acts and communicates from the inside out. ~ Simon Sinek,
791:In the Tantrik View, there are two goals in human life: worldly success and spiritual liberation. The former consists of learning how to successfully negotiate the challenges of embodiment. Creating sufficient harmony and balance in relation to one’s work, family, mental and physical health, and so on gives rise to worldly happiness, the ability to simply enjoy life (bhoga). Unlike all the pre-Tantrik forms of yoga, the Tantra does not reject this goal, but actually provides tools to achieve it. The second goal, or purpose, of human life is seemingly very different: to achieve a spiritual liberation that entails a deep and quiet joy that is utterly independent of one’s life circumstances, a joy in simply existing, free from all mind-created suffering (mokṣa). Tantra does not see these goals as necessarily mutually exclusive: you can strive for greater happiness and success (bhoga) while at the same time cultivating a practice that will enable you to deeply love your life even if it doesn’t go the way you want (mokṣa). It’s a win–win proposition. But the tradition correctly points out that unless the former activity (bhoga) is subordinated to the latter (mokṣa), it is likely that pursuit of bhoga will take over. That outcome is potentially regrettable for two reasons: first, if you haven’t cultivated mokṣa (spiritual liberation) and your carefully built house of cards collapses, as can happen to any of us at any time, you will have no inner ‘safety net’ to catch you. ~ Christopher D Wallis,
792:Olujime was a pit fighter, an accountant, a magical warrior, and an ostrich whisperer. Somehow I was not surprised. “Is he going with you?” I asked. Thalia laughed. “No. Just helping us get ready. Seems like a good guy, but I don’t think he’s Hunter material. He’s not even, uh…a Greek-Roman type, is he? I mean, he’s not a legacy of you guys, the Olympians.” “No,” I agreed. “He is from a different tradition and parentage entirely.” Thalia’s short spiky hair rippled in the wind, as if reacting to her uneasiness. “You mean from other gods.” “Of course. He mentioned the Yoruba, though I admit I know very little about their ways.” “How is that possible? Other pantheons of gods, side by side?” I shrugged. I was often surprised by mortals’ limited imaginations, as if the world was an either/or proposition. Sometimes humans seemed as stuck in their thinking as they were in their meat-sack bodies. Not, mind you, that gods were much better. “How could it not be possible?” I countered. “In ancient times, this was common sense. Each country, sometimes each city, had its own pantheon of gods. We Olympians have always been used to living in close proximity to, ah…the competition.” “So you’re the sun god,” Thalia said. “But some other deity from some other culture is also the sun god?” “Exactly. Different manifestations of the same truth.” “I don’t get it.” I spread my hands. “Honestly, Thalia Grace, I don’t know how to explain it any better. But surely you’ve been a demigod long enough to ~ Rick Riordan,
793:The 'Manifesto' being our joint production, I consider myself bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus belongs to Marx. That proposition is: that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolution in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and the oppressed class—the proletariat—cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class—the bourgeoisie—without, at the same time, and once for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinctions and class struggles.

This proposition, which, in my opinion, is destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has done for biology, we, both of us, had been gradually approaching for some years before 1845. ~ Friedrich Engels,
794:When will you be married?” “Married?” Portia exclaimed. Cecily sighed. Just like Denny, to take his responsibilities as her third cousin twice removed—and only male relation in the vicinity—so seriously. But did he have to force the issue now? Certainly, she hoped that she and Luke might one day— “As soon as possible.” Luke’s arm slid around her waist. Cecily’s gaze snapped up to his. Are you certain? she asked him silently. He answered her with a quick kiss. “Well, then. When can we be married?” Brooke directed his question to Portia. “Married!” Blushing furiously, Portia made a dismissive gesture with both hands. “Why, I’m only just learning to enjoy being a widow. I don’t want to be married. I want to write scandalous novels and take dozens of lovers.” Brooke raised an eyebrow. “Can that be negotiated to lover, singular?” “That,” she said, giving him a coy smile, “would depend on your skill at negotiation.” “What an evening you’ve had, Portia,” Cecily said. “A brush with death, a proposal of marriage, an indecent proposition . . . Surely you have sufficient inspiration for your gothic novel?” “Too much inspiration!” Portia wailed, gesturing toward her bandaged foot. “I am done with gothics completely. No, I shall take a cue from my insipid wallpaper and write a bawdy little tale about a wanton dairymaid and her many lovers.” “Lover, singular.” Brooke flopped on the divan and settled her feet in his lap. “Oh,” she sighed, as he massaged her uninjured foot. “Oh, very well.” Luke ~ Tessa Dare,
795:The great irony, then, is that the nation’s most famous modern conservative economist became the father of Big Government, chronic deficits, and national fiscal bankruptcy. It was Friedman who first urged the removal of the Bretton Woods gold standard restraints on central bank money printing, and then added insult to injury by giving conservative sanction to perpetual open market purchases of government debt by the Fed. Friedman’s monetarism thereby institutionalized a régime which allowed politicians to chronically spend without taxing. Likewise, it was the free market professor of the Chicago school who also blessed the fundamental Keynesian proposition that Washington must continuously manage and stimulate the national economy. To be sure, Friedman’s “freshwater” proposition, in Paul Krugman’s famous paradigm, was far more modest than the vast “fine-tuning” pretensions of his “salt-water” rivals. The saltwater Keynesians of the 1960s proposed to stimulate the economy until the last billion dollars of potential GDP was realized; that is, they would achieve prosperity by causing the state to do anything that was needed through a multiplicity of fiscal interventions. By contrast, the freshwater Keynesian, Milton Friedman, thought that capitalism could take care of itself as long as it had precisely the right quantity of money at all times; that is, Friedman would attain prosperity by causing the state to do the one thing that was needed through the single spigot of M1 growth. ~ David A Stockman,
796:they told me that the night and day were all that I could see

They told me that I had five senses to inclose me up

And they inclosed my brain into a narrow circle

And sunk my heart into the abyss, a red round globe, hotburning, Til all from life I was obliterated and erased. Instead of morn arises a bright shadow, like an eye In the eastern cloud; instead of night, a sickly charnel house....

What Blake is intimating here is that the vision of things as ‘infinite and holy’ is not an abnormal vision, but the perfectly normal emotional state. And yet man is not born with such a vision, and he can five so far from it that he can decide at the end of his life that ‘not to be born is the best thing, and death is better than life’. Why? Blake cannot say why; he can only account for it by utilizing the legend of a Fall; by saying, as it were, ‘Men are born like smashed radio sets, and before they can function properly, they must repair themselves’. (Blake lived before the machine-age, or no doubt he would have used the same kind of simile.) In short, he used the legend of Original Sin.

For readers who approach this argument for the first time, the most doubtful part about it is the proposition that men ought to see the world like Van Gogh’s Nuit Etoile as a matter of course. They may object: ‘We agree that man could see a starry night that way, but to claim that he ought to, perhaps that he did, once upon a time, and lost the faculty because he ate an apple from a forbidden tree ~ Colin Wilson,
797:In order to see the difference which exists between... studies,—for instance, history and geometry, it will be useful to ask how we come by knowledge in each. Suppose, for example, we feel certain of a fact related in history... if we apply the notions of evidence which every-day experience justifies us in entertaining, we feel that the improbability of the contrary compels us to take refuge in the belief of the fact; and, if we allow that there is still a possibility of its falsehood, it is because this supposition does not involve absolute absurdity, but only extreme improbability.
  In mathematics the case is wholly different... and the difference consists in this—that, instead of showing the contrary of the proposition asserted to be only improbable, it proves it at once to be absurd and impossible. This is done by showing that the contrary of the proposition which is asserted is in direct contradiction to some extremely evident fact, of the truth of which our eyes and hands convince us. In geometry, of the principles alluded to, those which are most commonly used are—  I. If a magnitude is divided into parts, the whole is greater than either of those parts.
  II. Two straight lines cannot inclose a space.
  III. Through one point only one straight line can be drawn, which never meets another straight line, or which is parallel to it.
  It is on such principles as these that the whole of geometry is founded, and the demonstration of every proposition consists in proving the contrary of it to be inconsistent with one of these. ~ Augustus De Morgan, Ch. I.,
798:It may be asked how I know that there are any Reals. If this hypothesis is the sole support of my method of inquiry, my method of inquiry must not be used to support my hypothesis. The reply is this: 1. If investigation cannot be regarded as proving that there are Real things, it at least does not lead to a contrary conclusion; but the method and the conception on which it is based remain ever in harmony. No doubts of the method, therefore, necessarily arise from its practice, as is the case with all the others. 2. The feeling which gives rise to any method of fixing belief is a dissatisfaction at two repugnant propositions. But here already is a vague concession that there is some one thing which a proposition should represent. Nobody, therefore, can really doubt that there are Reals, for, if he did, doubt would not be a source of dissatisfaction. The hypothesis, therefore, is one which every mind admits. So that the social impulse does not cause men to doubt it. 3. Everybody uses the scientific method about a great many things, and only ceases to use it when he does not know how to apply it. 4. Experience of the method has not led us to doubt it, but, on the contrary, scientific investigation has had the most wonderful triumphs in the way of settling opinion. These afford the explanation of my not doubting the method or the hypothesis which it supposes; and not having any doubt, nor believing that anybody else whom I could influence has, it would be the merest babble for me to say more about it. If there be anybody with a living doubt upon the subject, let him consider it. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce,
799:In 1906, the year after Einstein’s annus mirabilis, Kurt Gödel was born in the city of Brno (now in the Czech Republic). Kurt was both an inquisitive child—his parents and brother gave him the nickname der Herr Warum, “Mr. Why?”—and a nervous one. At the age of five, he seems to have suffered a mild anxiety neurosis. At eight, he had a terrifying bout of rheumatic fever, which left him with the lifelong conviction that his heart had been fatally damaged. Gödel entered the University of Vienna in 1924. He had intended to study physics, but he was soon seduced by the beauties of mathematics, and especially by the notion that abstractions like numbers and circles had a perfect, timeless existence independent of the human mind. This doctrine, which is called Platonism, because it descends from Plato’s theory of ideas, has always been popular among mathematicians. In the philosophical world of 1920s Vienna, however, it was considered distinctly old-fashioned. Among the many intellectual movements that flourished in the city’s rich café culture, one of the most prominent was the Vienna Circle, a group of thinkers united in their belief that philosophy must be cleansed of metaphysics and made over in the image of science. Under the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein, their reluctant guru, the members of the Vienna Circle regarded mathematics as a game played with symbols, a more intricate version of chess. What made a proposition like “2 + 2 = 4” true, they held, was not that it correctly described some abstract world of numbers but that it could be derived in a logical system according to certain rules. ~ Jim Holt,
800:What is not so generally recognized is that there can be no way of proving that the existence of a god, such as the God of Christianity, is even probable. Yet this also is easily shown. For if the existence of such a god were probable, then the proposition that he existed would be an empirical hypothesis. And in that case it would be possible to deduce from it, and other empirical hypotheses, certain experiential propositions which were not deducible from those other hypotheses alone. But in fact this is not possible. It is sometimes claimed, indeed, that the existence of a certain sort of regularity in nature constitutes sufficient evidence for the existence of a god. But if the sentence "God exists" entails no more than that certain types of phenomena occur in certain sequences, then to assert the existence of a god will be simply equivalent to asserting that there is the requisite regularity in nature; and no religious man would admit that this was all he intended to assert in asserting the existence of a god. He would say that in talking about God, he was talking about a transcendent being who might be known through certain empirical manifestations, but certainly could not be defined in terms of those manifestations. But in that case the term "god" is a metaphysical term. And if "god" is a metaphysical term, then it cannot be even probable that a god exists. For to say that "God exists" is to make a metaphysical utterance which cannot be either true or false. And by the same criterion, no sentence which purports to describe the nature of a transcendent god can possess any literal significance. ~ A J Ayer,
801:What type of sentence (I asked myself) will an absolute mind construct? I considered that even in human languages there is no proposition that does not imply the whole universe… . I considered that in the language of a god every word would enunciate that infinite concatenation of facts, and not in an implicit but explicit manner, and not progressively but instantaneously… . A god, I reflected, ought to utter only a single word and in that word absolute fullness. No word uttered by him can be inferior to the universe or less than the sum total of time. Shadows or simulacra of that single word equivalent to a language and to all language can embrace are the poor and ambitious human words, all, world, universe… .

Then there occurred what I cannot forget nor communicate. There occurred the union with the divinity, with the universe (I do not know whether these words differ in meaning). Ecstasy does not repeat its symbols; God has been seen in a blazing light, in a sword or in the circles of a rose. I saw an exceedingly high Wheel, which was not before my eyes, nor behind me, nor to the sides, but every place at one time. That wheel was made of water, but also of fire, and it was (although the edge could be seen) infinite. Interlinked, all things that are, were, and shall be formed it, and I was one of the fibers of that total fabric… .I saw the universe and I saw the intimate designs of the universe; … I saw the faceless god concealed behind the other gods. I saw infinite processes that formed one single felicity and, understanding all, I was able to understand the script of the tiger. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,
802:Collective security is a mirage. It rests on the obvious fallacy that all countries perceive threats in the same way and therefore will take equal risks to meet those threats. Of course they don't. If North Korea invades South Korea, will the threat be perceived in the same way in the United States and China, in Iceland and Argentina?
It is every country for itself. That does not mean that there cannot be, as in the Gulf, ad hoc coalitions in which particular countries at a particular time happen to perceive a particular threat as large and join together to do something about it. But there is nothing universal, permanent, or even reliable about such coalitions. They come and they go. And when they go, one either relies on one's own strength to meet the threat or one submits.
Moreover, countries differ not just in threat perception but in the power to do something about it. All the collective goodwill in the world is useless without the power to back it up and only America has the power. Without the United States, what would "collective security" have done about Kuwait?
Potential allies do not sign on to a losing proposition. One of the reasons so many countries joined the United States in the Gulf is that they had confidence in American power. Coalitions do not grow on trees. They grow on the backs of superpowers.
Collective action is fine. But it cannot succeed, even exist, without a nucleus around which to organize. The critics offer collectivism as a substitute for American power. On the contrary, it is a complement to American power and, in the final analysis, its consequence. ~ Charles Krauthammer,
803:Political and indeed private life was governed by a web of religious rules and procedures, predictions and omens. Religion was not so much a set of personal beliefs as precisely laid-down ways of living in harmony with the expectations of the gods. In fact, by the end of the Republic educated men believed less in the literal truth of the apparatus of religious doctrine than in a vaguer notion of the validity of tradition. The basic proposition was that no human enterprise could be undertaken without divine sanction. This applied to domestic households as well as to state affairs. The gods worked through natural phenomena to reveal their wishes or intentions. Signs included the flight or songs of birds, the activities of animals and thunder and lightning. It was also possible to attach significance to words or phrases casually spoken. The College of Augurs had the sole right of interpreting the auspices. (Like the College of Pontiffs, it comprised leading personalities of the Roman establishment and Cicero became a member towards the end of his career.) An Augur would mark off a rectangular space, called a templum (the origin of the word “temple”), from which he would conduct his observations. In some places permanent templa were identified, one of which was on the citadel on the Capitol Hill. Signs from the east (usually on the Augur’s left) were held to be favorable and those from the west unfavorable. In addition, Etruscan soothsayers, or haruspices, were often called to Rome to explain apparently supernatural events and gave judgments based on an examination of the entrails of sacrificed animals. ~ Anthony Everitt,
804:The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex. There are tyrants, not Muslims.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that we should now define ourselves not only by what we are for but by what we are against. I would reverse that proposition, because in the present instance what we are against is a no brainer. Suicidist assassins ram wide-bodied aircraft into the World Trade Center and Pentagon and kill thousands of people: um, I'm against that. But what are we for? What will we risk our lives to defend? Can we unanimously concur that all the items in the preceding list -- yes, even the short skirts and the dancing -- are worth dying for?

The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. In his world-view, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat them.

How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared. ~ Salman Rushdie,
805:It is a strange notion that the acknowledgment of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones. To inform a traveler respecting the place of his ultimate destination, is not to forbid the use of land-marks and direction-posts on the way. The proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be laid down to that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take one direction rather than another. Men really ought to leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor listen to on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more difficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as long as foresight is a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do. Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require subordinate principles to apply it by: the impossibility of doing without them, being common to all systems, can afford no argument against any one in particular: but gravely to argue as if no such secondary principles could be had, and as if mankind had remained till now, and always must remain, without drawing any general conclusions from the experience of human life, is as high a pitch, I think, as absurdity has ever reached in philosophical controversy. ~ John Stuart Mill,
806:Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, 'Try all things, hold fast by that which is good'; it is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic position, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.

The results of the working out of the agnostic principle will vary according to individual knowledge and capacity, and according to the general condition of science. That which is unproved today may be proved, by the help of new discoveries, tomorrow. The only negative fixed points will be those negations which flow from the demonstrable limitation of our faculties. And the only obligation accepted is to have the mind always open to conviction.

That it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts and in my opinion, is all that is essential to agnosticism. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley,
807:You'll let me bed you in return for my money and protection," he said, as if the word mistress required definition. He threw a cautious glance at her. "You will live with me, and accompany me in public, regardless of the shame it causes you. Is that what you're saying?"
Her cheeks turned bright red, but she did not look away from him. "Yes."
Desire flooded every part of his body with primal heat. The realization that he was going to have her, that she would give herself to him willingly, made him light-headed. His mistress... but that wasn't enough. He needed more of her. All of her.
Deliberately he went to the settee, a somewhat utilitarian piece upholstered in stiff burgundy leather, and he sat with his legs spread. He let his gaze travel over her with pure sexual appraisal. "Before I agree to anything, I want a sample of what you're offering."
She stiffened. "I think you've sampled quite enough already."
"You're referring to our interlude in the woods this evening?" He made his voice very soft, while his heart pounded violently in his chest. "That was nothing, Lottie. I want more than a few innocent kisses from you. Keeping a mistress can be an expensive proposition- you'll have to prove that you're worth it."
She came to him slowly, her slim form silhouetted in the firelight. Clearly she knew that he was playing some kind of game with her, but she hadn't yet realized what the stakes were. "What do you want from me?" she asked softly.
What he'd had from Gemma. No, more than Gemma had ever given him. He wanted someone to belong to him. To care about him. To need him in some way. He didn't know if that was possible... but he was willing to gamble everything on Lottie. She was his only chance.
"I'll show you. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
808:Amelia stopped before him, her skirts crowded between his parted knees. The clean, salty, evergreen scent of him drifted to her nostrils. “I have a proposition for you,” she said, trying for a businesslike tone. “A very sensible one. You see—” She paused to clear her throat. “I’ve been thinking about your problem.” “What problem?” Cam played lightly with the folds of her skirts, watching her face alertly. “Your good-luck curse. I know how to get rid of it. You should marry into a family with very, very bad luck. A family with expensive problems. And then you won’t have to be embarrassed about having so much money, because it will flow out nearly as fast as it comes in."

"Very sensible.” Cam took her shaking hand in his, pressed it between his warm palms. And touched his foot to her rapidly tapping one.
“Hummingbird,” he whispered, “you don’t have to be nervous with me.”

Gathering her courage, Amelia blurted out, “I want your ring. I want never to take it off again. I want to be your romni forever”—she paused with a quick, abashed smile—“whatever that is.”

“My bride. My wife.” Amelia froze in a moment of throat-clenching delight as she felt him slide the gold ring onto her finger, easing it to the base.

“When we were with Leo, tonight,” she said scratchily, “I knew exactly how he felt about losing Laura. He told me once that I couldn’t understand unless I had loved someone that way. He was right. And tonight, as I watched you with him . . . I knew what I would think at the very last moment of my life.” His thumb smoothed over the tender surface of her knuckle.

“Yes, love?”

"I would think,” she continued,” ‘Oh, if I could have just one more day with Cam. I would fit a lifetime into those few hours. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
809:Let’s just run through this again, shall we?” said the Demon King. He leaned back in his throne. “You happened to find the Tezumen one day and decided, I think I recall your words correctly, that they were ‘a bunch of Stone-Age no-hopers sitting around in a swamp being no trouble to anyone,’ am I right? Whereupon you entered the mind of one of their high priests—I believe at that time they worshipped a small stick—drove him insane and inspired the tribes to unite, terrorize their neighbors and bring forth upon the continent a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men should be taken to the top of ceremonial pyramids and be chopped up with stone knives.” The King pulled his notes toward him. “Oh yes, some of them were also to be flayed alive,” he added. Quezovercoatl shuffled his feet. “Whereupon,” said the King, “they immediately engaged in a prolonged war with just about everyone else, bringing death and destruction to thousands of moderately blameless people, ekcetra, ekcetra. Now, look, this sort of thing has got to stop.” Quezovercoatl swayed back a bit. “It was only, you know, a hobby,” said the imp. “I thought, you know, it was the right thing, sort of thing. Death and destruction and that.” “You did, did you?” said the King. “Thousands of more-or-less innocent people dying? Straight out of our hands,” he snapped his fingers, “just like that. Straight off to their happy hunting ground or whatever. That’s the trouble with you people. You don’t think of the Big Picture. I mean, look at the Tezumen. Gloomy, unimaginative, obsessive…by now they could have invented a whole bureaucracy and taxation system that could have turned the minds of the continent to slag. Instead of which, they’re just a bunch of second-rate axe-murderers. What a waste. ~ Terry Pratchett,
810:Temperance Dews stood with quiet confidence, a respectable women who lived in the sewer that was St. Giles. Her eyes had widened at the sight of Lazarus, but she made no move to flee. Indeed, finding a strange man in her pathetic sitting room seemed not to frighten her at all.

Interesting.

“I am Lazarus Huntington, Lord Caire,” he said.

“I know. What are you doing here?”

He tilted his head, studying her. She knew him, yet did not recoil in horror? Yes, she’d do quite well. “I’ve come to make a proposition to you, Mrs. Dews.”

Still no sign of fear, though she eyed the doorway. “You’ve chosen the wrong woman, my lord. The night is late. Please leave my house.”

No fear and no deference to his rank. An interesting woman indeed.

“My proposition is not, er, illicit in nature,” he drawled. “In fact, it’s quite respectable. Or nearly so.”

She sighed, looked down at her tray, and then back up at him. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

He almost smiled. Tea? When had he last been offered something so very prosaic by a woman? He couldn’t remember.

But he replied gravely enough. “Thank you, no.”

She nodded. “Then if you don’t mind?”

He waved a hand to indicate permission.

She set the tea tray on the wretched little table and sat on the padded footstool to pour herself a cup. He watched her. She was a monochromatic study. Her dress, bodice, hose, and shoes were all flat black. A fichu tucked in at her severe neckline, an apron, and cap—no lace or ruffles—were all white. No color marred her aspect, making the lush red of her full lips all the more startling. She wore the clothes of a nun, yet had the mouth of a sybarite.

The contrast was fascinating—and arousing.

“You’re a Puritan?” he asked.

