jon (08/04/82)
The "equivalence" of the statements
good food is not cheap
cheap food is not good
depends on the transformation of English into logic,
a transformation I do not believe is correct and which has
already been debated here.
The whole experiment -- to see whether people will recognize the equivalence --
presupposes that people actually *care* what logic has to say about
the meanings of English sentences. People will fail to recognize logical
equivalence because formal logic bears no relation to human discourse.
Logic tells us that a double negative is a positive; human language tells
us that doubling simply increases the negativity; in Russian,
the negative distributes and correct usage requires that every word which
can be negated must be.
Applying logic to human language is like applying logic to humans:
it doesn't work. Mathematical logic is too simple and too rigid.
Frankly, I think it's more interesting this way.
Jon Mauney
uwvax!jondjh (08/14/82)
It appears that the initial response ( very poor) was appropriate.