• Bylaw
    486
    If any of these is the case then they are true. If they are not the case they are false. 'Look before you leap' is a saying and does not have this kind of truth value. I don't know what 'trusting people is a problem' means.Tom Storm
    A saying is an assertion. Can you explain what assertions are not under the purview of true and false? As far as 'being the case' they are somewhat true, somewhat false. And an assertion, at least according to many, such as 'a virus is a lifeform' is neither true nor false. It has within it a category 'lifeform' that has been treated for a long term as part of a binary pair, but it may not be a binary pair, there may be combinations or a spectrum.

    One should trust people.
    [a better formulation, perhaps]

    I think a good case can be made that this is not a nonsense statement, but also is neither true nor false.

    An electron is a particle.

    Some might say so. Others might say that is a useful sentence but not entirely true. Others would say that it is partly false.

    I don't see why every statement has to be either true or false, when statements could include some truth and some falsehood. And also given that language is, obviously, human made and may have categories that are confused or openended or seem part of binary pairs but are not.
  • Nickolasgaspar
    1k

    -"Or the final judgment is not a binary yes, no, true false. IOW we could decide that viruses are something in between a lifeform and not a lifeform. That it would be wrong to categorize it as one and not the other. "
    Correct. As I said there are cases where we don't have the facts to make a judge for the truth value of a claim.
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    I don't see why every statement has to be either true or false,Bylaw

    Agree.

    A saying is an assertion. Can you explain what assertions are not under the purview of true and false?Bylaw

    I'm not a philosopher so if there's a specialist answer, I don't know it. But to say some statements are neither true or false, therefore they are both seems to express a bland superfluity. What is gained? My intuition on this is that many of these statements are incomplete or ambiguous and therefore outside of the scope of any true or false assessment.
  • TiredThinker
    819


    That is a matter of a proper statement. I am assuming asking the right question is always the issue. A 6 and a 9 are the same shape so if the statement is whether or not it is this shape than it would be true so long as you don't get too specific on a meaning a particular number may have.
  • Bylaw
    486
    But to say some statements are neither true or false, therefore they are both seems to express a bland superfluity.Tom Storm
    I think statements can be ambiguous and therefore cannot be neatly categorizes as true or false. I think some statements can be nonsense and again true and false are off the table. But then I think there are many sentences that are not, for example, 100% true, that it would be false to say they were false.
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