Her beautiful mouth compressed. “No. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt,
811:Between state building and economic growth Having a state is a basic precondition for intensive economic growth. The economist Paul Collier has demonstrated the converse of this proposition, namely, that state breakdown, civil war, and interstate conflict have very negative consequences for growth.20 A great deal of Africa’s poverty in the late twentieth century was related to the fact that states there were very weak and subject to constant breakdown and instability. Beyond the establishment of a state that can provide for basic order, greater administrative capacity is also strongly correlated with economic growth. This is particularly true at low absolute levels of per capita GDP (less than $1,000); while it remains important at higher levels of income, the impact may not be proportionate. There is also a large literature linking good governance to economic growth, though the definition of “good governance” is not well established and, depending on the author, sometimes includes all three components of political development.21 While the correlation between a strong, coherent state and economic growth is well established, the direction of causality is not always clear. The economist Jeffrey Sachs has maintained that good governance is endogenous: it is the product of economic growth rather than a cause of it.22 There is a good logic to this: government costs money. One of the reasons why there is so much corruption in poor countries is that they cannot afford to pay their civil servants adequate salaries to feed their families, so they are inclined to take bribes. Per capita spending on all government services, from armies and roads to schools and police on the street, was about $17,000 in the United States in 2008 but only $19 in Afghanistan.23 It is therefore not a surprise that the Afghan state is much weaker than the American one, or that large flows of aid money generate corruption. ~ Francis Fukuyama,
812:If better conditions will make the poor more fit to govern themselves, why should not better conditions already make the rich more fit to govern them? On the ordinary environment argument the matter is fairly manifest. The comfortable class must be merely our vanguard in Utopia...Is there any answer to the proposition that those who have had the best opportunities will probably be our best guides? Is there any answer to the argument that those who have breathed clean air had better decide for those who have breathed foul? As far as I know, there is only one answer, and that answer is Christianity. Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in man's environment, but in man. Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all is the commodious environment...Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. ~ G K Chesterton,
813:My anxieties as to behavior are futile, ever more so, to infinity. If the other, incidentally or negligently, gives the telephone number of a place where he or she can be reached at certain times, I immediately grow baffled: should I telephone or shouldn't I? (It would do no good to tell me that I can telephone - that is the objective, reasonable meaning of the message - for it is precisely this permission I don't know how to handle.) What is futile is what apparently has and will have no consequence. But for me, an amorous subject, everything which is new, everything which disturbs, is received not as a fact but in the aspect of a sign which must be interpreted. From the lover's point of view, the fact becomes consequential because it is immediately transformed into a sign: it is the sign, not the fact, which is consequential (by its aura). If the other has given me this new telephone number, what was that the sign of? Was it an invitation to telephone right away, for the pleasure of the call, or only should the occasion arise, out of necessity? My answer itself will be a sign, which the other will inevitably interpret, thereby releasing, between us, a tumultuous maneuvering of images. Everything signifies: by this proposition, I entrap myself, I bind myself in calculations, I keep myself from enjoyment.
Sometimes, by dint of deliberating about "nothing" (as the world sees it), I exhaust myself; then I try, in reaction, to return -- like a drowning man who stamps on the floor of the sea -- to a spontaneous decision (spontaneity: the great dream: paradise, power, delight): go on, telephone, since you want to! But such recourse is futile: amorous time does not permit the subject to align impulse and action, to make them coincide: I am not the man of mere "acting out" -- my madness is tempered, it is not seen; it is right away that I fear consequences, any consequence: it is my fear -- my deliberation -- which is "spontaneous. ~ Roland Barthes,
814:Never Put These Ten Words in Your Pitch Deck Take a close look at your standard pitch deck, the “about us” section on your corporate home page, or your PR material. Highlight every instance of the words “leading,” “unique,” “solution,” or “innovative.” In particular, go find all instances of the phrase “We work to understand our customers’ unique needs and then build custom solutions to meet those needs.” Then hit the delete key. Because every time you use one of those buzzwords, you are telling your customers, “We are exactly the same as everyone else.” Ironically, the more we try to play up our differences, the more things sound the same. Public relations expert Adam Sherk recently analyzed the terms used in company communications, and the results are devastating. Here are the top ten: By definition, there can be only one leader in any industry—and 161,000 companies each think they’re it. More than 75,000 companies think they’re the “best” or the “top”; 30,400 think they’re “unique.” “Solution” also makes an appearance at number seven—so if you think that calling your offering a “solution” differentiates you, think again. If everyone’s saying they offer the “leading solution,” what’s the customer to think? We can tell you what their response will be: “Great—give me 10 percent off.” We don’t mean to be unsympathetic here. You’ll find it’s hard to avoid these terms—heck, we call our own consulting arm “SEC Solutions”! In all of our time at the Council, we have never once met a member who doesn’t think her company’s value proposition beats the socks off the competitors’. And it’s understandable. After all, why would we want to work for a company whose product is second-rate—especially when our job is to sell that product? But what the utter sameness of language here tells us is that, ironically, a strategy of more precisely describing our products’ advantages over the competition’s is destined to have the exact opposite effect—we simply end up sounding like everyone else. ~ Anonymous,
815:I don't require any more sleep than you do, sir. If you stay up late, I am capable of doing the same. I also have work to do."
His brows lowered in a forbidding scowl. "Go to bed, Miss Sydney."
Sophia did not flinch. "Not until you do."
"My bedtime has nothing to do with yours," he said curtly, "unless you are suggesting that we go to bed together."
Clearly, the remark was meant to intimidate her into silence.
A reckless reply came to mind, one so bold that she bit her tongue to keep from speaking. And then she thought, Why not? It was time to declare her sexual interest in him... time to advance her plan of seduction one more step.
"All right," she said quickly. "If that is what it takes to make you get the rest you require- so be it."
His dark face went blank. The lengthy silence that ensued was evidence of how greatly she had surprised him. My God, she thought in a flutter of panic. Now I've done it. She could not predict how Sir Ross would respond. Being a gentleman- a notoriously celibate one- he might refuse her proposition. However, there was something in his expression- a flicker in his gray eyes- that made her wonder if he might not accept the impulsive invitation. And if he did, she would have to carry it out and sleep with him. The thought jarred her very soul. This was what she had planned, what she had wanted to achieve, but she was suddenly terrified.
Terrified by the realization of how much she wanted him.
Slowly Sir Ross approached, following as she backed away one step, then another, until her spine was flattened against the door. His alert gaze did not move from her flushed face as he braced his hands on the door, placing them on either side of her head.
"My bedroom or yours?" he asked softly.
Perhaps he expected her to back down, stammer, run away.
Her hands curled into balls of tension. "Which would you prefer?" she parried.
His head tilted as he studied her, his eyes oddly caressing. "My bed is bigger. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
816:Paradox is any self-contradictory proposition that, when investigated, may prove to be well-founded or true. Once understood, it opens the gateway to higher wisdom. But how can contradictory principles both be true? As the Buddhist Riddle of Five Truths puts it: “It is right. It is wrong. It is both right and wrong. It is neither right nor wrong. All exist simultaneously.” Charles Dickens expressed the paradox of his era, equally true today, when he wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,” going on to describe that time as one of belief and incredulity, light and darkness, hope and despair. Two opposing statements can each be true depending on the observer: it’s true that spiders are merciless killers from the viewpoint of tiny insects caught in their webs—but for most humans, nearly all spiders are harmless creatures. A story of the Sufi sage Mullah Nasruddin expresses the nature of paradox when he’s asked to arbitrate between two men with opposing views. Hearing the first man, he remarks, “You’re right.” When he hears the second man, he also says, “You’re right.” When a bystander points out, “They can’t both be right,” the mullah scratches his head and says, “You’re right.” Let’s go deeper and consider four central sets of paradoxical truths: * Time is real. It moves from past to present to future. * There is no time, no past, no future—only the eternal present. * You possess free will and can thus take responsibility for your choices. * Free will is an illusion—your choices are influenced, even predetermined, by all that preceded them. * You are, or possess, a separate inner self existing within a body. * No separation exists—you are a part of the same Consciousness shining through billions of eyes. * Death is an inevitable reality you’ll meet at the end of life. * The death of the inner self is an illusion. Life is eternal. Must you choose one assertion and reject the other? Or is there a way to meaningfully resolve and even reconcile such apparent contradictions? ~ Dan Millman,
817:A Roman came to Rabbi Gimzo the Water Carrier, and asked, "What is this study of the law that you Jews engage in?" and Gimzo replied, "I shall explain. There were two men on a roof, and they climbed down the chimney. One's face became sooty. The other's not. Which one washed his face?" The Roman said, "That's easy, the sooty one, of course." Gimzo said, "No. The man without the soot looked at his friend, saw that the man's face was dirty, assumed that his was too, and washed it." Cried the Roman, "Ah ha! So that's the study of law. Sound reasoning." But Gimzo said, "You foolish man, you don't understand. Let me explain again. Two men on a roof. They climb down a chimney. One's face is sooty, the other's not. Which one washes?" The Roman said, "As you just explained, the man without the soot." Gimzo cried,"No, you foolish one! There was a mirror on the wall and the man with the dirty face saw how sooty it was and washed it." The Roman said, "Ah ha! So that's the study of law! Conforming to the logical." But Rabbi Gimzo said, "No, you foolish one. Two men climbed down the chimney. One's face became sooty? The other's not? That's impossible. You're wasting my time with such a proposition." And the Roman said, "So that's the law! Common sense." And Gimzo said, "You foolish man! Of course it was possible. When the first man climbed down the chimney he brushed the soot away. So the man who followed found none to mar him." And the Roman cried, "That's brilliant, Rabbi Gimzo. Law is getting at the basic facts." And for the last time Gimzo said, "No, you foolish man. Who could brush all the soot from a chimney? Who could ever understand all the facts?" Humbly the Roman asked, "Then what is the law?" And Gimzo said quietly, "It's doing the best we can to ascertain God's intention, for there were indeed two men on a roof, and they did climb down the same chimney. The first man emerged completely clean while it was the second who was covered with soot, and neither man washed his face, because you forgot to ask me whether there was any water in the basin. There was none. ~ James A Michener,
818:I have spent these last two days in concentrated introspection," said Cutie, "and the results have been most interesting. I began at the one sure assumption I felt permitted to make.I, myself, exist, because I think-"
Powell groaned, "Oh, Jupiter, a robot Descartes!"
"Who's Descartes?" demanded Donovan. "Listen, do we have to sit here and listen to this metal maniac-"
"Keep quiet, Mike!"
Cutie continued imperturbably, "And the question that immediately arose was: Just what is the cause of my existence?"
Powell's jaw set lumpily. "You're being foolish. I told you already that we made you."
"And if you don't believe us," added Donovan, "we'll gladly take you apart!"
The robot spread his strong hands in a deprecatory gesture, "I accept nothing on authority. A hypothesis must be backed by reason, or else it is worthless - and it goes against all the dictates of logic to suppose that you made me."
Powell dropped a restraining arm upon Donovan's suddenly unched fist. "Just why do you say that?"
Cutie laughed. It was a very inhuman laugh - the most machine-like utterance he had yet given vent to. It was sharp and explosive, as regular as a metronome and as uninflected.
"Look at you," he said finally. "I say this in no spirit of contempt, but look at you! The material you are made of is soft and flabby, lacking endurance and strength, depending for energy upon the inefficient oxidation of organic material - like that." He pointed a disapproving finger at what remained of Donovan's sandwich. "Periodically you pass into a coma and the least variation in temperature, air ressure, humidity, or radiation intensity impairs your efficiency. You are makeshift .
"I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing. ~ Isaac Asimov,
819:As soon as one considers a system abstractly and theoretically, one puts himself, in effect, on the plane of the universal, thus, of the infinite. That is why reading the Hegelian system is so comforting. I remember having experienced a great feeling of calm on reading Hegel in the impersonal framework of the Bibliotheque Nationale in August 1940. But once I got into the street again, into my life, out of the system, beneath a real sky, the system was no longer of any use to me: what it had offered me, under a show of the infinite, was the consolations of death; and I again wanted to live in the midst of living men. I think that, inversely, existentialism does not offer to the reader the consolations of an abstract evasion: existentialism proposes no evasion. On the contrary, its ethics is experienced in the truth of life, and it then appears as the only proposition of salvation which one can address to men. Taking on its own account Descartes' revolt against the evil genius, the pride of the thinking reed in the face of the universe which crushes him, it asserts that, despite his limits, through them, it is up to each one to fulfill his existence as an absolute. Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes to come, and our individual weakness within the immense collectivity, the fact remains that we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite. And in fact, any man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires, and real will knows quite well that he has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals; their certitude comes from his own drive. There is a very old saying which goes: "Do what you must, come what may." That amounts to saying in a different way that the result is not external to the good will which fulfills itself in aiming at it. If it came to be that each man did what he must, existence would be saved in each one without there being any need of dreaming of a paradise where all would be reconciled in death. ~ Simone de Beauvoir,
820:Let’s just run through this again, shall we?” said the Demon King. He leaned back in his throne. “You happened to find the Tezumen one day and decided, I think I recall your words correctly, that they were ‘a bunch of Stone-Age no-hopers sitting around in a swamp being no trouble to anyone,’ am I right? Whereupon you entered the mind of one of their high priests—I believe at that time they worshipped a small stick—drove him insane and inspired the tribes to unite, terrorize their neighbors and bring forth upon the continent a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men should be taken to the top of ceremonial pyramids and be chopped up with stone knives.” The King pulled his notes toward him. “Oh yes, some of them were also to be flayed alive,” he added. Quezovercoatl shuffled his feet. “Whereupon,” said the King, “they immediately engaged in a prolonged war with just about everyone else, bringing death and destruction to thousands of moderately blameless people, ekcetra, ekcetra. Now, look, this sort of thing has got to stop.” Quezovercoatl swayed back a bit. “It was only, you know, a hobby,” said the imp. “I thought, you know, it was the right thing, sort of thing. Death and destruction and that.” “You did, did you?” said the King. “Thousands of more-or-less innocent people dying? Straight out of our hands,” he snapped his fingers, “just like that. Straight off to their happy hunting ground or whatever. That’s the trouble with you people. You don’t think of the Big Picture.
I mean, look at the Tezumen. Gloomy, unimaginative, obsessive…by now they could have invented a whole bureaucracy and taxation system that could have turned the minds of the continent to slag. Instead of which, they’re just a bunch of second-rate axe-murderers. What a waste.

Quezovercoatl squirmed. The King swiveled the throne back and forth a bit. “Now, I want you to go straight back down there and tell them you’re sorry,” he said. “Pardon?” “Tell them you’ve changed your mind. Tell them that what you really wanted them to do was strive day and night to improve the lot of their fellow men. It’ll be a winner. ~ Terry Pratchett,
821:Anyone can tell that Freddy is no thief.”
“She’s right about that,” the dull-witted Freddy put in helpfully. “I’ve got two left feet-can’t go anywhere without running into something. That’s probably why they caught me.”
“Ah, but in cases like this, the fools generally prevail. Those fellows out there don’t care about the truth. They just want your cousin’s blood.”
Panic showed in her face. “You mustn’t let them have it!”
He stifled a smile. “I could put in a good word for him, soothe their tempers and get you two out of this with your necks attached. If…”
She instantly stiffened. “If what?”
“If you accept my proposition.”
A fetching blush spread over her pretty cheeks. “I shan’t give up my virtue, even to save my neck.”
“Did I say anything about giving up your virtue?”
She blinked. “Well…no. But given the kind of man you are-“
“And what kind is that?” This should be amusing.
“You know.” She tipped up her chin. “The kind who spends his time in brothels. I’ve heard all about you English lords and your debauchery.”
“I don’t want your virtue, my dear.” He flicked his glance down her delectable body and suppressed a sigh. “Not that I don’t find the idea tempting, but right now I have more urgent concerns.”
And no man of rank was fool enough to seduce a virgin-that was the surest way to end up leg-shackled to a schemer. Besides, he preferred experienced women. They knew how to pleasure a man without plaguing him about his feelings.
“This may surprise you,” he went on, “but I rarely have trouble finding women to join me willingly in bed. I’ve no need to force a pretty thief there.”
“I’m not a thief!”
“Frankly, I don’t care if you are. The important thing is that you suit my purpose perfectly.”
She had the same brash temperament as his sisters, which Gran had always deplored. She had the sort of upbringing that Americans seemed to prize and Englishmen to despise. A mother who’d been a shopkeeper’s daughter, and a father who’d been an illegitimate American of no consequence? Who’d fought in the very revolution that had cost Gran her only son? He couldn’t ask for better. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,
822:dependability of your business. 6. If your Customer is Traditional, you have to talk about the financial competitiveness of your business. Additionally, what your Customers want is determined by who they are. Who they are is regularly demonstrated by what they do. Think about the Customers with whom you do business. Ask yourself: In which of the categories would I place them? What do they do for a living? For example: If they are mechanical engineers, they are probably Neutral Customers. If they are cardiologists, they are probably Tactile. If they are software engineers, they are probably Experimental. If they are accountants, they are probably Traditional. But don’t take my word for it. Make your own analysis. CONFUSION 2: HOW TO COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY WITH YOUR CUSTOMER The next step in the Customer Satisfaction Process is to decide how to magnify the characteristics of your business that are most likely to appeal to your category of Customer. That begins with what marketing people call your Positioning Strategy. What do I mean by positioning your business? You position your business with words. A few well-chosen words to tell your Customers exactly what they want to hear. In marketing lingo, those words are called your USP, or Unique Selling Proposition. For example, if you are targeting Tactile Customers (people), your USP could be: “Superior Contracting, where the feelings of people really count!” If you are targeting Experimental Customers (new things), your USP could be: “Superior Contracting, where living on the edge is a way of life!” In other words, when they choose to do business with your company, they can count on your job being unique, original, on the cutting edge. Do you get it? Do you see how the ordinary things most Contractors do to get Customers can be done in a significantly more effective way? Once you understand the essential principles of marketing The E-Myth Way, the strategies by which you attract customers can make an enormous difference in your market share. When applied to your business, your Positioning Strategy becomes the foundation of what we at E-Myth call your Lead Generation System. ~ Michael E Gerber,
823:These are the general propositions that form this Humility Code: 1. We don’t live for happiness, we live for holiness. Day to day we seek out pleasure, but deep down, human beings are endowed with moral imagination. All human beings seek to lead lives not just of pleasure, but of purpose, righteousness, and virtue. As John Stuart Mill put it, people have a responsibility to become more moral over time. The best life is oriented around the increasing excellence of the soul and is nourished by moral joy, the quiet sense of gratitude and tranquillity that comes as a byproduct of successful moral struggle. The meaningful life is the same eternal thing, the combination of some set of ideals and some man or woman’s struggle for those ideals. Life is essentially a moral drama, not a hedonistic one. 2. Proposition one defines the goal of life. The long road to character begins with an accurate understanding of our nature, and the core of that understanding is that we are flawed creatures. We have an innate tendency toward selfishness and overconfidence. We have a tendency to see ourselves as the center of the universe, as if everything revolves around us. We resolve to do one thing but end up doing the opposite. We know what is deep and important in life, but we still pursue the things that are shallow and vain. Furthermore, we overestimate our own strength and rationalize our own failures. We know less than we think we do. We give in to short-term desires even when we know we shouldn’t. We imagine that spiritual and moral needs can be solved through status and material things. 3. Although we are flawed creatures, we are also splendidly endowed. We are divided within ourselves, both fearfully and wonderfully made. We do sin, but we also have the capacity to recognize sin, to feel ashamed of sin, and to overcome sin. We are both weak and strong, bound and free, blind and far-seeing. We thus have the capacity to struggle with ourselves. There is something heroic about a person in struggle with herself, strained on the rack of conscience, suffering torments, yet staying alive and growing stronger, sacrificing a worldly success for the sake of an inner victory. ~ David Brooks,
824:L'Art d’avoir toujours raison La dialectique 1 éristique est l’art de disputer, et ce de telle sorte que l’on ait toujours raison, donc per fas et nefas (c’est-à-dire par tous les moyens possibles)2. On peut en effet avoir objectivement raison quant au débat lui-même tout en ayant tort aux yeux des personnes présentes, et parfois même à ses propres yeux. En effet, quand mon adversaire réfute ma preuve et que cela équivaut à réfuter mon affirmation elle-même, qui peut cependant être étayée par d’autres preuves – auquel cas, bien entendu, le rapport est inversé en ce qui concerne mon adversaire : il a raison bien qu’il ait objectivement tort. Donc, la vérité objective d’une proposition et la validité de celle-ci au plan de l’approbation des opposants et des auditeurs sont deux choses bien distinctes. (C'est à cette dernière que se rapporte la dialectique.) D’où cela vient-il ? De la médiocrité naturelle de l’espèce humaine. Si ce n’était pas le cas, si nous étions foncièrement honnêtes, nous ne chercherions, dans tout débat, qu’à faire surgir la vérité, sans nous soucier de savoir si elle est conforme à l’opinion que nous avions d’abord défendue ou à celle de l’adversaire : ce qui n’aurait pas d’importance ou serait du moins tout à fait secondaire. Mais c’est désormais l’essentiel. La vanité innée, particulièrement irritable en ce qui concerne les facultés intellectuelles, ne veut pas accepter que notre affirmation se révèle fausse, ni que celle de l’adversaire soit juste. Par conséquent, chacun devrait simplement s’efforcer de n’exprimer que des jugements justes, ce qui devrait inciter à penser d’abord et à parler ensuite. Mais chez la plupart des hommes, la vanité innée s’accompagne d’un besoin de bavardage et d’une malhonnêteté innée. Ils parlent avant d’avoir réfléchi, et même s’ils se rendent compte après coup que leur affirmation est fausse et qu’ils ont tort, il faut que les apparences prouvent le contraire. Leur intérêt pour la vérité, qui doit sans doute être généralement l’unique motif les guidant lors de l’affirmation d’une thèse supposée vraie, s’efface complètement devant les intérêts de leur vanité : le vrai doit paraître faux et le faux vrai. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
825:He loved to tell his students a story which summarized his attitudes on this matter of intellectual inspection: “A Roman came to Rabbi Gimzo the Water Carrier, and asked, ‘What is this study of the law that you Jews engage in?’ and Gimzo replied, ‘I shall explain. There were two men on a roof, and they climbed down the chimney. One’s face became sooty. The other’s not. Which one washed his face?’ The Roman said, ‘That’s easy, the sooty one, of course.’ Gimzo said, ‘No. The man without the soot looked at his friend, saw that the man’s face was dirty, assumed that his was too, and washed it.’ Cried the Roman, ‘Ah ha! So that’s the study of law. Sound reasoning.’ But Gimzo said, ‘You foolish man, you don’t understand. Let me explain again. Two men on a roof. They climb down a chimney. One’s face is sooty, the other’s not. Which one washes?’ The Roman said, ‘As you just explained, the man without the soot.’ Gimzo cried, ‘No, you foolish one! There was a mirror on the wall and the man with the dirty face saw how sooty it was and washed it.’ The Roman said, ‘Ah ha! So that’s the study of law! Conforming to the logical.’ But Rabbi Gimzo said, ‘No, you foolish one. Two men climbed down the chimney. One’s face became sooty? The other’s not? That’s impossible. You’re wasting my time with such a proposition.’ And the Roman said, ‘So that’s the law! Common sense.’ And Gimzo said, ‘You foolish man! Of course it was possible. When the first man climbed down the chimney he brushed the soot away. So the man who followed found none to mar him.’ And the Roman cried, ‘That’s brilliant, Rabbi Gimzo. Law is getting at the basic facts.’ And for the last time Gimzo said, ‘No, you foolish man. Who could brush all the soot from a chimney? Who can ever understand all the facts?’ Humbly the Roman asked, ‘Then what is the law?’ And Gimzo said quietly, ‘It’s doing the best we can to ascertain God’s intention, for there were indeed two men on a roof, and they did climb down the same chimney. The first man emerged completely clean while it was the second who was covered with soot, and neither man washed his face, because you forgot to ask me whether there was any water in the basin. There was none.’  ~ James A Michener,
826:To G. M. W. And G. F. W.
Whenas—(I love that 'whenas' word—
It shows I am a poet, too,)
Q. Horace Flaccus gaily stirred
The welkin with his tra-la-loo,
He little thought one donkey’s back
Would carry thus a double load—
Father and son upon one jack,
Galumphing down the Tibur Road.
II
Old is the tale—Aesop’s, I think—
Of that famed miller and his son
Whose fortunes were so 'on the blink'
They had one donk, and only one;
You know the tale—the critic’s squawk
(As pater that poor ass bestrode)—
'Selfish! To make thy fine son walk!'
Perhaps that was on Tibur Road?
III
You will recall how dad got down
And made the son the ass bestride:—
The critics shouted with a frown:
'Shame, boy! pray let thy father ride!'
Up got the dad beside the son;
The donkey staggered with the load
'Poor donk! For shame!' cried every one
That walked the (was it?) Tibur Road.
IV
You know the end! Upon their backs
Daddy and son with much ado
Boosted that most surprised of jacks,—
He kicked, and off the bridge he flew;
'He! haw!' A splash! A gurgling sound—
A long, last watery abode—
86
In Anio’s stream the donk was drowned—
(If this occurred on Tibur Road.)
Let Donkey represent the Odes;
The Miller represent G. M.;
The Son stand for G. F.; the loads
Of Critics—I will do for them.
Now, then, this proposition made,
(And my bum verses 'Ah’d' and 'Oh’d!').
What Q. E. D. can be displayed
Anent this 'On the Tibur Road'?
VI
First, Horry’s dead and he don’t care,
So cancel him, and let him snore;
His Donkey has been raised in air
So oft he’s tough and calloused o’er;
Our Miller—dusty-headed man—
Follows the best donk-boosting code:
Our Son—dispute it no one can—
Sings gaily down the Tibur Road.
VII
This, then, must be this Critic’s scream:—
The donk was boosted well and high,
And, ergo! falling in the stream,
Isn’t and ain’t and can’t be dry;
Nor is your book. Which is to say
It is no gloomy episode—
You’ve made a dead donk sweetly bray,
And joyful is the Tibur Road.
~ Ellis Parker Butler,
827:Somewhere in between are the rest of us natives, in whom such change revives long-buried anger at those faraway people who seem to govern the world: city people, educated city people who win and control while the rest of us work and lose. Snort at the proposition if you want, but that was the view I grew up with, and it still is quite prevalent, though not so open as in those days. These are the sentiments the fearful rich and the Republicans capitalize on in order to kick liberal asses in elections.

The Democrats' 2006 midterm gains should not fool anyone into thinking that these feelings are not still out here in this heartland that has so rapidly become suburbanized. It is still politically profitable to cast matters as a battle between the slick people, liberals all, and the regular Joes, people who like white bread and Hamburger Helper and "normal" beer. When you are looking around you in the big cities at all those people, it's hard to understand that there are just as many out here who never will taste sushi or, in all likelihood, fly on an airplane other than when we are flown to boot camp, compliments of Uncle Sam. Only 20 percent of Americans have ever owned a passport. To the working people I grew up with, sophistication of any and all types, and especially urbanity, is suspect. Hell, those city people have never even fired a gun. Then again, who would ever trust Jerry Seinfeld or Dennis Kucinich or Hillary Clinton with a gun? At least Dick Cheney hunts, even if he ain't safe to hunt with. George W. Bush probably knows a good goose gun when he sees one. Guns are everyday tools, like Skil saws and barbecue grills.

