Return-Path: Delivery-Date: Received: from ted.cs.uidaho.edu (no rfc931) by swan.cl.cam.ac.uk with SMTP (PP-6.4) outside ac.uk; Tue, 9 Feb 1993 14:02:48 +0000 Received: by ted.cs.uidaho.edu (16.6/1.34) id AA07015; Tue, 9 Feb 93 05:47:43 -0800 Sender: info-hol-request@edu.uidaho.cs.ted Errors-To: info-hol-request@edu.uidaho.cs.ted Precedence: bulk Received: from swan.cl.cam.ac.uk by ted.cs.uidaho.edu (16.6/1.34) id AA07010; Tue, 9 Feb 93 05:47:30 -0800 Received: from auk.cl.cam.ac.uk (no rfc931) by swan.cl.cam.ac.uk with SMTP (PP-6.4) to cl; Tue, 9 Feb 1993 13:46:54 +0000 To: info-hol@edu.uidaho.cs.ted Subject: Waugh! Huh! What is it good for? Date: Tue, 09 Feb 93 13:46:48 +0000 From: John Harrison Message-Id: <"swan.cl.ca.842:09.02.93.13.47.03"@cl.cam.ac.uk> I thought the following extract from Auberon Waugh's recent autobiography, "Will This Do?" (Arrow books 1991) might amuse people: Lesson one in formal logic, which seeks to reduce logical argument to algebraic symbols as a means of testing its validity, concerns a symbol called the hook, thus \supset. [...] Now we come to the {\em pons asinorum}. {\em If A is untrue, then the hook is true whatever the truth of B}. The reason for this is that the hook guarantees only that A cannot be true and B false. However this restriction removes the hook from all application to truth or reason, and reduces it to a mathematical symbol. There are no circumstances in which `A therefore B' or `If A then B' automatically become true statements when A is shown to be false. If the hook does not cover either the consequent or the conditional relationship, but one of its own invention, then its only applied function must be either as a parlour game or as a liars' charter. Formal logic, like so many other things studied in the universities, must surely be a colossal waste of time. Far better play with Rubic cubes, which might impart a measure of digital dexterity which could be useful in a world threatened by a plague of RSI. John.