So when the left began to demonize gun owners in the 1960s, they not only were arrogant and insulting because they associated all gun owners with criminals but also were politically stupid. It made perfect sense to middle America that the gun control movement was centered in large urban areas, the home to everything against which middle America tries to protect itself—gangbangers, queer bars, dope-fiend burglars, swarthy people jabbering in strange languages. From the perspective of small and medium-size towns all over the country, antigun activists are an overwrought bunch. ~ Joe Bageant,
828:There is one are of work that should be mentioned here, referred to as 'automatic theorem proving'. One set of procedures that would come under this heading consists of fixing some formal system H, and trying to derive theorems within this system. We recall, from 2.9, that it would be an entirely computational matter to provide proofs of all the theorems of H one after the other. This kind of thing can be automated, but if done without further thought or insight, such an operation would be likely to be immensely inefficient. However, with the employment of such insight in the setting up of the computational procedures, some quite impressive results have been obtained. In one of these schemes (Chou 1988), the rules of Euclidean geometry have been translated into a very effective system for proving (and sometimes discovering) geometrical theorems. As an example of one of these, a geometrical proposition known as V. Thebault's conjecture, which had been proposed in 1938 (and only rather recently proved, by K.B. Taylor in 1983), was presented to the system and solved in 44 hours' computing time.

More closely analogous to the procedures discussed in the previous sections are attempts by various people over the past 10 years or so to provide 'artificial intelligence' procedures for mathematical 'understanding'. I hope it is clear from the arguments that I have given, that whatever these systems do achieve, what they do not do is obtain any actual mathematical understanding! Somewhat related to this are attempts to find automatic theorem-generating systems, where the system is set up to find theorems that are regarded as 'interesting'-according to certain criteria that the computational system is provided with. I do think that it would be generally accepted that nothing of very great actual mathematical interest has yet come out of these attempts. Of course, it would be argued that these are early days yet, and perhaps one may expect something much more exciting to come out of them in the future. However, it should be clear to anyone who has read this far, that I myself regard the entire enterprise as unlikely to lead to much that is genuinely positive, except to emphasize what such systems do not achieve. ~ Roger Penrose,
829:Fundamentally, there are only two ways of co-ordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion—the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary co-operation of individuals—the technique of the market place. The possibility of co-ordination through voluntary co-operation rests on the elementary—yet frequently denied—proposition that both parties to an economic transaction benefit from it, provided the transaction is bi-laterally voluntary and informed. Exchange can therefore bring about co-ordination without coercion. A working model of a society organized through voluntary exchange is a free private enterprise exchange economy—what we have been calling competitive capitalism. In its simplest form, such a society consists of a number of independent households—a collection of Robinson Crusoes, as it were. Each household uses the resources it controls to produce goods and services that it exchanges for goods and services produced by other households, on terms mutually acceptable to the two parties to the bargain. It is thereby enabled to satisfy its wants indirectly by producing goods and services for others, rather than directly by producing goods for its own immediate use. The incentive for adopting this indirect route is, of course, the increased product made possible by division of labor and specialization of function. Since the household always has the alternative of producing directly for itself, it need not enter into any exchange unless it benefits from it. Hence, no exchange will take place unless both parties do benefit from it. Co-operation is thereby achieved without coercion. Specialization of function and division of labor would not go far if the ultimate productive unit were the household. In a modern society, we have gone much farther. We have introduced enterprises which are intermediaries between individuals in their capacities as suppliers of service and as purchasers of goods. And similarly, specialization of function and division of labor could not go very far if we had to continue to rely on the barter of product for product. In consequence, money has been introduced as a means of facilitating exchange, and ~ Milton Friedman,
830:The frequent hearing of my mistress reading
the bible--for she often read aloud when her
husband was absent--soon awakened my
curiosity in respect to this mystery of reading,
and roused in me the desire to learn. Having no
fear of my kind mistress before my eyes, (she
had given me no reason to fear,) I frankly asked
her to teach me to read; and without hesitation,
the dear woman began the task, and very soon,
by her assistance, I was master of the alphabet,
and could spell words of three or four
letters...Master Hugh was amazed at the
simplicity of his spouse, and, probably for the
first time, he unfolded to her the true philosophy
of slavery, and the peculiar rules necessary to
be observed by masters and mistresses, in the
management of their human chattels. Mr. Auld
promptly forbade the continuance of her
[reading] instruction; telling her, in the first
place, that the thing itself was unlawful; that it
was also unsafe, and could only lead to mischief.... Mrs. Auld evidently felt the force of
his remarks; and, like an obedient wife, began
to shape her course in the direction indicated by
her husband. The effect of his words, on me,
was neither slight nor transitory. His iron
sentences--cold and harsh--sunk deep into my
heart, and stirred up not only my feelings into a
sort of rebellion, but awakened within me a
slumbering train of vital thought. It was a new
and special revelation, dispelling a painful
mystery, against which my youthful
understanding had struggled, and struggled in
vain, to wit: the white man's power to perpetuate
the enslavement of the black man. "Very well,"
thought I; "knowledge unfits a child to be a
slave." I instinctively assented to the
proposition; and from that moment I understood
the direct pathway from slavery to freedom. This
was just what I needed; and got it at a time, and
from a source, whence I least expected it....
Wise as Mr. Auld was, he evidently underrated
my comprehension, and had little idea of the
use to which I was capable of putting the
impressive lesson he was giving to his wife....
That which he most loved I most hated; and the
very determination which he expressed to keep
me in ignorance, only rendered me the more
resolute in seeking intelligence. ~ Frederick Douglass,
831:I have a proposition for you,” she said, trying for a businesslike tone. “A very sensible one. You see—” She paused to clear her throat. “I’ve been thinking about your problem.”
“What problem?” Cam played lightly with the folds of her skirts, watching her face alertly.
“Your good-luck curse. I know how to get rid of it. You should marry into a family with very, very bad luck. A family with expensive problems. And then you won’t have to be embarrassed about having so much money, because it will flow out nearly as fast as it comes in.”
“Very sensible.” Cam took her shaking hand in his, pressed it between his warm palms. And touched his foot to her rapidly tapping one. “Hummingbird,” he whispered, “you don’t have to be nervous with me.”
Gathering her courage, Amelia blurted out, “I want your ring. I want never to take it off again. I want to be your romni forever”— she paused with a quick, abashed smile—“ whatever that is.”
“My bride. My wife.”
Amelia froze in a moment of throat-clenching delight as she felt him slide the gold ring onto her finger, easing it to the base. “When we were with Leo, tonight,” she said scratchily, “I knew exactly how he felt about losing Laura. He told me once that I couldn’t understand unless I had loved someone that way. He was right. And tonight, as I watched you with him … I knew what I would think at the very last moment of my life.”
His thumb smoothed over the tender surface of her knuckle. “Yes, love?”
“I would think,” she continued, “‘ Oh, if I could have just one more day with Cam. I would fit a lifetime into those few hours.’”
“Not necessary,” he assured her gently. “Statistically speaking, we’ll have at least ten, fifteen thousand days to spend together.”
“I don’t want to be apart from you for even one of them.”
Cam cupped her small, serious face in his hands, his thumbs skimming the trace of tears beneath her eyes. His gaze caressed her. “Are we to live in sin, love, or will you finally agree to marry me?”
“Yes. Yes. I’ll marry you. Although … I still can’t promise to obey you.”
Cam laughed quietly. “We’ll manage around that. If you’ll at least promise to love me.”
Amelia gripped his wrists, his pulse steady and strong beneath her fingertips. “Oh, I do love you, you’re—”
“I love you, too.”
“— my fate. You’re everything I—” She would have said more, if he had not pulled her head to his, kissing her with hard, thrilling pressure. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
832:Cecily.” His gaze wandered from her unbound hair to her disheveled gown, to her fingers still laced with Luke’s. “I . . . I was just about to go searching for you.”
“There you are!” Portia called from behind him. “Come in, come in.” She lay swaddled in blankets on the divan, with her bandaged leg propped on a nearby ottoman. Brooke sat beside her, balancing a teacup in either hand.
Cecily turned to Denny. “I’m sorry to have worried you, but . . .” She squeezed Luke’s hand for courage. “You see, Luke and I—”
“I understand,” he replied. The serious expression on his face told her he did understand, completely. To his credit, he took it well. He turned to Luke. “When will you be married?”
“Married?” Portia exclaimed.
Cecily sighed. Just like Denny, to take his responsibilities as her third cousin twice removed— and only male relation in the vicinity— so seriously. But did he have to force the issue now? Certainly, she hoped that she and Luke might one day—
“As soon as possible.” Luke’s arm slid around her waist.
Cecily’s gaze snapped up to his. Are you certain? she asked him silently. He answered her with a quick kiss.
“Well, then. When can we be married?” Brooke directed his question to Portia.
“Married!” Blushing furiously, Portia made a dismissive gesture with both hands. “Why, I’m only just learning to enjoy being a widow. I don’t want to be married. I want to write scandalous novels and take dozens of lovers.”
Brooke raised an eyebrow. “Can that be negotiated to lover, singular?”
“That,” she said, giving him a coy smile, “would depend on your skill at negotiation.”
“What an evening you’ve had, Portia,” Cecily said. “A brush with death, a proposal of marriage, an indecent proposition . . . Surely you have sufficient inspiration for your gothic novel?”
“Too much inspiration!” Portia wailed, gesturing toward her bandaged foot. “I am done with gothics completely. No, I shall take a cue from my insipid wallpaper and write a bawdy little tale about a wanton dairymaid and her many lovers.”
“Lover, singular.” Brooke flopped on the divan and settled her feet in his lap.
“Oh,” she sighed, as he massaged her uninjured foot. “Oh, very well.”
Luke tugged on Cecily’s hand, drawing her toward the doorway. “Let’s make our escape.”
As they left, she heard Denny say in his usual jocular tone, “Do me a favor, Portia? Model your hero after me. Just once, I should like to get the girl. ~ Tessa Dare,
833:A finished or even a competent reasoner is not the work of nature alone... education develops faculties which would otherwise never have manifested their existence. It is, therefore, as necessary to learn to reason before we can expect to be able to reason, as it is to learn to swim or fence, in order to attain either of those arts. Now, something must be reasoned upon, it matters not much what it is, provided that it can be reasoned upon with certainty. The properties of mind or matter, or the study of languages, mathematics, or natural history may be chosen for this purpose. Now, of all these, it is desirable to choose the one... in which we can find out by other means, such as measurement and ocular demonstration of all sorts, whether the results are true or not.
  ..Now the mathematics are peculiarly well adapted for this purpose, on the following grounds:—
  1. Every term is distinctly explained, and has but one meaning, and it is rarely that two words are employed to mean the same thing.
  2. The first principles are self-evident, and, though derived from observation, do not require more of it than has been made by children in general.
  3. The demonstration is strictly logical, taking nothing for granted except the self-evident first principles, resting nothing upon probability, and entirely independent of authority and opinion.
  4. When the conclusion is attained by reasoning, its truth or falsehood can be ascertained, in geometry by actual measurement, in algebra by common arithmetical calculation. This gives confidence, and is absolutely necessary, if... reason is not to be the instructor, but the pupil.
  5. There are no words whose meanings are so much alike that the ideas which they stand for may be confounded.
  ...These are the principal grounds on which... the utility of mathematical studies may be shewn to rest, as a discipline for the reasoning powers. But the habits of mind which these studies have a tendency to form are valuable in the highest degree. The most important of all is the power of concentrating the ideas which a successful study of them increases where it did exist, and creates where it did not. A difficult position or a new method of passing from one proposition to another, arrests all the attention, and forces the united faculties to use their utmost exertions. The habit of mind thus formed soon extends itself to other pursuits, and is beneficially felt in all the business of life. ~ Augustus De Morgan, Ch. I.,
834:Hic Vir, Hic Est
Often, when o'er tree and turret,
Eve a dying radiance flings,
By that ancient pile I linger
Known familiarly as 'King's.'
And the ghosts of days departed
Rise, and in my burning breast
All the undergraduate wakens,
And my spirit is at rest.
What, but a revolting fiction,
Seems the actual result
Of the Census's enquiries
Made upon the 15th ult.?
Still my soul is in its boyhood;
Nor of year or changes recks.
Though my scalp is almost hairless,
And my figure grows convex.
Backward moves the kindly dial;
And I'm numbered once again
With those noblest of their species
Called emphatically 'Men':
Loaf, as I have loafed aforetime,
Through the streets, with tranquil mind,
And a long-backed fancy-mongrel
Trailing casually behind:
Past the Senate-house I saunter,
Whistling with an easy grace;
Past the cabbage-stalks that carpet
Still the beefy market-place;
Poising evermore the eye-glass
In the light sarcastic eye,
Lest, by chance, some breezy nursemaid
Pass, without a tribute, by.
Once, an unassuming Freshman,
Through these wilds I wandered on,
Seeing in each house a College,
34
Under every cap a Don:
Each perambulating infant
Had a magic in its squall,
For my eager eye detected
Senior Wranglers in them all.
By degrees my education
Grew, and I became as others;
Learned to court delirium tremens
By the aid of Bacon Brothers;
Bought me tiny boots of Mortlock,
And colossal prints of Roe;
And ignored the proposition
That both time and money go.
Learned to work the wary dogcart
Artfully through King's Parade;
Dress, and steer a boat, and sport with
Amaryllis in the shade:
Struck, at Brown's, the dashing hazard;
Or (more curious sport than that)
Dropped, at Callaby's, the terrier
Down upon the prisoned rat.
I have stood serene on Fenner's
Ground, indifferent to blisters,
While the Buttress of the period
Bowled me his peculiar twisters:
Sung 'We won't go home till morning';
Striven to part my backhair straight;
Drunk (not lavishly) of Miller's
Old dry wines at 78:When within my veins the blood ran,
And the curls were on my brow,
I did, oh ye undergraduates,
Much as ye are doing now.
Wherefore bless ye, O beloved ones:Now unto mine inn must I,
Your 'poor moralist,' {51a} betake me,
In my 'solitary fly.'
35
~ Charles Stuart Calverley,
835:My father's generation grew up with certain beliefs. One of those beliefs is that the amount of money one earns is a rough guide to one's contribution to the welfare and prosperity of our society. I grew up unusually close to my father. Each evening I would plop into a chair near him, sweaty from a game of baseball in the front yard, and listen to him explain why such and such was true and such and such was not. One thing that was almost always true was that people who made a lot of money were neat. Horatio Alger and all that. It took watching his son being paid 225 grand at the age of twenty-seven, after two years on the job, to shake his faith in money. He has only recently recovered from the shock.

I haven't. When you sit, as I did, at the center of what has been possibly the most absurd money game ever and benefit out of all proportion to your value to society (as much as I'd like to think I got only what I deserved, I don't), when hundreds of equally undeserving people around you are all raking it in faster than they can count it, what happens to the money belief? Well, that depends. For some, good fortune simply reinforces the belief. They take the funny money seriously, as evidence that they are worthy citizens of the Republic. It becomes their guiding assumption-for it couldn't possibly be clearly thought out-that a talent for making money come out of a telephone is a reflection of merit on a grander scale. It is tempting to believe that people who think this way eventually suffer their comeuppance. They don't. They just get richer. I'm sure most of them die fat and happy.

For me, however, the belief in the meaning of making dollars crumbled; the proposition that the more money you earn, the better the life you are leading was refuted by too much hard evidence to the contrary. And without that belief, I lost the need to make huge sums of money. The funny thing is that I was largely unaware how heavily influenced I was by the money belief until it had vanished.

It is a small piece of education, but still the most useful thing I picked up at Salomon Brothers. Almost everything else I learned I left behind. I became fairly handy with a few hundred million dollars, but I'm still lost when I have to decide what to do with a few thousand. I learned humility briefly in the training program but forgot it as soon as I was given a chance. And I learned that people can be corrupted by organizations, but since I remain willing to join organizations and even to be corrupted by them (mildly, please), I'm not sure what practical benefit will come from this lesson. ~ Michael Lewis,
836:What’s he doing?” I asked, leaning over the side of the boat, searching for him beneath the water. If the tow rope had gotten tangled, he might need help. And someone would need to go in the water with him, perhaps accidentally sliding against him down where no one else could see.
Boo!” A handful of bryozoa rushed up at me from the lake.
I screamed (for once I didn’t have to think about this girl-reaction) and fell backward into the boat. Sean hefted himself over the side with one arm, holding the bryozoan high in the other hand. It dripped green slime through his fingers. “Bwa-ha-ha!” He came after me.
I squealed again. It was so unbelievably fantastic that he was flirting with me, but bryozoa was involved. Was it worth it? No. I paused on the side of the boat, ready to jump back into the water myself. He might chase me around the lake with the bryozoa, but at least it would be diluted. On second thought, I didn’t particularly want to jump into the very waters the bryozoa had come from.
Sean solved the problem for me. He slipped behind me and showed me he was holding the ties of my bikini in his free hand. If I jumped, Sean would take possession of my bikini top.
I had thought about double knotting my bikini. I’d hoped against hope that Stage Two: Bikini would work, and that Sean might try something like this. Of course, I didn’t really want my top to come off in front of everyone. Nay, in front of anyone. But I’d checked the double knots in the mirror. They’d looked…well, double knotted, for protection, sort of like wearing a turtleneck to the prom. I’d re-tied the strings normally.
Now I wished I’d double knotted after all. Sean brought the dripping slime close to my shoulder. “Go ahead and jump,” he said, twisting my bikini ties in his finges.
“Sean,” came McGullicuddy’s voice in warning. This surprised me. My brother had never taken up for me before. Of course, none of the boys had ever crossed this particular line.
But that was nothing compared with my surprise when the bryozoa suddenly lobbed out of Sean’s hand, sailed through the air, and plopped into the lake. Adam, standing behind him, must have shoved his arm.
Which meant I owed Adam my gratitude for saving me. Except I didn’t want him to save me from Sean, and I thought I’d made that clear. Saving me from Sean with bryozoa…that was a more iffy proposition. I wasn’t sure whether I should give Adam the little dolphin look again when our eyes met. But it didn’t matter. When I turned around, he was already stepping over Cameron’s legs to return to the driver’s seat. ~ Jennifer Echols,
837:Godwin on Fenelon and his Valet *


Following is an excerpt from William Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Book II, Chapter II: “Of Justice”:


In a loose and general view I and my neighbour are both of us men; and of consequence entitled to equal attention. But, in reality, it is probable that one of us is a being of more worth and importance than the other. A man is of more worth than a beast; because, being possessed of higher faculties, he is capable of a more refined and genuine happiness. In the same manner the illustrious archbishop of Cambray was of more worth than his valet, and there are few of us that would hesitate to pronounce, if his palace were in flames, and the life of only one of them could be preserved, which of the two ought to be preferred.

But there is another ground of preference, beside the private consideration of one of them being further removed from the state of a mere animal. We are not connected with one or two percipient beings, but with a society, a nation, and in some sense with the whole family of mankind. Of consequence that life ought to be preferred which will be most conducive to the general good. In saving the life of Fenelon, suppose at the moment he conceived the project of his immortal Telemachus, should have been promoting the benefit of thousands, who have been cured by the perusal of that work of some error, vice and consequent unhappiness. Nay, my benefit would extend further than this; for every individual, thus cured, has become a better member of society, and has contributed in his turn to the happiness, information, and improvement of others.

Suppose I had been myself the valet; I ought to have chosen to die, rather than Fenelon should have died. The life of Fenelon was really preferable to that of the valet. But understanding is the faculty that perceives the truth of this and similar propositions; and justice is the principle that regulates my conduct accordingly. It would have been just in the valet to have preferred the archbishop to himself. To have done otherwise would have been a breach of justice.

Suppose the valet had been my brother, my father, or my benefactor. This would not alter the truth of the proposition. The life of Fenelon would still be more valuable than that of the valet; and justice, pure, unadulterated justice, would still have preferred that which was most valuable. Justice would have taught me to save the life of Fenelon at the expense of the other. What magic is there in the pronoun “my,” that should justify us in overturning the decisions of impartial truth? My brother or my father may be a fool or a profligate, malicious, lying or dishonest. If they be, of what consequence is it that they are mine? ~ William Godwin,
838:To satisfy our doubts . . . it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency -- by something upon which our thinking has no effect. . . . Our external permanency would not be external, in our sense, if it was restricted in its influence to one individual. It must be something which affects, or might affect, every man. And, though these affections are necessarily as various as are individual conditions, yet the method must be such that the ultimate conclusion of every man shall be the same. Such is the method of science. Its fundamental hypothesis, restated in more familiar language, is this: There are Real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those Reals affect our senses according to regular laws, and, though our sensations are as different as are our relations to the objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really and truly are; and any man, if he have sufficient experience and he reason enough about it, will be led to the one True conclusion. The new conception here involved is that of Reality. It may be asked how I know that there are any Reals. If this hypothesis is the sole support of my method of inquiry, my method of inquiry must not be used to support my hypothesis. The reply is this: 1. If investigation cannot be regarded as proving that there are Real things, it at least does not lead to a contrary conclusion; but the method and the conception on which it is based remain ever in harmony. No doubts of the method, therefore, necessarily arise from its practice, as is the case with all the others. 2. The feeling which gives rise to any method of fixing belief is a dissatisfaction at two repugnant propositions. But here already is a vague concession that there is some one thing which a proposition should represent. Nobody, therefore, can really doubt that there are Reals, for, if he did, doubt would not be a source of dissatisfaction. The hypothesis, therefore, is one which every mind admits. So that the social impulse does not cause men to doubt it. 3. Everybody uses the scientific method about a great many things, and only ceases to use it when he does not know how to apply it. 4. Experience of the method has not led us to doubt it, but, on the contrary, scientific investigation has had the most wonderful triumphs in the way of settling opinion. These afford the explanation of my not doubting the method or the hypothesis which it supposes; and not having any doubt, nor believing that anybody else whom I could influence has, it would be the merest babble for me to say more about it. If there be anybody with a living doubt upon the subject, let him consider it. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce,
839:The thing I remember from the Letters Page in those antique days was the way the OBs signed off. There was Yours faithfully, Yours sincerely, and I have the honour to be, sir, your obedient servant. But the ones I always looked for - and which I took to be the true sign of an Old Bastard - simply ended like this: Yours etc. And then the newspaper drew even more attention to the sign-off by printing it: Yours &c.
Yours &c. I used to muse about that. What did it mean? Where did it come from? I imagined some bespatted captain of industry dictating his OB’s views to his secretary for transmission to the Newspaper of Record which he doubtless referred to with jocund familiarity as ‘The Thunderer’. When his oratorical belch was complete, he would say ‘Yours, etc,’ which Miss ffffffolkes would automatically transcribe into, ‘I have the honour to be, sir, one of the distinguished Old Bastards who could send you the label off a tin of pilchards and you would still print it above this my name,’ or whatever, and then it would be, ‘Despatch this instanter to The Thunderer, Miss ffffffolkes.’
But one day Miss ffffffolkes was away giving a handjob to the Archbishop of York, so they sent a temp. And the temp wrote Yours, etc, just as she heard it and The Times reckoned the OB captain a very gusher of wit, but decided to add their own little rococo touch by compacting it further to &c., whereupon other OBs followed the bespatted lead of the captain of industry, who claimed all the credit for himself. There we have it: Yours &c.
Whereupon, as an ardent damp-ear of sixteen, I took to the parodic sign-off: Love, &c. Not all my correspondents unfailingly seized the reference, I regret to say. One demoiselle hastened her own de-accessioning from the museum of my heart by informing me with hauteur that use of the word etc., whether in oral communication or in carven prose, was common and vulgar. To which I replied, first, that ‘the word’ et cetera was not one but two words, and that the only common and vulgar thing about my letter - given the identity of its recipient - was affixing to it the word that preceded etc. Alack, she didn’t respond to this observation with the Buddhistic serenity one might have hoped.
Love, etc. The proposition is simple. The world divides into two categories: those who believe that the purpose, the function, the bass pedal and principal melody of life is love, and that anything else - everything else - is merely an etc.; and those, those unhappy many, who believe primarily in the etc. of life, for whom love, however agreeable, is but a passing flurry of youth, the pattering prelude to nappy-duty, but not something as solid, steadfast and reliable as, say, home decoration. This is the only division between people that counts. ~ Julian Barnes,
840:Article 10: Whether symbolic logic is superior to Aristotelian logic for philosophizing?

Objection 1 : It seems that it is, for it is a modern development, and would not have become popular if it were not superior. In fact, 99% of all formal logic textbooks in print today use symbolic rather than Aristotelian logic.
Objection 2: It is as superior in efficiency to Aristotelian logic as Arabic numerals to Roman numerals, or a computer to an abacus.
Objection 3: Aristotelian logic presupposes metaphysical and epistemological realism, which are no longer universally accepted. Symbolic logic is ideologically neutral. It is like mathematics not only in efficiency but also in that it carries less “philosophical baggage.”

On the contrary , the authority of common sense is still on the side of Aristotelian rather than symbolic logic. But common sense is the origin, basis, and foundation of all further refinements of reason, including symbolic logic; and a branch should not contradict its trunk, an upper story should not contradict its foundation. All philosophical systems, including symbolic logic, since they are refinements of, begin with, and depend on the validity of common sense, even while they greatly refine and expand this foundation, should not contradict it, as symbolic logic does. (See below.)

I answer that at least two essential principles of symbolic logic contradict common sense: (1) the counter-intuitive “paradox of material implication,” according to which a false proposition materially implies any proposition, false as well as true, including contradictories (see Socratic Logic , pp. 266-369); and (2) the assumption that a particular proposition (like “some elves are evil”) claims more, not less, than a universal proposition (like “all elves are evil'’), since it is assumed to have “existential import” while a universal proposition is assumed to lack it, since symbolic logic assumes the metaphysical position (or “metaphysical baggage”) of Nominalism. See Socratic Logic , pp. 179-81, 262-63 and The Two Logics by Henry Veatch. Furthermore, no one ever actually argues in symbolic logic except professional philosophers. Its use coincides with the sudden decline of interest in philosophy among students. If you believe that is a coincidence, I have a nice timeshare in Florida that I would like to sell to you.

Reply to Objection 1: Popularity is no index of truth. If it were, truth would change, and contradict itself, as popularity changed — including the truth of that statement. And thus it is self-contradictory.

Reply to Objection 2: It is not more efficient in dealing with ordinary language. We never hear people actually argue any of the great philosophical questions in symbolic logic, but we hear a syllogism every few sentences.

Reply to Objection 3: Symbolic logic is not philosophically neutral but presupposes Nominalism, as shown by the references in the “/ answer that ” above. ~ Peter Kreeft,
841:I like rainbows.

We came back down to the meadow near the steaming terrace and sat in the river, just where one of the bigger hot streams poured into the cold water of the Ferris Fork. It is illegal – not to say suicidal – to bathe in any of the thermal features of the park. But when those features empty into the river, at what is called a hot pot, swimming and soaking are perfectly acceptable. So we were soaking off our long walk, talking about our favorite waterfalls, and discussing rainbows when it occurred to us that the moon was full. There wasn’t a hint of foul weather. And if you had a clear sky and a waterfall facing in just the right direction…
Over the course of a couple of days we hked back down the canyon to the Boundary Creek Trail and followed it to Dunanda Falls, which is only about eight miles from the ranger station at the entrance to the park. Dunanda is a 150-foot-high plunge facing generally south, so that in the afternoons reliable rainbows dance over the rocks at its base. It is the archetype of all western waterfalls. Dunenda is an Indian name; in Shoshone it means “straight down,” which is a pretty good description of the plunge.
...
…We had to walk three miles back toward the ranger station and our assigned campsite. We planned to set up our tents, eat, hang our food, and walk back to Dunanda Falls in the dark, using headlamps. We could be there by ten or eleven. At that time the full moon would clear the east ridge of the downriver canyon and would be shining directly on the fall.

Walking at night is never a happy proposition, and this particular evening stroll involved five stream crossings, mostly on old logs, and took a lot longer than we’d anticipated. Still, we beat the moon to the fall.

Most of us took up residence in one or another of the hot pots. Presently the moon, like a floodlight, rose over the canyon rim. The falling water took on a silver tinge, and the rock wall, which had looked gold under the sun, was now a slick black so the contrast of water and rock was incomparably stark. The pools below the lip of the fall were glowing, as from within, with a pale blue light. And then it started at the base of the fall: just a diagonal line in the spray that ran from the lower east to the upper west side of the wall.
“It’s going to happen,” I told Kara, who was sitting beside me in one of the hot pots.
Where falling water hit the rock at the base of the fall and exploded upward in vapor, the light was very bright. It concentrated itself in a shining ball. The diagonal line was above and slowly began to bend until, in the fullness of time (ten minutes, maybe), it formed a perfectly symmetrical bow, shining silver blue under the moon. The color was vaguely electrical.
Kara said she could see colors in the moonbow, and when I looked very hard, I thought I could make out a faint line of reddish orange above, and some deep violet at the bottom. Both colors were very pale, flickering, like bad florescent light.
In any case, it was exhilarating, the experience of a lifetime: an entirely perfect moonbow, silver and iridescent, all shining and spectral there at the base of Dunanda Falls. The hot pot itself was a luxury, and I considered myself a pretty swell fellow, doing all this for the sanity of city dwellers, who need such things more than anyone else. I even thought of naming the moonbow: Cahill’s Luminescence. Something like that. Otherwise, someone else might take credit for it. ~ Tim Cahill,
842:The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time.

The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is.

There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There's a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you could run into a ritual honoring some vaguely known queen. Bluebloods, titled persons like crazy drunks, lean weakly against the walls and drag themselves through the gutter. Even they seem to have insights you might want to listen to. No action seems inappropriate here. The city is one very long poem. Gardens full of pansies, pink petunias, opiates. Flower-bedecked shrines, white myrtles, bougainvillea and purple oleander stimulate your senses, make you feel cool and clear inside.

Everything in New Orleans is a good idea. Bijou temple-type cottages and lyric cathedrals side by side. Houses and mansions, structures of wild grace. Italianate, Gothic, Romanesque, Greek Revival standing in a long line in the rain. Roman Catholic art. Sweeping front porches, turrets, cast-iron balconies, colonnades- 30-foot columns, gloriously beautiful- double pitched roofs, all the architecture of the whole wide world and it doesn't move. All that and a town square where public executions took place. In New Orleans you could almost see other dimensions. There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees. You never get tired of it. After a while you start to feel like a ghost from one of the tombs, like you're in a wax museum below crimson clouds. Spirit empire. Wealthy empire. One of Napoleon's generals, Lallemaud, was said to have come here to check it out, looking for a place for his commander to seek refuge after Waterloo. He scouted around and left, said that here the devil is damned, just like everybody else, only worse. The devil comes here and sighs. New Orleans. Exquisite, old-fashioned. A great place to live vicariously. Nothing makes any difference and you never feel hurt, a great place to really hit on things. Somebody puts something in front of you here and you might as well drink it. Great place to be intimate or do nothing. A place to come and hope you'll get smart - to feed pigeons looking for handouts ~ Bob Dylan,
843:If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixtures, I take things to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, *I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings*. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real unity, because every being derives its reality only from the reality of those beings of which it is composed, so that it will not have any reality at all if each being of which it is composed is itself a being by aggregation, a being for which we must still seek further grounds for its reality, grounds which can never be found in this way, if we must always continue to seek for them. I agree, Sir, that there are only machines (that are often animated) in all of corporeal nature, but I do not agree that *there are only aggregates of substances, there must also be true substances from which all the aggregates result.
We must, then, necessarily come down to the atoms of Epicurus and Cordemoy (which are things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality in bodies; or finally, we must recognize some substances that have a true unity. I have already said in another letter that the composite made up of the diamonds of the Grand Duke and of the Great Mogul can be called a pair of diamonds, but this is only a being of reason. And when they are brought closer to one another, it would be a being of the imagination or perception, that is to say, a phenomenon. For contact, common motion, and participation in a common plan have no effect on substantial unity. It is true that there are sometimes more, sometimes fewer, grounds for supposing that several things constitute a single thing, in proportion to the extent to which these things are connected. But this serves only to abbreviate our thoughts and to represent the phenomena.
It also seems that what constitutes the essence of a being by aggregation is only a mode (*maniére d'être*) of the things of which it is composed. For example, what constitutes the essence of an army is only a mode of the men who compose it. This mode therefore presupposes a substance whose essence is not a mode of substance. Every machine also presupposes some substance in the pieces of which it is made, and there is no plurality without true unities. To put it briefly, I hold this identical proposition, differentiated only by the emphasis, to be an axiom, namely, *that what is not truly* one *being is not truly one* being *either*. It has always been thought that one and being are reciprocal things. Being is one thing and beings are another; but the plural presupposes the singular, and where there is no being still less will there be several beings. What could be clearer? [[I therefore believed that I would be allowed to distinguish beings by aggregation from substances, since these beings have their unity in our mind only, a unity founded on the relations or modes [*modes*] of true substances. If a machine is one substance, a circle of men holding hands will also be one substance, and so will an army, and finally, so will every multitude of substances.]]."

—from Letters to Arnauld ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,
844:If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixtures, I take things to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, *I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings*. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real unity, because every being derives its reality only from the reality of those beings of which it is composed, so that it will not have any reality at all if each being of which it is composed is itself a being by aggregation, a being for which we must still seek further grounds for its reality, grounds which can never be found in this way, if we must always continue to seek for them. I agree, Sir, that there are only machines (that are often animated) in all of corporeal nature, but I do not agree that *there are only aggregates of substances, there must also be true substances from which all the aggregates result.

We must, then, necessarily come down to the atoms of Epicurus and Cordemoy (which are things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality in bodies; or finally, we must recognize some substances that have a true unity. I have already said in another letter that the composite made up of the diamonds of the Grand Duke and of the Great Mogul can be called a pair of diamonds, but this is only a being of reason. And when they are brought closer to one another, it would be a being of the imagination or perception, that is to say, a phenomenon. For contact, common motion, and participation in a common plan have no effect on substantial unity. It is true that there are sometimes more, sometimes fewer, grounds for supposing that several things constitute a single thing, in proportion to the extent to which these things are connected. But this serves only to abbreviate our thoughts and to represent the phenomena.

It also seems that what constitutes the essence of a being by aggregation is only a mode (*maniére d'être*) of the things of which it is composed. For example, what constitutes the essence of an army is only a mode of the men who compose it. This mode therefore presupposes a substance whose essence is not a mode of substance. Every machine also presupposes some substance in the pieces of which it is made, and there is no plurality without true unities. To put it briefly, I hold this identical proposition, differentiated only by the emphasis, to be an axiom, namely, *that what is not truly* one *being is not truly one* being *either*. It has always been thought that one and being are reciprocal things. Being is one thing and beings are another; but the plural presupposes the singular, and where there is no being still less will there be several beings. What could be clearer? [[I therefore believed that I would be allowed to distinguish beings by aggregation from substances, since these beings have their unity in our mind only, a unity founded on the relations or modes [*modes*] of true substances. If a machine is one substance, a circle of men holding hands will also be one substance, and so will an army, and finally, so will every multitude of substances.]]."

—from Letters to Arnauld ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,
845:On ne peut s'empêcher de constater [que l'Occidental religieux] perd en pratique volontiers de vue les tendances fondamentales de sa foi, c'est-à-dire qu'il se retranche derrière les alternatives simples de la morale et des exigences de la pratique religieuse tout en trahissant, en sa qualité de « civilisé », les tendances mêmes qui sont à la base et de ces alternatives et de cette pratique. La machine est une bonne chose, pourvu qu'on aime Dieu ; la république est un bien, pourvu qu'elle favorise la religion ; que la machine tue de facto l'amour de Dieu, et que la république étouffe de facto la religion, ne semble pas effleurer l'esprit de l'immense majorité des croyants. Si on est finalement obligé de constater ces effets néfastes, on accusera d'abord la nature humaine et ensuite quelque déchéance imaginaire de la religion ; on accusera jamais les causes réelles, considérées a priori comme neutre parce que situées en dehors des alternatives morales simplistes et des règles pratiques auxquelles on a réduit la religion, et en dehors aussi de la pure théologie. Et comme le monde de la machine – « chrétien » selon certains puisque la machine ne commet point d'adultère et puisque toute chose efficace doit provenir du Christianisme –, comme ce monde s'impose partout pour des raisons matérielles irréversibles, il favorise partout sur le globe terrestre l'élément mondain et la mondanité technocratique, laquelle est de tout évidence l'antipode de tout amour de Dieu.

Cette mondanité utilitaire – franchement impie ou trompeusement chrétienne – ne saurait s'affirmer par une dialectique normale, elle a besoin d'arguments qui remplacent la réalité par des suggestions imaginatives des plus arbitraires. Au moins aussi déplaisant qu'un hyperbolisme inconsidéré, et bien davantage suivant les cas, est le biais faussement moralisant si commun au langage moderne : il consiste à vouloir justifier une erreur ou un mal quelconque par des étiquettes flatteuses et à vouloir compromettre une vérité ou un fait positif par des étiquettes infamantes, souvent en utilisant de fausses valeurs telles que la « jeunesse » et sans que les suggestions avancées aient le moindre rapport avec les choses auxquelles on les applique (18). Un autre vice de dialectique, ou un autre abus de pensée, est l'inversion du rapport causal et logique : on dira qu'il est temps d'inventer un idéal nouveau qui puisse enflammer les hommes, ou qu'il faut forger une mentalité capable de trouver beau le monde des machines et laid celui des sanctuaires, ou une mentalité capable de préférer la nouvelle messe ou la nouvelle religion à l'ancienne messe ou à la religion de toujours, et ainsi de suite. Comme le biais moralisant, le raisonnement inversant est totalement étranger à la dialectique orientale et à la dialectique traditionnelle tout court, et pour cause.

Nous pourrions signaler également, en passant, le raisonnement dynamiste qui subordonne la constatation d'un fait à la proposition d'une solution pratique – comme si la vérité n'avait pas sa raison d'être ou sa valeur en elle-même – ou le raisonnement utilitariste qui subordonne la vérité comme telle aux intérêts matériels des hommes physiques. Tout ceci n'est pas incompatible en fait avec un certains sens critique sur quelques plans extérieurs ; s'il en est ainsi, l'inverse doit être possible également, à savoir la disproportion entre un discernement spirituel et un langage inconsidérément impulsif et hyperbolique.[...]

(18) La propagande pour les innovations liturgiques et théologiques – et contre ceux qui n'en sont pas dupes – est un exemple particulièrement écœurant de ce procédé. ~ Frithjof Schuon,
846:In consequence of the inevitably scattered and fragmentary nature of our thinking, which has been mentioned, and of the mixing together of the most heterogeneous representations thus brought about and inherent even in the noblest human mind, we really possess only *half a consciousness*. With this we grope about in the labyrinth of our life and in the obscurity of our investigations; bright moments illuminate our path like flashes of lighting. But what is to be expected generally from heads of which even the wisest is every night the playground of the strangest and most senseless dreams, and has to take up its meditations again on emerging from these dreams? Obviously a consciousness subject to such great limitations is little fitted to explore and fathom the riddle of the world; and to beings of a higher order, whose intellect did not have time as its form, and whose thinking therefore had true completeness and unity, such an endeavor would necessarily appear strange and pitiable. In fact, it is a wonder that we are not completely confused by the extremely heterogeneous mixture of fragments of representations and of ideas of every kind which are constantly crossing one another in our heads, but that we are always able to find our way again, and to adapt and adjust everything. Obviously there must exist a simple thread on which everything is arranged side by side: but what is this? Memory alone is not enough, since it has essential limitations of which I shall shortly speak; moreover, it is extremely imperfect and treacherous. The *logical ego*, or even the *transcendental synthetic unity of apperception*, are expressions and explanations that will not readily serve to make the matter comprehensible; on the contrary, it will occur to many that

“Your wards are deftly wrought, but drive no bolts asunder.”

Kant’s proposition: “The *I think* must accompany all our representations ,” is insufficient; for the “I” is an unknown quantity, in other words, it is itself a mystery and a secret. What gives unity and sequence to consciousness, since by pervading all the representations of consciousness, it is its substratum, its permanent supporter, cannot itself be conditioned by consciousness, and therefore cannot be a representation. On the contrary, it must be the *prius* of consciousness, and the root of the tree of which consciousness is the fruit. This, I say, is the *will*; it alone is unalterable and absolutely identical, and has brought forth consciousness for its own ends. It is therefore the will that gives unity and holds all its representations and ideas together, accompanying them, as it were, like a continuous ground-bass. Without it the intellect would have no more unity of consciousness than has a mirror, in which now one thing now another presents itself in succession, or at most only as much as a convex mirror has, whose rays converge at an imaginary point behind its surface. But it is *the will* alone that is permanent and unchangeable in consciousness. It is the will that holds all ideas and representations together as means to its ends, tinges them with the colour of its character, its mood, and its interest, commands the attention, and holds the thread of motives in its hand. The influence of these motives ultimately puts into action memory and the association of ideas. Fundamentally it is the will that is spoken of whenever “I” occurs in a judgement. Therefore, the will is the true and ultimate point of unity of consciousness, and the bond of all its functions and acts. It does not, however, itself belong to the intellect, but is only its root, origin, and controller."

—from The World as Will and Representation . Translated from the German by E. F. J. Payne in two volumes: volume II, pp. 139-140 ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
847:In short the only fully rational world would be the world of wishing-caps, the world of telepathy, where every desire is fulfilled instanter, without having to consider or placate surrounding or intermediate powers. This is the Absolute's own world. He calls upon the phenomenal world to be, and it IS, exactly as he calls for it, no other condition being required. In our world, the wishes of the individual are only one condition. Other individuals are there with other wishes and they must be propitiated first. So Being grows under all sorts of resistances in this world of the many, and, from
compromise to compromise, only gets organized gradually into what may be called secondarily rational shape. We approach the wishing-cap type of organization only in a few departments of life. We want water and we turn a faucet. We want a kodak-picture and we press a button. We want information and we telephone. We want to travel and we buy a ticket. In these and similar cases, we hardly need to do more than the wishing—the world is rationally organized to do the rest.
But this talk of rationality is a parenthesis and a digression. What we were discussing was the idea of a world growing not integrally but piecemeal by the contributions of its several parts. Take the hypothesis seriously and as a live one. Suppose that the world's author put the case to you before creation, saying: "I am going to make a world not certain to be saved, a world the perfection of which shall be conditional merely, the condition being that each several agent does its own 'level best.' I offer you the chance of taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through. It is a social scheme of co-operative work genuinely to be done. Will you join the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other agents enough to face the risk?"
Should you in all seriousness, if participation in such a world were proposed to you, feel bound to reject it as not safe enough? Would you say that, rather than be part and parcel of so fundamentally pluralistic and irrational a universe, you preferred to relapse into the slumber of nonentity from which you had been momentarily aroused by the tempter's voice?
Of course if you are normally constituted, you would do nothing of the sort. There is a healthy- minded buoyancy in most of us which such a universe would exactly fit. We would therefore accept the offer—"Top! und schlag auf schlag!" It would be just like the world we practically live in; and loyalty to our old nurse Nature would forbid us to say no. The world proposed would seem 'rational' to us in the most living way.
Most of us, I say, would therefore welcome the proposition and add our fiat to the fiat of the creator. Yet perhaps some would not; for there are morbid minds in every human collection, and to them the prospect of a universe with only a fighting chance of safety would probably make no appeal. There are moments of discouragement in us all, when we are sick of self and tired of vainly striving. Our own life breaks down, and we fall into the attitude of the prodigal son. We mistrust the chances of things. We want a universe where we can just give up, fall on our father's neck, and be absorbed into the absolute life as a drop of water melts into the river or the sea.
The peace and rest, the security desiderated at such moments is security against the bewildering accidents of so much finite experience. Nirvana means safety from this everlasting round of adventures of which the world of sense consists. The hindoo and the buddhist, for this is essentially their attitude, are simply afraid, afraid of more experience, afraid of life.
And to men of this complexion, religious monism comes with its consoling words: "All is needed and essential—even you with your sick soul and heart. All are one ~ William James,
848:Mr. Fink's Debating Donkey
Of a person known as Peters I will humbly crave your leave
An unusual adventure into narrative to weave
Mr. William Perry Peters, of the town of Muscatel,
A public educator and an orator as well.
Mr. Peters had a weakness which, 'tis painful to relate,
Was a strong predisposition to the pleasures of debate.
He would foster disputation wheresoever he might be;
In polygonal contention none so happy was as he.
'Twas observable, however, that the exercises ran
Into monologue by Peters, that rhetorical young man.
And the Muscatelian rustics who assisted at the show,
By involuntary silence testified their overthrowMr. Peters, all unheedful of their silence and their grief,
Still effacing every vestige of erroneous belief.
O, he was a sore affliction to all heretics so bold
As to entertain opinions that he didn't care to hold.
One day-'t was in pursuance of a pedagogic plan
For the mental elevation of Uncultivated Man
Mr. Peters, to his pupils, in dismissing them, explained
That the Friday evening following (unless, indeed, it rained)
Would be signalized by holding in the schoolhouse a debate
Free to all who their opinions might desire to ventilate
On the question, 'Which is better, as a serviceable gift,
Speech or hearing, from barbarity the human mind to lift?'
The pupils told their fathers, who, forehanded always, met
At the barroom to discuss it every evening, dry or wet,
They argued it and argued it and spat upon the stove,
And the non-committal 'barkeep' on their differences throve.
And I state it as a maxim in a loosish kind of way:
You'll have the more to back your word the less you have to say.
Public interest was lively, but one Ebenezer Fink
Of the Rancho del Jackrabbit, only seemed to sit and think.
On the memorable evening all the men of Muscatel
Came to listen to the logic and the eloquence as well
All but William Perry Peters, whose attendance there, I fear.
Was to wreak his ready rhetoric upon the public ear,
And prove (whichever side he took) that hearing wouldn't lift
354
The human mind as ably as the other, greater gift.
The judges being chosen and the disputants enrolled,
The question he proceeded _in extenso_ to unfold:
'_Resolved_-The sense of hearing lifts the mind up out of reach
Of the fogs of error better than the faculty of speech.'
This simple proposition he expounded, word by word,
Until they best understood it who least perfectly had heard.
Even the judges comprehended as he ventured to explain
The impact of a spit-ball admonishing in vain.
Beginning at a period before Creation's morn,
He had reached the bounds of tolerance and Adam yet unborn.
As down the early centuries of pre-historic time
He tracked important principles and quoted striking rhyme,
And Whisky Bill, prosaic soul! proclaiming him a jay,
Had risen and like an earthquake, 'reeled unheededly away,'
And a late lamented cat, when opportunity should serve,
Was preparing to embark upon her parabolic curve,
A noise arose outside-the door was opened with a bang
And old Ebenezer Fink was heard ejaculating 'G'lang!'
Straight into that assembly gravely marched without a wink
An ancient ass-the property it was of Mr. Fink.
Its ears depressed and beating time to its infestive tread,
Silent through silence moved amain that stately quadruped!
It stopped before the orator, and in the lamplight thrown
Upon its tail they saw that member weighted with a stone.
Then spake old Ebenezer: 'Gents, I heern o' this debate
On w'ether v'ice or y'ears is best the mind to elevate.
Now 'yer's a bird ken throw some light uponto that tough theme:
He has 'em both, I'm free to say, oncommonly extreme.
He wa'n't invited for to speak, but he will not refuse
(If t'other gentleman ken wait) to exposay his views.'
Ere merriment or anger o'er amazement could prevail;
He cut the string that held the stone on that canary's tail.
Freed from the weight, that member made a gesture of delight,
Then rose until its rigid length was horizontal quite.
With lifted head and level ears along his withers laid,
Jack sighed, refilled his lungs and then-to put it mildly-brayed!
He brayed until the stones were stirred in circumjacent hills,
And sleeping women rose and fled, in divers kinds of frills.
'T is said that awful bugle-blast-to make the story briefWafted William Perry Peters through the window, like a leaf!
355
Such is the tale. If anything additional occurred
'Tis not set down, though, truly, I remember to have heard
That a gentleman named Peters, now residing at Soquel,
A considerable distance from the town of Muscatel,
Is opposed to education, and to rhetoric, as well.
~ Ambrose Bierce,
849:BY MICHING MALLECHO, Esq.

Is it a party in a parlour,
Crammed just as they on earth were crammed,
Some sipping punchsome sipping tea;
But, as you by their faces see,
All silent, and alldamned!
Peter Bell, by W. Wordsworth.

Ophelia.What means this, my lord?
Hamlet.Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it means mischief. ~Shakespeare.

PROLOGUE
Peter Bells, one, two and three,
O'er the wide world wandering be.
First, the antenatal Peter,
Wrapped in weeds of the same metre,
The so-long-predestined raiment
Clothed in which to walk his way meant
The second Peter; whose ambition
Is to link the proposition,
As the mean of two extremes
(This was learned from Aldric's themes)
Shielding from the guilt of schism
The orthodoxal syllogism;
The First Peterhe who was
Like the shadow in the glass
Of the second, yet unripe,
His substantial antitype.
Then came Peter Bell the Second,
Who henceforward must be reckoned
The body of a double soul,
And that portion of the whole
Without which the rest would seem
Ends of a disjointed dream.
And the Third is he who has
O'er the grave been forced to pass
To the other side, which is,
Go and try else,just like this.
Peter Bell the First was Peter
Smugger, milder, softer, neater,
Like the soul before it is
Born from that world into this.
The next Peter Bell was he,
Predevote, like you and me,
To good or evil as may come;
His was the severer doom,
For he was an evil Cotter,
And a polygamic Potter.
And the last is Peter Bell,
Damned since our first parents fell,
Damned eternally to Hell
Surely he deserves it well!
PART THE FIRST
DEATH
And Peter Bell, when he had been
With fresh-imported Hell-fire warmed,
Grew seriousfrom his dress and mien
'Twas very plainly to be seen
Peter was quite reformed.
His eyes turned up, his mouth turned down;
His accent caught a nasal twang;
He oiled his hair; there might be heard
The grace of God in every word
Which Peter said or sang.
But Peter now grew old, and had
An ill no doctor could unravel;
His torments almost drove him mad;
Some said it was a fever bad
Some swore it was the gravel.
His holy friends then came about,
And with long preaching and persuasion
Convinced the patient that, without
The smallest shadow of a doubt,
He was predestined to damnation.
They said'Thy name is Peter Bell;
Thy skin is of a brimstone hue;
Alive or deaday, sick or well
The one God made to rhyme with hell;
The other, I think, rhymes with you.'
Then Peter set up such a yell!
The nurse, who with some water gruel
Was climbing up the stairs, as well
As her old legs could climb themfell,
And broke them boththe fall was cruel.
The Parson from the casement lept
Into the lake of Windermere
And many an eelthough no adept
In God's right reason for itkept
Gnawing his kidneys half a year.
And all the rest rushed through the door,
And tumbled over one another,
And broke their skulls.Upon the floor
Meanwhile sat Peter Bell, and swore,
And cursed his father and his mother;
And raved of God, and sin, and death,
Blaspheming like an infidel;
And said, that with his clenchd teeth
He'd seize the earth from underneath,
And drag it with him down to hell.
As he was speaking came a spasm,
And wrenched his gnashing teeth asunder;
Like one who sees a strange phantasm
He lay,there was a silent chasm
Between his upper jaw and under.
And yellow death lay on his face;
And a fixed smile that was not human
Told, as I understand the case,
That he was gone to the wrong place:
I heard all this from the old woman.
Then there came down from Langdale Pike
A cloud, with lightning, wind and hail;
It swept over the mountains like
An ocean,and I heard it strike
The woods and crags of Grasmere vale.
And I saw the black storm come
Nearer, minute after minute;
Its thunder made the cataracts dumb;
With hiss, and clash, and hollow hum,
It neared as if the Devil was in it.
The Devil was in it:he had bought
Peter for half-a-crown; and when
The storm which bore him vanished, nought
That in the house that storm had caught
Was ever seen again.
The gaping neighbours came next day
They found all vanished from the shore:
The Bible, whence he used to pray,
Half scorched under a hen-coop lay;
Smashed glassand nothing more!
PART THE SECOND
THE DEVIL
The Devil, I safely can aver,
Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting;
Nor is he, as some sages swear,
A spirit, neither here nor there,
In nothingyet in everything.
He iswhat we are; for sometimes
The Devil is a gentleman;
At others a bard bartering rhymes
For sack; a statesman spinning crimes;
A swindler, living as he can;
A thief, who cometh in the night,
With whole boots and net pantaloons,
Like some one whom it were not right
To mention;or the luckless wight
From whom he steals nine silver spoons.
But in this case he did appear
Like a slop-merchant from Wapping,
And with smug face, and eye severe,
On every side did perk and peer
Till he saw Peter dead or napping.
He had on an upper Benjamin
(For he was of the driving schism)
In the which he wrapped his skin
From the storm he travelled in,
For fear of rheumatism.
He called the ghost out of the corse;
It was exceedingly like Peter,
Only its voice was hollow and hoarse
It had a queerish look of course
Its dress too was a little neater.
The Devil knew not his name and lot;
Peter knew not that he was Bell:
Each had an upper stream of thought,
Which made all seem as it was not;
Fitting itself to all things well.
Peter thought he had parents dear,
Brothers, sisters, cousins, cronies,
In the fens of Lincolnshire;
He perhaps had found them there
Had he gone and boldly shown his
Solemn phiz in his own village;
Where he thought oft when a boy
He'd clomb the orchard walls to pillage
The produce of his neighbour's tillage,
With marvellous pride and joy.
And the Devil thought he had,
'Mid the misery and confusion
Of an unjust war, just made
A fortune by the gainful trade
Of giving soldiers rations bad
The world is full of strange delusion
That he had a mansion planned
In a square like Grosvenor Square,
That he was aping fashion, and
That he now came to Westmoreland
To see what was romantic there.
And all this, though quite ideal,
Ready at a breath to vanish,
Was a state not more unreal
Than the peace he could not feel,
Or the care he could not banish.
After a little conversation,
The Devil told Peter, if he chose,
He'd bring him to the world of fashion
By giving him a situation
In his own serviceand new clothes.
And Peter bowed, quite pleased and proud,
And after waiting some few days
For a new liverydirty yellow
Turned up with blackthe wretched fellow
Was bowled to Hell in the Devil's chaise.
PART THE THIRD
HELL
Hell is a city much like London
A populous and a smoky city;
There are all sorts of people undone,
And there is little or no fun done;
Small justice shown, and still less pity.
There is a Castles, and a Canning,
A Cobbett, and a Castlereagh;
All sorts of caitiff corpses planning
All sorts of cozening for trepanning
Corpses less corrupt than they.
There is a -, who has lost
His wits, or sold them, none knows which;
He walks about a double ghost,
And though as thin as Fraud almost
Ever grows more grim and rich.
There is a Chancery Court; a King;
A manufacturing mob; a set
Of thieves who by themselves are sent
Similar thieves to represent;
An army; and a public debt.
Which last is a scheme of paper money,
And meansbeing interpreted
'Bees, keep your waxgive us the honey,
And we will plant, while skies are sunny,
Flowers, which in winter serve instead.'
There is a great talk of revolution
And a great chance of despotism
German soldierscampsconfusion
Tumultslotteriesragedelusion
Ginsuicideand methodism;
Taxes too, on wine and bread,
And meat, and beer, and tea, and cheese,
From which those patriots pure are fed,
Who gorge before they reel to bed
The tenfold essence of all these.
There are mincing women, mewing,
(Like cats, who amant miser,)
Of their own virtue, and pursuing
Their gentler sisters to that ruin,
Without whichwhat were chastity?
Lawyersjudgesold hobnobbers
Are therebailiffschancellors
Bishopsgreat and little robbers
Rhymesterspamphleteersstock-jobbers
Men of glory in the wars,
Things whose trade is, over ladies
To lean, and flirt, and stare, and simper,
Till all that is divine in woman
Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman,
Crucified 'twixt a smile and whimper.
Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling,
Frowning, preachingsuch a riot!
Each with never-ceasing labour,
Whilst he thinks he cheats his neighbour,
Cheating his own heart of quiet.
And all these meet at levees;
Dinners convivial and political;
Suppers of epic poets;teas,
Where small talk dies in agonies;
Breakfasts professional and critical;
Lunches and snacks so aldermanic
That one would furnish forth ten dinners,
Where reigns a Cretan-tongud panic,
Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic
Should make some losers, and some winners;
At conversazioniballs
Conventiclesand drawing-rooms
Courts of lawcommitteescalls
Of a morningclubsbook-stalls
Churchesmasqueradesand tombs.
And this is Helland in this smother
All are damnable and damned;
Each one damning, damns the other
They are damned by one another,
By none other are they damned.
'Tis a lie to say, 'God damns!'
Where was Heaven's Attorney General
When they first gave out such flams?
Let there be an end of shams,
They are mines of poisonous mineral.
Statesmen damn themselves to be
Cursed; and lawyers damn their souls
To the auction of a fee;
Churchmen damn themselves to see
God's sweet love in burning coals.
The rich are damned, beyond all cure,
To taunt, and starve, and trample on
The weak and wretched; and the poor
Damn their broken hearts to endure
Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan.
Sometimes the poor are damned indeed
To take,not means for being blessed,
But Cobbett's snuff, revenge; that weed
From which the worms that it doth feed
Squeeze less than they before possessed.
And some few, like we know who,
Damnedbut God alone knows why
To believe their minds are given
To make this ugly Hell a Heaven;
In which faith they live and die.
Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken,
Each man be he sound or no
Must indifferently sicken;
As when day begins to thicken,
None knows a pigeon from a crow,
So good and bad, sane and mad,
The oppressor and the oppressed;
Those who weep to see what others
Smile to inflict upon their brothers;
Lovers, haters, worst and best;
All are damnedthey breathe an air,
Thick, infected, joy-dispelling:
Each pursues what seems most fair,
Mining like moles, through mind, and there
Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care
In thrond state is ever dwelling.
PART THE FOURTH
SIN
Lo, Peter in Hell's Grosvenor Square,
A footman in the Devil's service!
And the misjudging world would swear
That every man in service there
To virtue would prefer vice.
But Peter, though now damned, was not
What Peter was before damnation.
Men oftentimes prepare a lot
Which ere it finds them, is not what
Suits with their genuine station.
All things that Peter saw and felt
Had a peculiar aspect to him;
And when they came within the belt
Of his own nature, seemed to melt,
Like cloud to cloud, into him.
And so the outward world uniting
To that within him, he became
Considerably uninviting
To those who, meditation slighting,
Were moulded in a different frame.
And he scorned them, and they scorned him;
And he scorned all they did; and they
Did all that men of their own trim
Are wont to do to please their whim,
Drinking, lying, swearing, play.
Such were his fellow-servants; thus
His virtue, like our own, was built
Too much on that indignant fuss
Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us
To bully one another's guilt.
He had a mind which was somehow
At once circumference and centre
Of all he might or feel or know;
Nothing went ever out, although
Something did ever enter.
He had as much imagination
As a pint-pot;he never could
Fancy another situation,
From which to dart his contemplation,
Than that wherein he stood.
Yet his was individual mind,
And new created all he saw
In a new manner, and refined
Those new creations, and combined
Them, by a master-spirit's law.
Thusthough unimaginative
An apprehension clear, intense,
Of his mind's work, had made alive
The things it wrought on; I believe
Wakening a sort of thought in sense.
But from the first 'twas Peter's drift
To be a kind of moral eunuch,
He touched the hem of Nature's shift,
Felt faintand never dared uplift
The closest, all-concealing tunic.
She laughed the while, with an arch smile,
And kissed him with a sister's kiss,
And said'My best Diogenes,
I love you wellbut, if you please,
Tempt not again my deepest bliss.
''Tis you are coldfor I, not coy,
Yield love for love, frank, warm, and true;
And Burns, a Scottish peasant boy
His errors prove itknew my joy
More, learnd friend, than you.
'Bocca bacciata non perde ventura,
Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna:
So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a
Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a
Low-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna.'
Then Peter rubbed his eyes severe,
And smoothed his spacious forehead down
With his broad palm;'twixt love and fear,
He looked, as he no doubt felt, queer,
And in his dream sate down.
The Devil was no uncommon creature;
A leaden-witted thiefjust huddled
Out of the dross and scum of nature;
A toad-like lump of limb and feature,
With mind, and heart, and fancy muddled.
He was that heavy, dull, cold thing,
The spirit of evil well may be:
A drone too base to have a sting;
Who gluts, and grimes his lazy wing,
And calls lust, luxury.
Now he was quite the kind of wight
Round whom collect, at a fixed aera,
Venison, turtle, hock, and claret,
Good cheerand those who come to share it
And best East Indian madeira!
It was his fancy to invite
Men of science, wit, and learning,
Who came to lend each other light;
He proudly thought that his gold's might
Had set those spirits burning.
And men of learning, science, wit,
Considered him as you and I
Think of some rotten tree, and sit
Lounging and dining under it,
Exposed to the wide sky.
And all the while, with loose fat smile,
The willing wretch sat winking there,
Believing 'twas his power that made
That jovial sceneand that all paid
Homage to his unnoticed chair.
Though to be sure this place was Hell;
He was the Deviland all they
What though the claret circled well,
And wit, like ocean, rose and fell?
Were damned eternally.
PART THE FIFTH
GRACE
Among the guests who often stayed
Till the Devil's petits-soupers,
A man there came, fair as a maid,
And Peter noted what he said,
Standing behind his master's chair.
He was a mighty poetand
A subtle-souled psychologist;
All things he seemed to understand,
Of old or newof sea or land
But his own mindwhich was a mist.
This was a man who might have turned
Hell into Heavenand so in gladness
A Heaven unto himself have earned;
But he in shadows undiscerned
Trusted,and damned himself to madness.
He spoke of poetry, and how
'Divine it wasa lighta love
A spirit which like wind doth blow
As it listeth, to and fro;
A dew rained down from God above;
'A power which comes and goes like dream,
And which none can ever trace
Heaven's light on earthTruth's brightest beam.'
And when he ceased there lay the gleam
Of those words upon his face.
Now Peter, when he heard such talk,
Would, heedless of a broken pate,
Stand like a man asleep, or balk
Some wishing guest of knife or fork,
Or drop and break his master's plate.
At night he oft would start and wake
Like a lover, and began
In a wild measure songs to make
On moor, and glen, and rocky lake,
And on the heart of man
And on the universal sky
And the wide earth's bosom green,
And the sweet, strange mystery
Of what beyond these things may lie,
And yet remain unseen.
For in his thought he visited
The spots in which, ere dead and damned,
He his wayward life had led;
Yet knew not whence the thoughts were fed
Which thus his fancy crammed.
And these obscure remembrances
Stirred such harmony in Peter,
That, whensoever he should please,
He could speak of rocks and trees
In poetic metre.
For though it was without a sense
Of memory, yet he remembered well
Many a ditch and quick-set fence;
Of lakes he had intelligence,
He knew something of heath and fell.
He had also dim recollections
Of pedlars tramping on their rounds;
Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections
Of saws, and proverbs; and reflections
Old parsons make in burying-grounds.
But Peter's verse was clear, and came
Announcing from the frozen hearth
Of a cold age, that none might tame
The soul of that diviner flame
It augured to the Earth:
Like gentle rains, on the dry plains,
Making that green which late was gray,
Or like the sudden moon, that stains
Some gloomy chamber's window-panes
With a broad light like day.
For language was in Peter's hand
Like clay while he was yet a potter;
And he made songs for all the land,
Sweet both to feel and understand,
As pipkins late to mountain Cotter.
And Mr. -, the bookseller,
Gave twenty pounds for some;then scorning
A footman's yellow coat to wear,
Peter, too proud of heart, I fear,
Instantly gave the Devil warning.
Whereat the Devil took offence,
And swore in his soul a great oath then,
'That for his damned impertinence
He'd bring him to a proper sense
Of what was due to gentlemen!'
PART THE SIXTH
DAMNATION
'O that mine enemy had written
A book!'cried Job:a fearful curse,
If to the Arab, as the Briton,
'Twas galling to be critic-bitten:
The Devil to Peter wished no worse.
When Peter's next new book found vent,
The Devil to all the first Reviews
A copy of it slyly sent,
With five-pound note as compliment,
And this short notice'Pray abuse.'
Then seriatim, month and quarter,
Appeared such mad tirades.One said
'Peter seduced Mrs. Foy's daughter,
Then drowned the mother in Ullswater,
The last thing as he went to bed.'
Another'Let him shave his head!
Where's Dr. Willis?Or is he joking?
What does the rascal mean or hope,
No longer imitating Pope,
In that barbarian Shakespeare poking?'
One more, 'Is incest not enough?
And must there be adultery too?
Grace after meat? Miscreant and Liar!
Thief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! Hell-fire
Is twenty times too good for you.
'By that last book of yours we think
You've double damned yourself to scorn;
We warned you whilst yet on the brink
You stood. From your black name will shrink
The babe that is unborn.'
All these Reviews the Devil made
Up in a parcel, which he had
Safely to Peter's house conveyed.
For carriage, tenpence Peter paid
Untied themread themwent half mad.
'What!' cried he, 'this is my reward
For nights of thought, and days of toil?
Do poets, but to be abhorred
By men of whom they never heard,
Consume their spirits' oil?
'What have I done to them?and who
Is Mrs. Foy? 'Tis very cruel
To speak of me and Betty so!
Adultery! God defend me! Oh!
I've half a mind to fight a duel.
'Or,' cried he, a grave look collecting,
'Is it my genius, like the moon,
Sets those who stand her face inspecting,
That face within their brain reflecting,
Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune?'
For Peter did not know the town,
But thought, as country readers do,
For half a guinea or a crown,
He bought oblivion or renown
From God's own voice in a review.
All Peter did on this occasion
Was, writing some sad stuff in prose.
It is a dangerous invasion
When poets criticize; their station
Is to delight, not pose.
The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair
For Born's translation of Kant's book;
A world of words, tail foremost, where
Rightwrongfalsetrueand fouland fair
As in a lottery-wheel are shook.
Five thousand crammed octavo pages
Of German psychologics,he
Who his furor verborum assuages
Thereon, deserves just seven months' wages
More than will e'er be due to me.
I looked on them nine several days,
And then I saw that they were bad;
A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise,
He never read them;with amaze
I found Sir William Drummond had.
When the book came, the Devil sent
It to P. Verbovale, Esquire,
With a brief note of compliment,
By that night's Carlisle mail. It went,
And set his soul on fire.
Fire, which ex luce praebens fumum,
Made him beyond the bottom see
Of truth's clear wellwhen I and you, Ma'am,
Go, as we shall do, subter humum,
We may know more than he.
Now Peter ran to seed in soul
Into a walking paradox;
For he was neither part nor whole,
Nor good, nor badnor knave nor fool;
Among the woods and rocks
Furious he rode, where late he ran,
Lashing and spurring his tame hobby;
Turned to a formal puritan,
A solemn and unsexual man,
He half believed White Obi.
This steed in vision he would ride,
High trotting over nine-inch bridges,
With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride,
Mocking and mowing by his side
A mad-brained goblin for a guide
Over corn-fields, gates, and hedges.
After these ghastly rides, he came
Home to his heart, and found from thence
Much stolen of its accustomed flame;
His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame
Of their intelligence.
To Peter's view, all seemed one hue;
He was no Whig, he was no Tory;
No Deist and no Christian he;
He got so subtle, that to be
Nothing, was all his glory.
One single point in his belief
From his organization sprung,
The heart-enrooted faith, the chief
Ear in his doctrines' blighted sheaf,
That 'Happiness is wrong';
So thought Calvin and Dominic;
So think their fierce successors, who
Even now would neither stint nor stick
Our flesh from off our bones to pick,
If they might 'do their do.'
His morals thus were undermined:
The old Peterthe hard, old Potter
Was born anew within his mind;
He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,
As when he tramped beside the Otter.
In the death hues of agony
Lambently flashing from a fish,
Now Peter felt amused to see
Shades like a rainbow's rise and flee,
Mixed with a certain hungry wish.
So in his Country's dying face
He lookedand, lovely as she lay,
Seeking in vain his last embrace,
Wailing her own abandoned case,
With hardened sneer he turned away:
And coolly to his own soul said;
'Do you not think that we might make
A poem on her when she's dead:
Or, noa thought is in my head
Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take:
'My wife wants one.Let who will bury
This mangled corpse! And I and you,
My dearest Soul, will then make merry,
As the Prince Regent did with Sherry,'
'Ayand at last desert me too.'
And so his Soul would not be gay,
But moaned within him; like a fawn
Moaning within a cave, it lay
Wounded and wasting, day by day,
Till all its life of life was gone.
As troubled skies stain waters clear,
The storm in Peter's heart and mind
Now made his verses dark and queer:
They were the ghosts of what they were,
Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind.
For he now raved enormous folly,
Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools, and Graves,
'Twould make George Colman melancholy
To have heard him, like a male Molly,
Chanting those stupid staves.
Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse
On Peter while he wrote for freedom,
So soon as in his song they spy
The folly which soothes tyranny,
Praise him, for those who feed 'em.
'He was a man, too great to scan;
A planet lost in truth's keen rays:
His virtue, awful and prodigious;
He was the most sublime, religious,
Pure-minded Poet of these days.'
As soon as he read that, cried Peter,
'Eureka! I have found the way
To make a better thing of metre
Than e'er was made by living creature
Up to this blessd day.'
Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil;
In one of which he meekly said:
'May Carnage and Slaughter,
Thy niece and thy daughter,
May Rapine and Famine,
Thy gorge ever cramming,
Glut thee with living and dead!
  'May Death and Damnation,
And Consternation,
Flit up from Hell with pure intent!
Slash them at Manchester,
Glasgow, Leeds, and Chester;
Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent.
'Let thy body-guard yeomen
Hew down babes and women,
And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven be rent!
When Moloch in Jewry
Munched children with fury,
It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent.'
PART THE SEVENTH
DOUBLE DAMNATION
The Devil now knew his proper cue.
Soon as he read the ode, he drove
To his friend Lord MacMurderchouse's,
A man of interest in both houses,
And said:'For money or for love,
'Pray find some cure or sinecure;
To feed from the superfluous taxes
A friend of oursa poetfewer
Have fluttered tamer to the lure
Than he.' His lordship stands and racks his
Stupid brains, while one might count
As many beads as he had boroughs,
At length replies; from his mean front,
Like one who rubs out an account,
Smoothing away the unmeaning furrows:
'It happens fortunately, dear Sir,
I can. I hope I need require
No pledge from you, that he will stir
In our affairs;like Oliver,
That he'll be worthy of his hire.'
These words exchanged, the news sent off
To Peter, home the Devil hied,
Took to his bed; he had no cough,
No doctor,meat and drink enough,
Yet that same night he died.
The Devil's corpse was leaded down;
His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf,
Mourning-coaches, many a one,
Followed his hearse along the town:
Where was the Devil himself?
When Peter heard of his promotion,
His eyes grew like two stars for bliss:
There was a bow of sleek devotion
Engendering in his back; each motion
Seemed a Lord's shoe to kiss.
He hired a house, bought plate, and made
A genteel drive up to his door,
With sifted gravel neatly laid,
As if defying all who said,
Peter was ever poor.
But a disease soon struck into
The very life and soul of Peter
He walked aboutslepthad the hue
Of health upon his cheeksand few
Dug betternone a heartier eater.
And yet a strange and horrid curse
Clung upon Peter, night and day;
Month after month the thing grew worse,
And deadlier than in this my verse
I can find strength to say.
Peter was dullhe was at first
Dulloh, so dullso very dull!
Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed
Still with this dulness was he cursed
Dullbeyond all conceptiondull.
No one could read his booksno mortal,
But a few natural friends, would hear him;
The parson came not near his portal;
His state was like that of the immortal
Described by Swiftno man could bear him.
His sister, wife, and children yawned,
With a long, slow, and drear ennui,
All human patience far beyond;
Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned,
Anywhere else to be.
But in his verse, and in his prose,
The essence of his dulness was
Concentred and compressed so close,
'Twould have made Guatimozin doze
On his red gridiron of brass.
A printer's boy, folding those pages,
Fell slumbrously upon one side;
Like those famed Seven who slept three ages.
To wakeful frenzy's vigil-rages,
As opiates, were the same applied.
Even the Reviewers who were hired
To do the work of his reviewing,
With adamantine nerves, grew tired;
Gaping and torpid they retired,
To dream of what they should be doing.
And worse and worse, the drowsy curse
Yawned in him, till it grew a pest
A wide contagious atmosphere,
Creeping like cold through all things near;
A power to infect and to infest.
His servant-maids and dogs grew dull;
His kitten, late a sportive elf;
The woods and lakes, so beautiful,
Of dim stupidity were full,
All grew dull as Peter's self.
The earth under his feetthe springs,
Which lived within it a quick life,
The air, the winds of many wings,
That fan it with new murmurings,
Were dead to their harmonious strife.
The birds and beasts within the wood,
The insects, and each creeping thing,
Were now a silent multitude;
Love's work was left unwroughtno brood
Near Peter's house took wing.
And every neighbouring cottager
Stupidly yawned upon the other:
No jackass brayed; no little cur
Cocked up his ears;no man would stir
To save a dying mother.
Yet all from that charmed district went
But some half-idiot and half-knave,
Who rather than pay any rent,
Would live with marvellous content,
Over his father's grave.
No bailiff dared within that space,
For fear of the dull charm, to enter;
A man would bear upon his face,
For fifteen months in any case,
The yawn of such a venture.
Seven miles abovebelowaround
This pest of dulness holds its sway;
A ghastly life without a sound;
To Peter's soul the spell is bound
How should it ever pass away?
'Composed at Florence, October 1819, and forwarded to Hunt (Nov. 2) to be published by C. & J. Ollier without the author's name; ultimately printed by Mrs. Shelley in the second edition of the Poetical Works, 1839. A skit by John Hamilton Reynolds, Peter Bell, A Lyrical Ballad, had already appeared (April, 1819), a few days before the publication of Wordsworth's Peter Bell, A Tale. These productions were reviewed in Leigh Hunt's Examiner (April 26, May 3, 1819); and to the entertainment derived from his perusal of Hunt's criticisms the composition of Shelley's Peter Bell the Third is chiefly owing.' ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Peter Bell The Third
,

IN CHAPTERS [50/152]



   25 Christianity
   24 Philosophy
   24 Integral Yoga
   19 Occultism
   9 Poetry
   7 Science
   6 Psychology
   4 Fiction
   3 Integral Theory
   2 Yoga
   2 Hinduism
   1 Thelema
   1 Islam
   1 Cybernetics
   1 Alchemy


   24 Sri Aurobindo
   16 Aleister Crowley
   11 Plotinus
   11 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   9 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   6 Plato
   5 Jorge Luis Borges
   4 Walt Whitman
   4 Jordan Peterson
   4 Carl Jung
   3 Satprem
   3 Saint Augustine of Hippo
   3 H P Lovecraft
   3 George Van Vrekhem
   3 Friedrich Nietzsche
   2 The Mother
   2 Swami Vivekananda
   2 Ken Wilber
   2 Edgar Allan Poe
   2 Aldous Huxley


   11 Magick Without Tears
   7 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
   6 The Problems of Philosophy
   6 The Life Divine
   5 The Future of Man
   5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
   4 Whitman - Poems
   4 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   4 The Secret Doctrine
   4 Maps of Meaning
   4 Liber ABA
   3 Twilight of the Idols
   3 The Phenomenon of Man
   3 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   3 Preparing for the Miraculous
   3 Lovecraft - Poems
   3 Labyrinths
   3 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   3 Essays Divine And Human
   3 City of God
   2 The Perennial Philosophy
   2 The Blue Cliff Records
   2 Sex Ecology Spirituality
   2 Poe - Poems
   2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
   2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
   2 Letters On Yoga IV
   2 Let Me Explain
   2 Aion
   2 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah


000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
  000.120 Now in the 1970s we can state an indisputable proposition of abundance
  of which the world power structures do not yet have dawning awareness. We can

0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
    Yet by forcing the brain to accept propositions of
     which one set is absurdity, the other truism, a

0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  It is the very first proposition that is wrong, I am not displeased
  with you - so all that follows cannot be correct.

01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   "The zeal for the Lord hath eaten me up." Such has indeed been the case with Pascal, almost literally. The fire that burned in him was too ardent and vehement for the vehicle, the material instrument, which was very soon used up and reduced to ashes. At twenty-four he was already a broken man, being struck with paralysis and neuras thenia; he died at the comparatively early age of 39, emulating, as it were, the life career of his Lord the Christ who died at 33. The Fire martyrised the body, but kindled and brought forth experiences and realisations that save and truths that abide. It was the Divine Fire whose vision and experience he had on the famous night of 23 November 1654 which brought about his final and definitive conversion. It was the same fire that had blazed up in his brain, while yet a boy, and made him a precocious genius, a marvel of intellectual power in the exact sciences. At 12 this prodigy discovered by himself the 32nd proposition of Euclid, Book I. At sixteen he wrote a treatise on conic sections. At nineteen he invented a calculating machine which, without the help of any mathematical rule or process, gave absolutely accurate results. At twenty-three he published his experiments with vacuum. At twenty-five he conducted the well-known experiment from the tower of St. Jacques, proving the existence of atmospheric pressure. His studies in infinitesimal calculus were remarkably creative and original. And it might be said he was a pioneer in quite a new branch of mathematics, viz., the mathematical theory of probability. We shall see presently how his preoccupation with the mathematics of chance and probability coloured and reinforced his metaphysics and theology.
   But the pressure upon his dynamic and heated brain the fiery zeal in his mindwas already proving too much and he was advised medically to take complete rest. Thereupon followed what was known as Pascal's mundane lifea period of distraction and dissipation; but this did not last long nor was it of a serious nature. The inner fire could brook no delay, it was eager and impatient to englobe other fields and domains. Indeed, it turned to its own field the heart. Pascal became initiated into the mystery of Faith and Grace. Still he had to pass through a terrible period of dejection and despair: the life of the world had given him no rest or relaxation, it served only to fill his cup of misery to the brim. But the hour of final relief was not long postponed: the Grace came to him, even as it came to Moses or St. Paul as a sudden flare of fire which burnt up the Dark Night and opened out the portals of Morning Glory.
  --
   "We know truth not by reason alone, but by the heart also: it is in the latter way that we know the first principles, and in vain does reasoning, that has no part in it, attempt to combat them... The heart feels... and the reason demon strates afterwards... Principles are felt, propositions are deduced. . . . "5
   About doubt, Pascal says that the perfect doubter, the Pyrrhonian as he is called, is a fiction. Pascal asks:
  --
   "Nous connaissons la vrit, non seulement par la raison, mais encore par Ie cur; c'est de cette dernire sorte que nous connaissons les premiers principes, et c'est en vain que Ie raisonnement qui n'y a point de part, essaye de leg combattre... Le coeur sent et la raison dmontre ensuite Les principes se sentent, leg propositions se concluent."
   "Que Cera done l'homme en cet tat? Doutera-t-il de tout? . . . doutera-t-il s'il doute? doutera-t-il s'il est?. . En fait qu'il n'y ajamais eu de pyrrhonien effectif parfait."

02.05 - Federated Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The autocratic empire is dead and gone: we need not fear its shadow or ghostly regeneration. But the ideal which inspired it in secret and justified its advent and reign is a truth that has still its day. The drive of Nature, of the inner consciousness of humanity was always to find a greater and larger unit for the collective life of mankind. That unit today has to be a federation of free peoples and nations. In the place of nations, several such commonwealths must now form the broad systems of the body politic of human collectivity. That must give the pattern of its texture, the outline of its configuration the shape of things to come. Such unit is no longer a hypothetical proposition, a nebula, a matter of dream and imagination. It has become a practical necessity; first of all, because of the virtual impossibility of any single nation, big or small, standing all by itself alonemilitary and political and economic exigencies demand inescapable collaboration with others, and secondly, because of the still stricter geographical compulsion the speed and ease of communication has made the globe so small and all its parts so interdependent that none can possibly afford to be exclusive and self-centred.
   The organization of this greater and larger unit is the order of the day. It does not seem possible at this stage to go straight to the whole of humanity at large and make of it one single indivisible entity, obliterating all barriers of race and nation. An intermediate step is still necessary even if that remains the final end. Nationhood has been a helper in that direction; it is now a bar. And yet an indiscriminate internationalism cannot meet the situation today, it overshoots the mark. The march of events and circumstances prescribe that nations should combine to form groups or, as they say in French, societies of nations. The combination, however, must be freely determined, as voluntary partnership in a common labour organisation for common profit and achievement. This problem has to be solved first, then only can the question of nationalism or other allied knots be unravelled. Nature the Sphinx has set the problem before us and we have to answer it here and now, if humanity is to be saved and welded together into a harmonious whole for a divine purpose.

02.11 - New World-Conditions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   It is a trite saying that one must change with the changing times. But how many can really do so or know even how to do so? In politics, as in life generally (politics is a part of life, the "precipitated" part, one may say in chemical language), the principle is well-known, though often in a pejorative sense, as policy or tactics. Anyhow the policy pays: for it is one of the main lines, if not the main line of action along which lies success in the practical field. And precisely he who cannot change, who does not see the necessity of change, although conditions and circumstances have changed, is known as the ideologist, the doctrinaire, the fanatic. The no-changer does not change with the times: for, according to him, that is the nature of the weather-cock, the time-server. On the contrary, he seeks to impose his ideas (sometimes called ideals), notions, prejudgments and even prejudices upon time and circumstance. Such an endeavour, on most occasions, can have only a modicum of success; and a blind insistence may even lead to disaster. It may not be difficult to modify some surface movements of the oceanic surge of life, but to control and comm and it is quite a different proposition. This, however, is not to say that opportunism, slavery to circumstances should be the order of the day. Not at all. One is not asked to sacrifice the bed-rock truth and principle and run after the fleeting mode, the momentary need, the passing interest, to follow always the comfortable line of least resistance. But one has to distinguish. There are things of local and transient utility and there are things of abiding value brought up by deeper world-currents in the conditions and circumstances that face us. When such great occasionsgolden opportunities they are calledcome, they come with their own norms, and then it is foolish to force upon them the narrow strait-jacket forms fabricated by our old habits and preconceived notions.
   We talk even today of British Imperialism, of the Shylock nature of the white coloniser and exploiter

02.12 - The Ideals of Human Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The third is the religious principle. Religion, that is to say, institutional religion has also sought to unify mankind on a larger basis, as large indeed as the world itself. The aim of Christendom, of Islam was frankly a conquest of the whole human race for the one jealous Lord. Buddhism and Hinduism did not overtly or with a set purpose attempt any such worldwide proselytism, but their influence and actual working had almost a similar effect:at least in the case of the former, it was like a flood throwing down many local boundaries, overflooding distant countries, and peoples, giving them all one unified religious life and culture. But here too we meet the same objectionable feature as there is in the attempt at unity through the racial principle. For religious imperialism cannot succeed in unifying humanity, as amply demonstrated by the Roman Catholic Church; and like political imperialism it was more or less an experiment in the line, effecting nothing beyond a moral atmosphere. Even a federation of religions, contemplated by some idealists, seems hardly a practicable proposition; for it is only a mental conception and has no compelling vital force in it. At best it is only a sign-post, a pointer to the goal Nature and humanity have been endeavouring to evolve and realise.
   A new type of imperialism for imperialism it is in essence has been developing in recent times; and it seems it shall have its day and contri bute its share of experimentation towards the goal we are speaking of. I am of course referring to what has been frankly and aptly termed as the Dictatorship of the Proletariate. It is an attempt to cut across all other boundaries and unities of human groupingsracial, national, religious, even familial. It seeks to unify and consolidate one whole stratum of humanity in a single stream-lined steel-frame organisation. At least that was the ideal till yesterday; there seems to be growing here too a movement towards decentralisation. Naturally, even as an organisation that is top-heavy is bound to topple down in the end, likewise an organisation that is bottom-heavy, that is to say, restricts to that portion only of its body all sap and dynamism, is also bound to deteriorate and disintegrate. A tree does not live by its branches and leaves and flowers alone, no doubt, nor does it live by its roots alone.

02.14 - Panacea of Isms, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Nor can socialism remedy all the ills society suffers from, if it merely or mainly means the abolition of private enterprise and the assumption by the State of the entire economic and even cultural or educational apparatus of the society. Even as an economic proposition State Socialism, which is only another name of Totalitarianism, is hardly an unmixed good. First of all, however selfish and profiteering the individual may be, still, one must remember that it is always the individual who is adventurous and inventive, it is he who discovers, creates new things and beautiful things. A collective or global enterprise makes for massiveness and quantity, but it means also uniformity, often a dead uniformity: for variety, for originality, as well as for the aesthetic tone and the human touch, the personal element is needed, seems to be indispensable. Education in such a system would mean a set routine and pattern, an efficient machine to bring out consistently and continuously uniform types of men who are more or less 'automatons, mechanical and regimented in their make-up and behaviour. An all-out socialistic Government will bear down and entomb the deeper springs of human consciousness, the magic powers of initiative and creativity that depend upon individual liberty and the free play of personal choice. We do not deny that Socialism is an antidote to another malady in the social body the parcellation, the fragmentation into a thousand petty interestsall aggressive and combative-of the economic strength of a community, and also the stupendous inequality and maldistribution of wealth and opportunity. But it brings in its own poison.
   It is a great illusion, as has been pointed out by many, that a collective and impersonal body cannot be profiteers and war-mongers. A nation as a whole can very well be moved by greed and violence and Sieglust (passion for conquest)Nazism has another name, it is also called National Socialism. Everything depends not upon the form, but the spirit that animates the form. It is the spirit, man's inner nature that is to be handled, dealt with and changed; outer systems and forms have only a secondary importance.

05.02 - Physician, Heal Thyself, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   And if we cannot correct and mould as we wish the little world within which is our own, how can we expect to correct or change the vaster outer world? To leave oneself to be as one is and to try to make others change is evidently an absurd and self-contradictory proposition. On the other hand, if the first thing that one does is to correct oneself, then one will find, much to one's surprise and satisfaction, that there is very little to correct in the world, everything has been already corrected automatically.
   Each man is given his little domain within him and he is master of that domain. Nobody is given more (or less even) than what he can successfully manage: the charge is accurately measured according to capacity. One can be indeed a roi fainant, if one chooses to be so; but that is not man's inevitable destiny; he can truly be the ruling king and exercise, to the full, his authority. It is a simple truth that man has a will and can wield it. This will he can consciously develop, increase and enlarge, make it an extremely powerful, if not invincible, instrument for action.

05.05 - In Quest of Reality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Positivists are those who swear by facts. Facts to them mean naturally facts attested in the end by sense-experience. To a positivist the only question that matters and that needs to be answered and can be answered is whether a thing is or is not physically: other questions are otiose, irrelevant, misleading. So problems of the Good, of the Beautiful, of God are meaningless. When one says this is good, that is bad, well, it is a proposition that cannot be related to any fact, it is a subjective personal valuation. In the objective world a thing simply is or is not, one cannot say it is good or it is bad. The thing called good by one is called bad by another, the same thing that is good to you now will appear bad at another time. This is a region absolutely of personal and variable idiosyncrasy. The same with regard to the concept of beauty. That a thing is beautiful or ugly is a subjective judgment; it is not and cannot be an objective statement. Beauty is a formula in your mind and imagination, it is a changing mode of your apprehension. The concept of God too fares no better. God exists: it is a judgment based upon no fact or facts of sense-experience. However we may analyse it, it is found to have no direct or even indirect but inevitable rapport with the field of actual reality. There is between the two an unbridgeable hiatus. This is a position restated in a modern style, familiar to the Kantian Critique of Pure Reason.
   There are two ways off acing the problem. First, the Kantian way which cuts the Gordian knot. We say here that there are two realms in which man lives, but they are incommensurables: the truths and categories of one cannot be judged and tested by those of the other. Each is sui generis, each is valid in its own right, in its own dominion. God, Soul, Immortality these are realities belonging to one section of our nature, seizable by a faculty other than the Pure Reason, viz.,the Practical Reason; while the realities given by the senses and the judgments of the logical mind are of another section. It may be said one is physical, the other metaphysical. The positivists limit their field of enquiry and knowledge to the physical: they seek to keep the other domain quite apart as something imaginary, illusory, often unnecessary and not unoften harmful to true human interest.

10.08 - Consciousness as Freedom, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In the lower creation it is always a play of divergent forces and the individual being is only a field, a passive field for the play of cosmic or collective forces. It is in man, with the awakening of an individual consciousness in him, that a movement of self-assertion, of willed reaction has started in nature, that is to say, one is no more content with playing the role of a slave executing helplessly what is demanded of him by an external agent but is now making his own terms and propositions. That is how man is man because he is creating his own self and his own environment.
   Consciousness, however, is not mere consciousness, that is to say, awareness; it is also power, power for organisation and execution. It is unconsciousness that is or invariably leads to disorderliness, disorganisation and confusion. It is the light of consciousness that brings order out of chaos, gives an organised direction to forces moving at random and with no purpose. Man has started organising his life since he acquired the light of consciousness. He has been doing the yoga of the intelligent will (Gita's buddhi-yoga) since his advent upon earth. But even in man this force of light, the energy of consciousness is not fully operative because man is not fully conscious, he is only partially so. His mind is conscious and has developed into intelligence (a little strayed into intellectuality); but there are large domains in him that are wholly unconscious, that is to say, move in mechanical rounds, a passive slave of external impacts. I am referring to his vital being and his physical being. Even like the mind these too must admit into themselves the light of the consciousness in order to free themselves from the influence of other external forces and attain the sense of their own truth and self-fulfilment.

1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  genuinely artistic and creative production. The fundamental propositions of fascism and communism were
  rational, logical, statable, comprehensible and terribly wrong. No great ideological struggle presently

1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  following key propositions first:
  29
  --
  result of the incompatibility of (implicit and explicit) individual moral presumptions and propositions, in
  the interpersonal sphere (arise as a result of an interpersonal war of implicit gods). Such clashes may be

1.02 - Prayer of Parashara to Vishnu, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  kāra cannot be very well rendered by any European term. It means the principle of individual existence, that which appropriates perceptions, and on which depend the notions, I think, I feel, I am. It might be expressed by the proposition of Descartes reversed; "Sum, ergo cogito, sentio," &c. The equivalent employed by Mr. Colebrooke, egotism, has the advantage of an analogous etymology, Aha
  kāra being derived from Aham, 'I;' as in the Hari Vaṃśa: 'He (Brahmā), oh Bhārata, said, I will create creatures.' See also S. Kārikā, p. 91.

1.02 - SOCIAL HEREDITY AND PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  These three linked propositions complete a logical structure
  whose perfect harmony proclaims its truth.

1.02 - The Necessity of Magick for All, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  It is then (you will say) impossible to "do wrong", since all phenomena are equally "Illusion" and the answer is always "Nothing." In theory one can hardly deny this proposition; but in practice how shall I put it? "The state of Illusion which for convenience I call my present consciousness is such that the course of action A is more natural to me that the course of action B?"
  Or: A is a shorter cut to Nothing; A is less likely to create internal conflict.

1.02 - The Pit, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  Qabalists and all the various schools of Mystics generally begin from a still more absolute point of view, arguing that the whole controversy is a purely verbal one; for all such ontological propositions can, with a little ingenuity, be reduced to one form or another. There is in consequence of this observation in the realm of modern Philosophy what is
  80

1.02 - The Vision of the Past, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  These are three propositions which may be briefly de-
  veloped as follows :

1.03 - THE EARTH IN ITS EARLY STAGES, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  If we put these two propositions side by side wc see that they
  interweave and shed light upon each other without ambiguity.

1.04 - HOW THE .TRUE WORLD. ULTIMATELY BECAME A FABLE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
    simple, convincing. It was a paraphrase of the proposition
    "I, Plato, am the truth.")

1.04 - KAI VALYA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  Patanjali has advanced the proposition that these powers
  come by first, sometimes by chemical means, or they may be

1.04 - SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  These are three propositions which may be briefly developed
  as follows.

1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  Theorem demonstrated that any internally consistent and logical system of propositions must necessarily be
  predicated upon assumptions that cannot be proved from within the confines of that system. The

1.04 - Wherefore of World?, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  To say on the other hand that this world was necessity, is simply to affirm that the reason for which it exists, so prevailed over all others as to determine the realisation of this possibility and postpone to it the realisation of others,a self-evident proposition.
  Whether this be the best or the worst of all possible worlds, it is the necessary manifestation of a given sum of contingencies.

1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  Club is dedicated to the proposition that only by changing
  ourselves can we change the world, or variously put: A

1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  resulted in the proposition "omne bonum a Deo, omne malum
  ab homine." Another logical consequence was the subsequent
  --
  mentioning, however, that the reverse proposition: "the thing is
  the blacker, the less it is mixed with white," not only has the

1.05 - Computing Machines and the Nervous System, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
  1. P n is a proposition involving the number n.
  2. P n has been proved for n = 1.

1.05 - Consciousness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  Such is our own particular bias; we place ourselves at the center of the world and bestow the gift of consciousness upon all those who share our way of being and perceiving things. Not so long ago, we marveled that one could be Persian. However, if we want to understand and discover what consciousness truly is, and utilize it, we must indeed go beyond this narrow perspective. After having attained a certain degree of mental silence, Sri Aurobindo was able to make the following observations: Mental consciousness is only the human range which no more exhausts all the possible ranges of consciousness than human sight exhausts all the gradations of color or human hearing all the gradations of sound for there is much above or below that is to man invisible and inaudible. So there are ranges of consciousness above and below the human range, with which the normal human has no contact and they seem to it unconscious, supramental or overmental and submental ranges.42 . . . What we call unconsciousness is simply other-consciousness. . . . We are really no more unconscious when we are asleep or stunned or drugged or "dead" or in any other state, than when we are plunged in inner thought oblivious of our physical selves and our surroundings. For anyone who has advanced even a little way in Yoga, this is a most elementary proposition. And Sri Aurobindo adds: As we progress and awaken to the soul in us and things, we shall realize that there is a consciousness also in the plant,
  42

1.05 - Knowledge by Aquaintance and Knowledge by Description, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
  We shall say that an object is 'known by description' when we know that it is 'the so-and-so', i.e. when we know that there is one object, and no more, having a certain property; and it will generally be implied that we do not have knowledge of the same object by acquaintance. We know that the man with the iron mask existed, and many propositions are known about him; but we do not know who he was. We know that the candidate who gets the most votes will be elected, and in this case we are very likely also acquainted (in the only sense in which one can be acquainted with some one else) with the man who is, in fact, the candidate who will get most votes; but we do not know which of the candidates he is, i.e. we do not know any proposition of the form 'A is the candidate who will get most votes' where A is one of the candidates by name. We shall say that we have 'merely descriptive knowledge' of the so-and-so when, although we know that the so-and-so exists, and although we may possibly be acquainted with the object which is, in fact, the so-and-so, yet we do not know any proposition '_a_ is the so-and-so', where _a_ is something with which we are acquainted.
  When we say 'the so-and-so exists', we mean that there is just one object which is the so-and-so. The proposition '_a_ is the so-and-so' means that _a_ has the property so-and-so, and nothing else has. 'Mr.
  A. is the Unionist candidate for this constituency' means 'Mr. A. is a Unionist candidate for this constituency, and no one else is'. 'The
  --
  Common words, even proper names, are usually really descriptions. That is to say, the thought in the mind of a person using a proper name correctly can generally only be expressed explicitly if we replace the proper name by a description. Moreover, the description required to express the thought will vary for different people, or for the same person at different times. The only thing constant (so long as the name is rightly used) is the object to which the name applies. But so long as this remains constant, the particular description involved usually makes no difference to the truth or falsehood of the proposition in which the name appears.
  Let us take some illustrations. Suppose some statement made about
  --
  It would seem that, when we make a statement about something only known by description, we often _intend_ to make our statement, not in the form involving the description, but about the actual thing described. That is to say, when we say anything about Bismarck, we should like, if we could, to make the judgement which Bismarck alone can make, namely, the judgement of which he himself is a constituent. In this we are necessarily defeated, since the actual Bismarck is unknown to us. But we know that there is an object B, called Bismarck, and that B was an astute diplomatist. We can thus _describe_ the proposition we should like to affirm, namely, 'B was an astute diplomatist', where B is the object which was Bismarck. If we are describing Bismarck as 'the first
  Chancellor of the German Empire', the proposition we should like to affirm may be described as 'the proposition asserting, concerning the actual object which was the first Chancellor of the German Empire, that this object was an astute diplomatist'. What enables us to communicate in spite of the varying descriptions we employ is that we know there is a true proposition concerning the actual Bismarck, and that however we may vary the description (so long as the description is correct) the proposition described is still the same. This proposition, which is described and is known to be true, is what interests us; but we are not acquainted with the proposition itself, and do not know it, though we know it is true.
  It will be seen that there are various stages in the removal from acquaintance with particulars: there is Bismarck to people who knew him;
  Bismarck to those who only know of him through history; the man with the iron mask; the longest-lived of men. These are progressively further removed from acquaintance with particulars; the first comes as near to acquaintance as is possible in regard to another person; in the second, we shall still be said to know 'who Bismarck was'; in the third, we do not know who was the man with the iron mask, though we can know many propositions about him which are not logically deducible from the fact that he wore an iron mask; in the fourth, finally, we know nothing beyond what is logically deducible from the definition of the man. There is a similar hierarchy in the region of universals. Many universals, like many particulars, are only known to us by description. But here, as in the case of particulars, knowledge concerning what is known by description is ultimately reducible to knowledge concerning what is known by acquaintance.
  The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: _Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted_.
  We shall not at this stage attempt to answer all the objections which may be urged against this fundamental principle. For the present, we shall merely point out that, in some way or other, it must be possible to meet these objections, for it is scarcely conceivable that we can make a judgement or entertain a supposition without knowing what it is that we are judging or supposing about. We must attach _some_ meaning to the words we use, if we are to speak significantly and not utter mere noise; and the meaning we attach to our words must be something with which we are acquainted. Thus when, for example, we make a statement about Julius Caesar, it is plain that Julius Caesar himself is not before our minds, since we are not acquainted with him. We have in mind some description of Julius Caesar: 'the man who was assassinated on the

1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  It is capacity to voluntarily face the unknown, and to reconfigure accordingly the propositions that
  guided past adaptation, that constitutes the eternal spirit of man, the world-creating Word. The existence
  --
  for myth and religion. The propositions of myth and religion, in turn, help guide and stabilize revolutionary
  human adaptation. These answers have been rejected prematurely and without sufficient consideration.
  --
  brought to mind explicitly, as a proposition or image. The capacity for declarative memory may be a relatively
  recent feat of evolution, appearing early in the vertebrates with the development of the hippocampus, and the

1.05 - The Universe The 0 = 2 Equation, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  N. It has taken a long while to clear the ground. That I did not expect; the above propositions are so familiar to me, they run so cleanly through my mind, that, until I came to set them down in order, I had no idea what a long and difficult business it all was.
  Still, it's a long lane, etc. We have seen that "Two" (or "Many") are unsatisfactory as origin, if only because they can always be reduced to "One"; and "One" itself is no better, because, among other things, it finds itself forced to deny the very premises on which it was founded.

1.05 - Yoga and Hypnotism, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  What is this force that enables or compels a weak man to become so rigid that strong arms cannot bend him? that reverses the operations of the senses and abrogates pain? that changes the fixed character of a man in the shortest of periods? that is able to develop power where there was no power, moral strength where there was weakness, health where there was disease? that in its higher manifestations can exceed the barriers of space and time and produce that far-sight, far-hearing and far-thinking which shows mind to be an untrammelled agent or medium pervading the world and not limited to the body which it informs or seems to inform? The European scientist experimenting with hypnotism is handling forces which he cannot understand, stumbling on truths of which he cannot give a true account. His feet are faltering on the threshold of Yoga. It is held by some thinkers, and not unreasonably if we consider these phenomena, that mind is all and contains all. It is not the body which determines the operations of the mind, it is the mind which determines the laws of the body. It is the ordinary law of the body that if it is struck, pierced or roughly pressed it feels pain. This law is created by the mind which associates pain with these contacts, and if the mind changes its dharma and is able to associate with these contacts not pain but insensibility or pleasure, then they will bring about those results of insensibility or pleasure and no other. The pain and pleasure are not the result of the contact, neither is their seat in the body; they are the result of association and their seat is in the mind. Vinegar is sour, sugar sweet, but to the hypnotised mind vinegar can be sweet, sugar sour. The sourness or sweetness is not in the vinegar or sugar, but in the mind. The heart also is the subject of the mind. My emotions are like my physical feelings, the result of association, and my character is the result of accumulated past experiences with their resultant associations and reactions crystallising into habits of mind and heart summed up in the word, character. These things like all the rest that are made of the stuff of associations are not permanent or binding but fluid and mutable, anity sarvasaskr. If my friend blames me, I am grieved; that is an association and not binding. The grief is not the result of the blame but of an association in the mind. I can change the association so far that blame will cause me no grief, praise no elation. I can entirely stop the reactions of joy and grief by the same force that created them. They are habits of the mind, nothing more In the same way though with more difficulty I can stop the reactions of physical pain and pleasure so that nothing will hurt my body. If I am a coward today, I can be a hero tomorrow. The cowardice was merely the habit of associating certain things with pain and grief and of shrinking from the pain and grief; this shrinking and the physical sensations in the vital or nervous man which accompany it are called fear, and they can be dismissed by the action of the mind which created them. All these are propositions which European Science is even now unwilling to admit, yet it is being proved more and more by the phenomena of hypnotism that these effects can be temporarily at least produced by one man upon another; and it has even been proved that disease can be permanently cured or character permanently changed by the action of one mind upon another. The rest will be established in time by the development of hypnotism.
  The difference between Yoga and hypnotism is that what hypnotism does for a man through the agency of another and in the sleeping state, Yoga does for him by his own agency and in the waking state. The hypnotic sleep is necessary in order to prevent the activity of the subjects mind full of old ideas and associations from interfering with the operator. In the waking state he would naturally refuse to experience sweetness in vinegar or sourness in sugar or to believe that he can change from disease to health, cowardice to heroism by a mere act of faith; his established associations would rebel violently and successfully against such contradictions of universal experience. The force which transcends matter would be hampered by the obstruction of ignorance and attachment to universal error. The hypnotic sleep does not make the mind a tabula rasa but it renders it passive to everything but the touch of the operator. Yoga similarly teaches passivity of the mind so that the will may act unhampered by the saskras or old associations. It is these saskras, the habits formed by experience in the body, heart or mind, that form the laws of our psychology. The associations of the mind are the stuff of which our life is made. They are more persistent in the body than in the mind and therefore harder to alter. They are more persistent in the race than in the individual; the conquest of the body and mind by the individual is comparatively easy and can be done in the space of a single life, but the same conquest by the race involves the development of ages. It is conceivable, however, that the practice of Yoga by a great number of men and persistence in the practice by their descendants might bring about profound changes in human psychology and, by stamping these changes into body and brain through heredity, evolve a superior race which would endure and by the law of the survival of the fittest eliminate the weaker kinds of humanity. Just as the rudimentary mind of the animal has been evolved into the fine instrument of the human being so the rudiments of higher force and faculty in the present race might evolve into the perfect buddhi of the Yogin.

1.06 - Being Human and the Copernican Principle, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  Sun was a more correct proposition than the Sun orbiting
  around the Earth. As at that time the general belief was that

1.06 - The Sign of the Fishes, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  Testament is a somewhat uncomfortable proposition to swallow.
  The northerly, or easterly, fish, which the spring-point

1.06 - Yun Men's Every Day is a Good Day, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
  titude of arguments and propositions, though those who have
  not yet penetrated want (me as commentator) to go on like

1.079 - The Snatchers, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
  12. They say, “This is a losing proposition.”
  13. But it will be only a single nudge.

1.07 - Hui Ch'ao Asks about Buddha, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
  positions of prince and minister, ct or the four propositions/
  they simply talk of arrowpoints meeting. The style of Fa Yen's

1.07 - On Our Knowledge of General Principles, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
  In other words, 'anything implied by a true proposition is true', or
  'whatever follows from a true proposition is true'.
  This principle is really involved--at least, concrete instances of it are involved--in all demonstrations. Whenever one thing which we believe is used to prove something else, which we consequently believe, this principle is relevant. If any one asks: 'Why should I accept the results of valid arguments based on true premisses?' we can only answer by appealing to our principle. In fact, the truth of the principle is impossible to doubt, and its obviousness is so great that at first sight it seems almost trivial. Such principles, however, are not trivial to the philosopher, for they show that we may have indubitable knowledge which is in no way derived from objects of sense.
  --
  _exist_ except by the help of experience. That is to say, if we wish to prove that something of which we have no direct experience exists, we must have among our premisses the existence of one or more things of which we have direct experience. Our belief that the Emperor of China exists, for example, rests upon testimony, and testimony consists, in the last analysis, of sense-data seen or heard in reading or being spoken to. Rationalists believed that, from general consideration as to what must be, they could deduce the existence of this or that in the actual world. In this belief they seem to have been mistaken. All the knowledge that we can acquire _a priori_ concerning existence seems to be hypothetical: it tells us that if one thing exists, another must exist, or, more generally, that if one proposition is true, another must be true. This is exemplified by the principles we have already dealt with, such as '_if_ this is true, and this implies that, then that is true', or '_if_ this and that have been repeatedly found connected, they will probably be connected in the next instance in which one of them is found'. Thus the scope and power of _a priori_ principles is strictly limited. All knowledge that something exists must be in part dependent on experience. When anything is known immediately, its existence is known by experience alone; when anything is proved to exist, without being known immediately, both experience and _a priori_ principles must be required in the proof. Knowledge is called _empirical_ when it rests wholly or partly upon experience. Thus all knowledge which asserts existence is empirical, and the only _a priori_ knowledge concerning existence is hypothetical, giving connexions among things that exist or may exist, but not giving actual existence.
  _A priori_ knowledge is not all of the logical kind we have been hitherto considering. Perhaps the most important example of non-logical
  --
  The same thing is exemplified in geometry. If we want to prove some property of _all_ triangles, we draw some one triangle and reason about it; but we can avoid making use of any property which it does not share with all other triangles, and thus, from our particular case, we obtain a general result. We do not, in fact, feel our certainty that two and two are four increased by fresh instances, because, as soon as we have seen the truth of this proposition, our certainty becomes so great as to be incapable of growing greater. Moreover, we feel some quality of necessity about the proposition 'two and two are four', which is absent from even the best attested empirical generalizations. Such generalizations always remain mere facts: we feel that there might be a world in which they were false, though in the actual world they happen to be true. In any possible world, on the contrary, we feel that two and two would be four: this is not a mere fact, but a necessity to which everything actual and possible must conform.
  The case may be made clearer by considering a genuinely-empirical generalization, such as 'All men are mortal.' It is plain that we believe this proposition, in the first place, because there is no known instance of men living beyond a certain age, and in the second place because there seem to be physiological grounds for thinking that an organism such as a man's body must sooner or later wear out. Neglecting the second ground, and considering merely our experience of men's mortality, it is plain that we should not be content with one quite clearly understood instance of a man dying, whereas, in the case of 'two and two are four', one instance does suffice, when carefully considered, to persuade us that the same must happen in any other instance. Also we can be forced to admit, on reflection, that there may be some doubt, however slight, as to whether _all_ men are mortal. This may be made plain by the attempt to imagine two different worlds, in one of which there are men who are not mortal, while in the other two and two make five. When Swift invites us to consider the race of Struldbugs who never die, we are able to acquiesce in imagination. But a world where two and two make five seems quite on a different level. We feel that such a world, if there were one, would upset the whole fabric of our knowledge and reduce us to utter doubt.
  The fact is that, in simple mathematical judgements such as 'two and two are four', and also in many judgements of logic, we can know the general proposition without inferring it from instances, although some instance is usually necessary to make clear to us what the general proposition means. This is why there is real utility in the process of _deduction_, which goes from the general to the general, or from the general to the particular, as well as in the process of _induction_, which goes from the particular to the particular, or from the particular to the general.
  It is an old debate among philosophers whether deduction ever gives
  _new_ knowledge. We can now see that in certain cases, at least, it does do so. If we already know that two and two always make four, and we know that Brown and Jones are two, and so are Robinson and Smith, we can deduce that Brown and Jones and Robinson and Smith are four. This is new knowledge, not contained in our premisses, because the general proposition, 'two and two are four', never told us there were such people as Brown and Jones and Robinson and Smith, and the particular premisses do not tell us that there were four of them, whereas the particular proposition deduced does tell us both these things.
  But the newness of the knowledge is much less certain if we take the stock instance of deduction that is always given in books on logic, namely, 'All men are mortal; Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.' In this case, what we really know beyond reasonable doubt is that certain men, A, B, C, were mortal, since, in fact, they have died.
  --
  A, B, C, to Socrates, than to go round by the general proposition, 'all men are mortal'. For the probability that Socrates is mortal is greater, on our data, than the probability that all men are mortal. (This is obvious, because if all men are mortal, so is Socrates; but if Socrates is mortal, it does not follow that all men are mortal.) Hence we shall reach the conclusion that Socrates is mortal with a greater approach to certainty if we make our argument purely inductive than if we go by way of 'all men are mortal' and then use deduction.
  This illustrates the difference between general propositions known _a priori_ such as 'two and two are four', and empirical generalizations such as 'all men are mortal'. In regard to the former, deduction is the right mode of argument, whereas in regard to the latter, induction is always theoretically preferable, and warrants a greater confidence in the truth of our conclusion, because all empirical generalizations are more uncertain than the instances of them.
  We have now seen that there are propositions known _a priori_, and that among them are the propositions of logic and pure mathematics, as well as the fundamental propositions of ethics. The question which must next occupy us is this: How is it possible that there should be such knowledge? And more particularly, how can there be knowledge of general propositions in cases where we have not examined all the instances, and indeed never can examine them all, because their number is infinite?
  These questions, which were first brought prominently forward by the German philosopher Kant (1724-1804), are very difficult, and historically very important.

1.07 - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
  Likewise, in order to develop formal rationality, it is not necessary to learn calculus and propositional logic. Every time you imagine different outcomes, every time you see a possible future different from today's, every time you dream the dream of what might be, you are using formal operational awareness. And from that platform you can enter vision-logic, which means not that you have to become a Hegel or a Whitehead in order to advance, but only that you have to think globally, which is not so hard at all. Those who will master this stage, or any stage for that matter, will always be relatively few; but all are invited to pass through.
  Because vision-logic transcends but includes formal operational, it completes and brings to fruition many of the trends begun with universal rationality itself (which is why many writers refer to vision-logic as "mature reason" or "dialectical reason" or "synthetic reason," and so on). And some theorists simply subdivide formal operational awareness into several substages, with the highest of those stages being what we are calling vision-logic. James Fowler, for example, divides formop into early formop, dichotomizing formop, dialectical formop, and synthetic formop (the first two being what I am calling rationality, and the last two being vision-logic, although all four are "reason" in the very broadest sense). Incidentally, Fowler's extremely important work on the "stages of faith" (whose details I will reserve for a note)6 is yet another clear account of the evolution from magic to mythic-literal to the universal "commonwealth of being."

1.07 - The Three Schools of Magick 2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  We may complete the whole tradition of the Indian peninsula very simply. To the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Tripitaka of the Buddhists, we have only to add the Tantras of what are called the Vamacharya Schools. Paradoxical as it may sound the Tantrics are in reality the most advanced of the Hindus. Their theory is, in its philosophical ultimatum, a primitive stage of the White tradition, for the essence of the Tantric cults is that by the performance of certain rites of Magick, one does not only escape disaster, but obtains positive benediction. The Tantric is not obsessed by the will-to-die. It is a difficult business, no doubt, to get any fun out of existence; but at least it is not impossible. In other words, he implicitly denies the fundamental proposition that existence is sorrow, and he formulates the essential postulate of the White School of Magick, that means exist by which the universal sorrow (apparent indeed to all ordinary observation) may be unmasked, even as at the initiatory rite of Isis in the ancient days of Khem. There, a Neophyte presenting his mouth, under compulsion, to the pouting buttocks of the Goat of Mendez, found himself caressed by the chaste lips of a virginal priestess of that Goddess at the base of whose shrine is written that No man has lifted her veil.
  The basis of the Black philosophy is not impossibly mere climate, with its resulting etiolation of the native, its languid, bilious, anaemic, fever-prostrated, emasculation of the soul of man. We accordingly find few true equivalents of this School in Europe. In Greek philosophy there is no trace of any such doctrine. The poison in its foulest and most virulent form only entered with Christianity.*[AC17] But even so, few men of any real eminence were found to take the axioms of pessimism seriously. Huxley, for all of his harping on the minor key, was an eupeptic Tory. The culmination of the Black philosophy is only found in Schopenhauer, and we may regard him as having been obsessed, on the one hand, by the despair born of that false scepticism which he learnt from the bankruptcy of Hume and Kant; on the other, by the direct obsession of the Buddhist documents to which he was one of the earliest Europeans to obtain access. He was, so to speak, driven to suicide by his own vanity, a curious parallel to Kiriloff in The Possessed of Dostoiewsky.

1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  What is true of aesthetics is also true of theology. Theological speculation is valuable insofar as it enables those who have had immediate experience of various aspects of God to form intelligible ideas about the nature of the divine Ground, and of their own experience of the Ground in relation to other experiences. And when a coherent system of theology has been worked out, it is useful insofar as it convinces those who study it that there is nothing inherently self-contradictory about the postulate of the divine Ground and that, for those who are ready to fulfill certain conditions, the postulate may become a realized Fact. In no circumstances, however, can the study of theology or the minds assent to theological propositions take the place of what Law calls the birth of God within. For theory is not practice, and words are not the things for which they stand.
  Theology as we know it has been formed by the great mystics, especially St Augustine and St Thomas. Plenty of other great theologiansespecially St Gregory and St Bernard, even down to Suarezwould not have had such insight without mystic super-knowledge.

1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  Life, on page 19, to facilitate explanations. The idea of an astral body will not be altogether foreign to the reader who has understood the propositions of the chapter entitled
  Adam Kadmon. This body must be completely formu- lated, streng thened and purified, until it can function independently of the physical body, as a bright, glittering, and clear-cut organism, well able to deal with the phantoms of that plane. He is examined in his ability to see clearly and accurately on this plane by interpreting, in a vision, a symbol absolutely unknown and unintelligible to him. It must be described in a manner so precise, as if he had read concerning it in the book from which it was chosen.

1.08 - Independence from the Physical, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  whose conquest is as important for physical mastery as the conquest of the thinking mind and the vital mind are for mental and vital mastery. It would indeed seem that the mind is the scapegoat in integral yoga, since it is being hunted down everywhere. Let us note that it has also been a very substantial aid in the course of our evolution, and it remains, for many, an indispensable agent, but any aid, however high or divine, eventually becomes an obstacle, because it is meant for one step only, and we have many steps to take and more than one truth to conquer. If we accepted this simple proposition throughout our entire value system, including the particular ideal we are currently cherishing, we would progress quite rapidly on the path of evolution. This physical mind is the stupidest of all, the vestige in us of the first appearance of Mind in Matter. It is a microscopic,
  stubborn, fearful, narrow, and conservative (this was its evolutionary purpose) mind, which sends us ten times to check if the door is locked when we know perfectly well we have locked it, which panics at the slightest scratch and anticipates the worst illnesses the minute something goes wrong, which is unwaveringly skeptical of anything

1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  call him), upholds another proposition: that all beauty lures to
  procreation,--that this precisely is the chief characteristic of its

1.09 - Sri Aurobindo and the Big Bang, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  then already a celebrity, endorsed the first propositions of
  6 Kitty Ferguson: The Fire in the Equations, p. 126.
  --
  has never been a new proposition which was not attacked
  and covered with ridicule.)

1.1.04 - Philosophy, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The logician thinks he has ensured himself against error when he has made a classification of particular fallacies; but he forgets the supreme and general fallacy, the fallacy of thinking that logic can, as a rule, prove anything but particular and partial propositions dealing with a fragmentary and one-sided truth. Logic? But Truth is not logical; it contains logic, but is not contained by it. A particular syllogism may be true, so far as it goes, covering a sharply limited set of facts, but even a set of syllogisms cannot exhaust truth on a general subject, for the simple reason that they necessarily ignore a number of equally valid premises, facts or possibilities which support a modified or contrary view. If one could arrive first at a conclusion, then at its exact opposite and, finally, harmonise the contradiction, one might arrive at some approach to the truth. But this is a process logic abhors. Its fundamental conception is that two contradictory statements cannot be true at the same time and place & in the same circumstances. Now, Fact and Nature and
  God laugh aloud when they hear the logician state his fundamental conception. For the universe is based on the simultaneous existence of contradictions covering the same time, place and circumstances. The elementary conception that God is at once

1.10 - On our Knowledge of Universals, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
  Returning now to the problem of _a priori_ knowledge, which we left unsolved when we began the consideration of universals, we find ourselves in a position to deal with it in a much more satisfactory manner than was possible before. Let us revert to the proposition 'two and two are four'. It is fairly obvious, in view of what has been said, that this proposition states a relation between the universal 'two' and the universal 'four'. This suggests a proposition which we shall now endeavour to establish: namely, _All _a priori_ knowledge deals exclusively with the relations of universals_. This proposition is of great importance, and goes a long way towards solving our previous difficulties concerning _a priori_ knowledge.
  The only case in which it might seem, at first sight, as if our proposition were untrue, is the case in which an _a priori_ proposition states that _all_ of one class of particulars belong to some other class, or (what comes to the same thing) that _all_ particulars having some one property also have some other. In this case it might seem as though we were dealing with the particulars that have the property rather than with the property. The proposition 'two and two are four' is really a case in point, for this may be stated in the form 'any two and any other two are four', or 'any collection formed of two twos is a collection of four'. If we can show that such statements as this really deal only with universals, our proposition may be regarded as proved.
  One way of discovering what a proposition deals with is to ask ourselves what words we must understand--in other words, what objects we must be acquainted with--in order to see what the proposition means. As soon as we see what the proposition means, even if we do not yet know whether it is true or false, it is evident that we must have acquaintance with whatever is really dealt with by the proposition. By applying this test, it appears that many propositions which might seem to be concerned with particulars are really concerned only with universals. In the special case of 'two and two are four', even when we interpret it as meaning
  'any collection formed of two twos is a collection of four', it is plain that we can understand the proposition, i.e. we can see what it is that it asserts, as soon as we know what is meant by 'collection' and 'two' and 'four'. It is quite unnecessary to know all the couples in the world: if it were necessary, obviously we could never understand the proposition, since the couples are infinitely numerous and therefore cannot all be known to us. Thus although our general statement _implies_ statements about particular couples, _as soon as we know that there are such particular couples_, yet it does not itself assert or imply that there are such particular couples, and thus fails to make any statement whatever about any actual particular couple. The statement made is about
  'couple', the universal, and not about this or that couple.
  Thus the statement 'two and two are four' deals exclusively with universals, and therefore may be known by anybody who is acquainted with the universals concerned and can perceive the relation between them which the statement asserts. It must be taken as a fact, discovered by reflecting upon our knowledge, that we have the power of sometimes perceiving such relations between universals, and therefore of sometimes knowing general _a priori_ propositions such as those of arithmetic and logic. The thing that seemed mysterious, when we formerly considered such knowledge, was that it seemed to anticipate and control experience.
  This, however, we can now see to have been an error. _No_ fact concerning anything capable of being experienced can be known independently of experience. We know _a priori_ that two things and two other things together make four things, but we do _not_ know _a priori_ that if Brown and Jones are two, and Robinson and Smith are two, then
  Brown and Jones and Robinson and Smith are four. The reason is that this proposition cannot be understood at all unless we know that there are such people as Brown and Jones and Robinson and Smith, and this we can only know by experience. Hence, although our general proposition is _a priori_, all its applications to actual particulars involve experience and therefore contain an empirical element. In this way what seemed mysterious in our _a priori_ knowledge is seen to have been based upon an error.
  It will serve to make the point clearer if we contrast our genuine _a priori_ judgement with an empirical generalization, such as 'all men are mortals'. Here as before, we can _understand_ what the proposition means as soon as we understand the universals involved, namely _man_ and
  _mortal_. It is obviously unnecessary to have an individual acquaintance with the whole human race in order to understand what our proposition means. Thus the difference between an _a priori_ general proposition and an empirical generalization does not come in the _meaning_ of the proposition; it comes in the nature of the _evidence_ for it. In the empirical case, the evidence consists in the particular instances.
  We believe that all men are mortal because we know that there are innumerable instances of men dying, and no instances of their living beyond a certain age. We do not believe it because we see a connexion between the universal _man_ and the universal _mortal_. It is true that if physiology can prove, assuming the general laws that govern living bodies, that no living organism can last for ever, that gives a connexion between _man_ and _mortality_ which would enable us to assert our proposition without appealing to the special evidence of _men_ dying. But that only means that our generalization has been subsumed under a wider generalization, for which the evidence is still of the same kind, though more extensive. The progress of science is constantly producing such subsumptions, and therefore giving a constantly wider inductive basis for scientific generalizations. But although this gives a greater _degree_ of certainty, it does not give a different _kind_: the ultimate ground remains inductive, i.e. derived from instances, and not an _a priori_ connexion of universals such as we have in logic and arithmetic.
  Two opposite points are to be observed concerning _a priori_ general propositions. The first is that, if many particular instances are known, our general proposition may be arrived at in the first instance by induction, and the connexion of universals may be only subsequently perceived. For example, it is known that if we draw perpendiculars to the sides of a triangle from the opposite angles, all three perpendiculars meet in a point. It would be quite possible to be first led to this proposition by actually drawing perpendiculars in many cases, and finding that they always met in a point; this experience might lead us to look for the general proof and find it. Such cases are common in the experience of every mathematician.
  The other point is more interesting, and of more philosophical importance. It is, that we may sometimes know a general proposition in cases where we do not know a single instance of it. Take such a case as the following: We know that any two numbers can be multiplied together, and will give a third called their _product_. We know that all pairs of integers the product of which is less than 100 have been actually multiplied together, and the value of the product recorded in the multiplication table. But we also know that the number of integers is infinite, and that only a finite number of pairs of integers ever have been or ever will be thought of by human beings. Hence it follows that there are pairs of integers which never have been and never will be thought of by human beings, and that all of them deal with integers the product of which is over 100. Hence we arrive at the proposition:
  'All products of two integers, which never have been and never will be thought of by any human being, are over 100.' Here is a general proposition of which the truth is undeniable, and yet, from the very nature of the case, we can never give an instance; because any two numbers we may think of are excluded by the terms of the proposition.
  This possibility, of knowledge of general propositions of which no instance can be given, is often denied, because it is not perceived that the knowledge of such propositions only requires a knowledge of the relations of universals, and does not require any knowledge of instances of the universals in question. Yet the knowledge of such general propositions is quite vital to a great deal of what is generally admitted to be known. For example, we saw, in our early chapters, that knowledge of physical objects, as opposed to sense-data, is only obtained by an inference, and that they are not things with which we are acquainted. Hence we can never know any proposition of the form 'this is a physical object', where 'this' is something immediately known. It follows that all our knowledge concerning physical objects is such that no actual instance can be given. We can give instances of the associated sense-data, but we cannot give instances of the actual physical objects.
  Hence our knowledge as to physical objects depends throughout upon this possibility of general knowledge where no instance can be given. And the same applies to our knowledge of other people's minds, or of any other class of things of which no instance is known to us by acquaintance.
  We may now take a survey of the sources of our knowledge, as they have appeared in the course of our analysis. We have first to distinguish knowledge of things and knowledge of truths. In each there are two kinds, one immediate and one derivative. Our immediate knowledge of things, which we called _acquaintance_, consists of two sorts, according as the things known are particulars or universals. Among particulars, we have acquaintance with sense-data and (probably) with ourselves. Among universals, there seems to be no principle by which we can decide which can be known by acquaintance, but it is clear that among those that can be so known are sensible qualities, relations of space and time, similarity, and certain abstract logical universals. Our derivative knowledge of things, which we call knowledge by _description_, always involves both acquaintance with something and knowledge of truths. Our immediate knowledge of _truths_ may be called _intuitive_ knowledge, and the truths so known may be called _self-evident_ truths. Among such truths are included those which merely state what is given in sense, and also certain abstract logical and arithmetical principles, and (though with less certainty) some ethical propositions. Our _derivative_ knowledge of truths consists of everything that we can deduce from self-evident truths by the use of self-evident principles of deduction.
  If the above account is correct, all our knowledge of truths depends upon our intuitive knowledge. It therefore becomes important to consider the nature and scope of intuitive knowledge, in much the same way as, at an earlier stage, we considered the nature and scope of knowledge by acquaintance. But knowledge of truths raises a further problem, which does not arise in regard to knowledge of things, namely the problem of

1.10 - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The distinction is of the greatest importance; for not only does it show that the substance of our religious mentality and discipline goes back to the prehistoric antiquity of the Upanishads, but it justifies the hypothesis that the Vedantins of the Upanishads themselves held it as an inheritance from their Vedic forefa thers. If the Upanishads were only a record of intellectual speculations, the theory of a progression from Vedic materialism to new modes of thought would be entirely probable and no other hypothesis could hold the field without first destroying the rationalistic theory by new and unsuspected evidence. But the moment we perceive that the Upanishads are the result of this ancient & indigenous system of truth-finding, we are liberated from the burden of European examples. Evidently, we have here to deal with phenomena of thought which do not fall within the European scheme of a rapid transition from gross savage superstition to subtle metaphysical speculation. We have phenomena which are either sui generis or, if at any time common to humanity both within and outside India, then more ancient or at any rate earlier in the progression of mind than the modern intellectual methods first universalised by the Hellenic & Latin races; we have an intuitive and experiential method of truth finding, a fixed psychological theory and discipline, a system in which observation & comparison of subjective experiences forms the basis of fixed & verifiable psychological truth, just as nowadays in Europe observation & comparison of objective experiences forms the basis of fixed and verifiable physical truth. The difference between the speculative method and the experiential is that the speculative aims only at logical harmony and, due to the rigid abstract tendency, drives towards new blocks of thought and new mental attitudes; the experiential aims at verification by experience and drives towards the progressive discovery or restatement of eternal truths and their application to varying conditions. The indispensable basis of all Science is the invariability of the same result from the same experiment, given the same conditions; the same experiment with oxygen & hydrogen will always, in whatever age or clime it is applied, have one invariable result, the appearance of water. The indispensable basis of all Yoga is the same invariability in psychological experiments & their results. The same experiment with the limited waking or manifest consciousness and the unlimited unmanifest consciousness from which it is a selection and formation will always, in whatever age or clime it is applied, have the same result, the dissolution, gradual or rapid, complete or partial according to the instruments and conditions of the experiment, of the waking ego into the cosmic consciousness. In each method, physical Science or psychological Science, different Scientists or different teachers may differ as to some of the final generalisations to be drawn from the facts & the most appropriate terms to be used, or invent different instruments in the hope of arriving at a more rapid or a more delicate process, but the facts and the fundamental truths remain common to all, even if stated in different terms, because they are the subjects of a common experience. Now the facts discovered by the Indian method, the duality of Purusha and Prakriti, the triple states of conscious being, the relation between the macrocosm & the microcosm, the fivefold and sevenfold principles of consciousness, the existence of more than one bodily case in which, simultaneously, we dwell, these and a number of other fixed ideas which the modern Yogins hold not as speculative propositions but as observable and verifiable facts of experience, are to be found in the Upanishads already enounced in more ancient formulae and in a slightly different language. The question arises, when did they originate? If they are facts, when were they first discovered? If they are hallucinations, when were the methods of subjective experiment which result so persistently in these hallucinations, first evolved and fixed? Not at the time of the Upanishads, for the Upanishads professedly record the traditional knowledge of older Rishis which is still verifiable by the moderns, prvebhir rishibhir dyo ntanair uta.Then, some time before the composition of the Upanishads, either by the earlier or later Vedic Rishis or by predecessors of the Vedic Rishis or in the interval between the Vedic hymns and the first Vedantic compositions. But for the period between Veda & Vedanta we have no documents, no direct & plain evidence. The question therefore can only be decided by an examination of the Vedic hymns themselves. Only by settling the meaning of Veda can we decide whether the early Vedantins were right in supposing that they were merely restating in more modern terms the substantial ideas & experiences of Vedic Rishis or whether this grand assumption of the Upanishads must take its rank among those pious fictions or willing & half honest errors which have often been immensely helpful to the advance of human knowledge but are none the less impostures upon posterity.
  European scholars believe that they have fixed finally the meaning of Veda. Using as their tools the Sciences of Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology, itself a part of the strangely termed Science of Comparative Religion, they have excavated for us out of the ancient Veda a buried world, a forgotten civilisation, lost names of kings and nations, wars & battles, institutions, social habits & cultural ideas which the men of Vedantic times & their forerunners never dreamed were lying concealed in the revered & sacred words used daily by them in their worship and the fount and authority for their richest spiritual experiences deepest illuminated musings. The picture these discoveries constitute is a remarkable composition, imposing in its mass, brilliant and attractive in its details. The one lingering objection to them is a possible doubt of the truth of these discoveries, the soundness of the methods used to arrive at them. Are the conclusions of Vedic scholarship so undoubtedly true or so finally authoritative as to preclude a totally different hypothesis even though it may lead possibly to an interpretation which will wash out every colour & negative every detail of this great recovery? We must determine, first, whether the foundations of the European theory of Veda are solid & certain fact or whether it has been reared upon a basis of doubtful inference and conjecture. If the former, the question of the Veda is closed, its problem solved; if the latter, the European results may even then be true, but equally they may be false and replaceable by a more acceptable theory and riper conclusions.

1.11 - FAITH IN MAN, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  lize, in a series of abstract propositions, the basis of a common phi-
  losophy on which all men of goodwill can agree in order that the

1.11 - On Intuitive Knowledge, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
  Self-evidence, however, is not confined to those among general principles which are incapable of proof. When a certain number of logical principles have been admitted, the rest can be deduced from them; but the propositions deduced are often just as self-evident as those that were assumed without proof. All arithmetic, moreover, can be deduced from the general principles of logic, yet the simple propositions of arithmetic, such as 'two and two are four', are just as self-evident as the principles of logic.
  It would seem, also, though this is more disputable, that there are some self-evident ethical principles, such as 'we ought to pursue what is good'.
  --
  Degrees of self-evidence are important in the theory of knowledge, since, if propositions may (as seems likely) have some degree of self-evidence without being true, it will not be necessary to abandon all connexion between self-evidence and truth, but merely to say that, where there is a conflict, the more self-evident proposition is to be retained and the less self-evident rejected.
  It seems, however, highly probable that two different notions are combined in 'self-evidence' as above explained; that one of them, which corresponds to the highest degree of self-evidence, is really an infallible guarantee of truth, while the other, which corresponds to all the other degrees, does not give an infallible guarantee, but only a greater or less presumption. This, however, is only a suggestion, which we cannot as yet develop further. After we have dealt with the nature of truth, we shall return to the subject of self-evidence, in connexion with the distinction between knowledge and error.

WORDNET



--- Overview of noun proposition

The noun proposition has 5 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
                  
1. (6) proposition ::: ((logic) a statement that affirms or denies something and is either true or false)
2. (2) suggestion, proposition, proffer ::: (a proposal offered for acceptance or rejection; "it was a suggestion we couldn't refuse")
3. proposition ::: (an offer for a private bargain (especially a request for sexual favors))
4. proposal, proposition ::: (the act of making a proposal; "they listened to her proposal")
5. proposition ::: (a task to be dealt with; "securing adequate funding is a time-consuming proposition")

--- Overview of verb proposition

The verb proposition has 1 sense (first 1 from tagged texts)
                  
1. (1) proposition ::: (suggest sex to; "She was propositioned by a stranger at the party")


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun proposition

5 senses of proposition                        

Sense 1
proposition
   => statement
     => message, content, subject matter, substance
       => communication
         => abstraction, abstract entity
           => entity

Sense 2
suggestion, proposition, proffer
   => proposal
     => message, content, subject matter, substance
       => communication
         => abstraction, abstract entity
           => entity

Sense 3
proposition
   => offer, offering
     => message, content, subject matter, substance
       => communication
         => abstraction, abstract entity
           => entity

Sense 4
proposal, proposition
   => speech act
     => act, deed, human action, human activity
       => event
         => psychological feature
           => abstraction, abstract entity
             => entity

Sense 5
proposition
   => undertaking, project, task, labor
     => work
       => activity
         => act, deed, human action, human activity
           => event
             => psychological feature
               => abstraction, abstract entity
                 => entity


--- Hyponyms of noun proposition

3 of 5 senses of proposition                      

Sense 1
proposition
   => particular, particular proposition
   => universal, universal proposition
   => negation
   => converse
   => lemma
   => theorem
   => conclusion, ratiocination
   => postulate, posit
   => axiom

Sense 2
suggestion, proposition, proffer
   => hint, intimation, breath
   => touch, trace, ghost
   => overture, advance, approach, feeler

Sense 4
proposal, proposition
   => presentation


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun proposition

5 senses of proposition                        

Sense 1
proposition
   => statement

Sense 2
suggestion, proposition, proffer
   => proposal

Sense 3
proposition
   => offer, offering

Sense 4
proposal, proposition
   => speech act

Sense 5
proposition
   => undertaking, project, task, labor




--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun proposition

5 senses of proposition                        

Sense 1
proposition
  -> statement
   => summary, sum-up
   => pleading
   => amendment
   => thing
   => truth, true statement
   => description, verbal description
   => declaration
   => announcement, proclamation, annunciation, declaration
   => Bill of Rights
   => formula
   => mathematical statement
   => bid, bidding
   => word
   => explanation, account
   => explicandum, explanandum
   => explanans
   => value statement
   => representation
   => solution, answer, result, resolution, solvent
   => answer, reply, response
   => announcement, promulgation
   => prediction, foretelling, forecasting, prognostication
   => proposition
   => quotation
   => falsehood, falsity, untruth
   => understatement
   => reservation, qualification
   => cautious statement
   => comment, commentary
   => remark, comment, input
   => rhetorical question
   => misstatement
   => restatement
   => agreement, understanding
   => condition, term
   => estimate
   => formula, chemical formula
   => representation
   => declaration
   => assurance
   => recital
   => negation

Sense 2
suggestion, proposition, proffer
  -> proposal
   => advice
   => counterproposal
   => hypothesis
   => suggestion, proposition, proffer
   => introduction
   => re-introduction
   => motion, question

Sense 3
proposition
  -> offer, offering
   => contract offer
   => marriage proposal, proposal of marriage, marriage offer, proposal
   => proposition
   => counteroffer
   => bid, tender
   => prospectus
   => tender offer
   => reward
   => rights offering, rights issue
   => special
   => peace offering, olive branch
   => twofer

Sense 4
proposal, proposition
  -> speech act
   => congratulation, felicitation
   => slander
   => proposal, proposition
   => command, bid, bidding, dictation
   => agreement
   => citation
   => disagreement
   => offer, offering
   => request, asking
   => reply, response
   => description
   => affirmation, assertion, statement
   => denial
   => rejection
   => objection
   => informing, making known
   => disclosure, revelation, revealing
   => promise
   => boast, boasting, self-praise, jactitation
   => naming
   => challenge
   => explanation
   => denunciation, denouncement
   => address, speech
   => resignation

Sense 5
proposition
  -> undertaking, project, task, labor
   => cinch, breeze, picnic, snap, duck soup, child's play, pushover, walkover, piece of cake
   => adventure, escapade, risky venture, dangerous undertaking
   => assignment
   => baby
   => enterprise, endeavor, endeavour
   => labor of love, labour of love
   => marathon, endurance contest
   => no-brainer
   => proposition
   => tall order, large order
   => venture
   HAS INSTANCE=> Manhattan Project




--- Grep of noun proposition
particular proposition
proposition
propositional calculus
propositional logic
universal proposition



IN WEBGEN [10000/377]

Wikipedia - 1972 California Proposition 17 -- Measure enacted by California voters to reinstate the death penalty
Wikipedia - 1978 California Proposition 13 -- A ballot initiative which capped property tax at 1% and yearly increases at 2%
Wikipedia - 1986 California Proposition 65 -- California law to protect drinking water from toxic substances
Wikipedia - 2000 California Proposition 39 -- California ballot initiative
Wikipedia - 2004 California Proposition 71 -- California law
Wikipedia - 2008 California Proposition 7
Wikipedia - 2008 California Proposition 8 -- Ballot proposition and state constitutional amendment passed in November 2008
Wikipedia - 2009 California Proposition 1A -- Failed California ballot measure
Wikipedia - 2009 California Proposition 1F -- California ballot measure
Wikipedia - 2012 California Proposition 29 -- California law
Wikipedia - 2012 California Proposition 30 -- California ballot measure regarding taxes
Wikipedia - 2012 California Proposition 32 -- California ballot measure in 2012
Wikipedia - 2012 California Proposition 34 -- Failed California ballot measure
Wikipedia - 2015 Houston, Texas Proposition 1 -- Bill in Houston, Texas rejected by voters in 2015
Wikipedia - 2016 California Proposition 52 -- California law
Wikipedia - 2020 California Proposition 13 -- A $15 billion bond initiative for educational facility maintenance
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Wikipedia - Category:Propositions
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Wikipedia - Conjecture -- Proposition in mathematics that is unproven
Wikipedia - Consequentia mirabilis -- Pattern of reasoning in propositional logic
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Wikipedia - Contingency (philosophy) -- Status of propositions that are neither always true nor always false
Wikipedia - Contradiction -- Logical incompatibility between two or more propositions
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Wikipedia - List of California ballot propositions 2000-09 -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of California ballot propositions 2010-19 -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of California ballot propositions -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - Material implication (rule of inference) -- Rule of replacement in propositional logic
Wikipedia - Moral realism -- Position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world
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Psychology Wiki - Proposition
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - logic-algebraic-propositional
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - propositional-function
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - propositions-singular
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - propositions
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https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheProposition
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/FuturamaS6E4PropositionInfinity
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Proposition
The Game (1984)(1984) - Three bored millionaires gather nine people in an old mansion, and give them a proposition--if they can meet and conquer their biggest fears, they'll get one million dollars in cash
The Proposition (2005) ::: 7.3/10 -- R | 1h 44min | Crime, Drama, Western | 9 June 2006 (USA) -- A lawman apprehends a notorious outlaw and gives him nine days to kill his older brother, or else they'll execute his younger brother. Director: John Hillcoat Writer: Nick Cave (screenplay)
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/A_Business_Proposition
https://finance.fandom.com/wiki/Value_Proposition
https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Proposition_Infinity
https://kushowa.fandom.com/wiki/Kushowa_Reacts_to_Five_Nights_at_Freddy's_(part_8)_-_A_Mangled_Proposition_Tony_Crynight
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Proposition_X
https://teen-titans-go.fandom.com/wiki/Accept_the_Next_Proposition_You_Hear
Ginga Tetsudou 999 (Movie) -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Adventure Space Drama Fantasy -- Ginga Tetsudou 999 (Movie) Ginga Tetsudou 999 (Movie) -- Tetsurou Hoshino is a boy bent on obtaining an immortal mechanical body in order to take revenge against his mother's murderer, the machine man Count Mecha. However, due to the incredible cost of obtaining what he seeks, his only hope is to steal a boarding pass for the Galaxy Express 999, a space train that travels across the galaxy and whose final stop is a planet where the metal replacements are provided for free. After swiping a pass, Tetsurou is pursued by the police and ends up collapsing into the arms of a mysterious woman named Maetel, who closely resembles his mother. Once he awakens, she tells the boy that she will provide him entry onto the 999 as long as he agrees to travel with her. Accepting her proposition, Tetsurou boards the cosmic railway with Maetel and begins a journey across the galaxy. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- Movie - Aug 4, 1979 -- 15,280 7.56
Mahou Shoujo Madoka� -- Magica -- -- Shaft -- 12 eps -- Original -- Psychological Drama Magic Thriller -- Mahou Shoujo Madoka� -- Magica Mahou Shoujo Madoka� -- Magica -- Madoka Kaname and Sayaka Miki are regular middle school girls with regular lives, but all that changes when they encounter Kyuubey, a cat-like magical familiar, and Homura Akemi, the new transfer student. -- -- Kyuubey offers them a proposition: he will grant any one of their wishes and in exchange, they will each become a magical girl, gaining enough power to fulfill their dreams. However, Homura Akemi, a magical girl herself, urges them not to accept the offer, stating that everything is not what it seems. -- -- A story of hope, despair, and friendship, Mahou Shoujo Madoka� -- Magica deals with the difficulties of being a magical girl and the price one has to pay to make a dream come true. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 1,003,175 8.37
Noblesse -- -- Production I.G -- 13 eps -- Web manga -- Action School Supernatural Vampire -- Noblesse Noblesse -- The "Noblesse" Cadis Etrama di Raizel, also known as "Rai," is enrolled in Ye Ran High School by his servant Frankenstein to stay hidden from the sights of the Union, a mysterious organization out for Rai's blood. Rai commences his life as a student, making himself familiar with his classmates and the daily activities of humans. However, his new life is far from peaceful, and Rai is soon forced to save his new friends from the hands of the Union that had abducted them. --   -- Meanwhile, M-21—a Union agent gone rogue during Rai's rescue operation—joins the Ye Ran High School security staff after a proposition by the school's director, who happens to be none other than Frankenstein himself. On the surface, M-21 is a prim and proper employee, but in truth he is shackled by his former ties to the Union and the inevitable consequences of betraying the organization. --   -- To further complicate matters, Nobles Regis K. Landegre and Seira J. Loyard enroll in the same school to investigate the Noblesse. While the Union conducts a manhunt for M-21 to extract clues regarding their missing agents, Rai is forced to keep his identity hidden while protecting all that he holds dear. -- -- 177,212 6.82
Ookami to Koushinryou -- -- Imagin -- 13 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Fantasy Historical Romance -- Ookami to Koushinryou Ookami to Koushinryou -- Holo is a powerful wolf deity who is celebrated and revered in the small town of Pasloe for blessing the annual harvest. Yet as years go by and the villagers become more self-sufficient, Holo, who stylizes herself as the "Wise Wolf of Yoitsu," has been reduced to a mere folk tale. When a traveling merchant named Kraft Lawrence stops at Pasloe, Holo offers to become his business partner if he eventually takes her to her northern home of Yoitsu. The savvy trader recognizes Holo's unusual ability to evaluate a person's character and accepts her proposition. Now in the possession of both sharp business skills and a charismatic negotiator, Lawrence inches closer to his goal of opening his own shop. However, as Lawrence travels the countryside with Holo in search of economic opportunities, he begins to realize that his aspirations are slowly morphing into something unexpected. -- -- Based on the popular light novel of the same name, Ookami to Koushinryou, also known as Spice and Wolf, fuses the two polar genres of economics and romance to create an enthralling story abundant with elaborate schemes, sharp humor, and witty dialogue. Ookami to Koushinryou is more than just a story of bartering; it turns into a journey of searching for a lost identity in an ever-changing world. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation, Kadokawa Pictures USA -- 660,637 8.26
Shuumatsu no Harem -- -- AXsiZ, Studio Gokumi -- ? eps -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Harem Ecchi Shounen -- Shuumatsu no Harem Shuumatsu no Harem -- The Man-Killer Virus: a lethal disease that has eradicated 99.9% of the world's male population. Mizuhara Reito has been in cryogenic sleep for the past five years, leaving behind Tachibana Erisa, the girl of his dreams. When Reito awakens from the deep freeze, he emerges into a sex-crazed new world where he himself is the planet's most precious resource. Reito and four other male studs are given lives of luxury and one simple mission: repopulate the world by impregnating as many women as possible! All Reito wants, however, is to find his beloved Erisa who went missing three years ago. Can Reito resist temptation and find his one true love? -- -- (Source: Seven Seas Entertainment) -- TV - ??? ??, 2021 -- 15,282 N/AGinga Tetsudou 999 (Movie) -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Adventure Space Drama Fantasy -- Ginga Tetsudou 999 (Movie) Ginga Tetsudou 999 (Movie) -- Tetsurou Hoshino is a boy bent on obtaining an immortal mechanical body in order to take revenge against his mother's murderer, the machine man Count Mecha. However, due to the incredible cost of obtaining what he seeks, his only hope is to steal a boarding pass for the Galaxy Express 999, a space train that travels across the galaxy and whose final stop is a planet where the metal replacements are provided for free. After swiping a pass, Tetsurou is pursued by the police and ends up collapsing into the arms of a mysterious woman named Maetel, who closely resembles his mother. Once he awakens, she tells the boy that she will provide him entry onto the 999 as long as he agrees to travel with her. Accepting her proposition, Tetsurou boards the cosmic railway with Maetel and begins a journey across the galaxy. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- Movie - Aug 4, 1979 -- 15,280 7.56
Yowamushi Pedal -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 38 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Sports Drama Shounen -- Yowamushi Pedal Yowamushi Pedal -- Sakamichi Onoda is a cheerful otaku looking to join his new school's anime club, eager to finally make some friends. Unfortunately, the club has been disbanded and he takes it upon himself to revive it by finding students who are willing to join. Without much luck, Onoda decides to make a round trip to Akihabara on his old, bulky city bicycle, a weekly 90-kilometer ride he has been completing since fourth grade. -- -- This is when he meets fellow first year student, Shunsuke Imaizumi, a determined cyclist who is using the school's steep incline for practice. Surprised by Onoda's ability to climb the hill with his specific type of bicycle, Imaizumi challenges him to a race, with the proposition of joining the anime club should Onoda win. And thus begins the young boy's first foray into the world of high school bicycle racing! -- -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- TV - Oct 8, 2013 -- 187,204 7.98
Yowamushi Pedal -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 38 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Sports Drama Shounen -- Yowamushi Pedal Yowamushi Pedal -- Sakamichi Onoda is a cheerful otaku looking to join his new school's anime club, eager to finally make some friends. Unfortunately, the club has been disbanded and he takes it upon himself to revive it by finding students who are willing to join. Without much luck, Onoda decides to make a round trip to Akihabara on his old, bulky city bicycle, a weekly 90-kilometer ride he has been completing since fourth grade. -- -- This is when he meets fellow first year student, Shunsuke Imaizumi, a determined cyclist who is using the school's steep incline for practice. Surprised by Onoda's ability to climb the hill with his specific type of bicycle, Imaizumi challenges him to a race, with the proposition of joining the anime club should Onoda win. And thus begins the young boy's first foray into the world of high school bicycle racing! -- -- TV - Oct 8, 2013 -- 187,204 7.98
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Propositional_attitudes
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Propositions
110 Propositions for France
1911 California Proposition 4
1911 California Proposition 7
1911 California Proposition 8
1922 California Proposition 16
1922 California Proposition 20
1958 California Proposition 18
1964 California Proposition 14
1972 California Proposition 11
1972 California Proposition 17
1978 California Proposition 13
1978 California Proposition 7
1978 California Proposition 8
1982 California Proposition 8
1986 California Proposition 60
1986 California Proposition 63
1986 California Proposition 64
1986 California Proposition 65
1988 California Proposition 90
1988 California Proposition 98
1988 California Proposition 99
1994 California Proposition 187
1996 California Proposition 196
1996 California Proposition 209
1996 California Proposition 215
1996 California Proposition 218
1996 California Proposition 218 (Local Initiative Power)
1998 California Proposition 10
1998 California Proposition 227
1998 California Proposition 6
1999 Missouri Proposition B
2000 Arizona Proposition 203
2000 California Proposition 21
2000 California Proposition 22
2000 California Proposition 36
2000 California Proposition 39
2002 California Proposition 46
2002 California Proposition 47
2002 California Proposition 48
2002 California Proposition 49
2002 California Proposition 50
2002 California Proposition 51
2002 California Proposition 52
2003 California Proposition 53
2003 California Proposition 54
2004 Arizona Proposition 200
2004 California Proposition 1A
2004 California Proposition 55
2004 California Proposition 56
2004 California Proposition 57
2004 California Proposition 58
2004 California Proposition 59
2004 California Proposition 60
2004 California Proposition 60A
2004 California Proposition 61
2004 California Proposition 62
2004 California Proposition 64
2004 California Proposition 65
2004 California Proposition 66
2004 California Proposition 69
2004 California Proposition 71
2005 California Proposition 73
2005 California Proposition 74
2005 California Proposition 75
2005 California Proposition 76
2005 California Proposition 77
2005 California Proposition 78
2005 California Proposition 79
2005 California Proposition 80
2005 San Francisco Proposition I
2005 Texas Proposition 2
2006 Arizona Proposition 107
2006 Arizona Proposition 204
2006 Arizona Proposition 207
2006 California Proposition 81
2006 California Proposition 82
2006 California Proposition 83
2006 California Proposition 85
2006 California Proposition 86
2006 California Proposition 87
2006 California Proposition 89
2006 California Proposition 90
2006 Idaho Proposition 2
2008 Arizona Proposition 102
2008 California Proposition 10
2008 California Proposition 11
2008 California Proposition 12
2008 California Proposition 1A
2008 California Proposition 2
2008 California Proposition 3
2008 California Proposition 4
2008 California Proposition 5
2008 California Proposition 6
2008 California Proposition 7
2008 California Proposition 8
2008 California Proposition 91
2008 California Proposition 92
2008 California Proposition 93
2008 California Propositions 94, 95, 96, and 97
2008 California Propositions 98 and 99
2009 California Proposition 1A
2009 California Proposition 1B
2009 California Proposition 1C
2009 California Proposition 1D
2009 California Proposition 1E
2009 California Proposition 1F
2010 Arizona Proposition 100
2010 Arizona Proposition 203
2010 California Proposition 14
2010 California Proposition 16
2010 California Proposition 19
2010 California Proposition 20
2010 California Proposition 23
2010 California Proposition 27
2012 California Proposition 28
2012 California Proposition 29
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