PHIL 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Arity, Unary Function
17 Sep 2016
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Atomic sentence: most basic forms of sentence; called atomic since they are the building blocks of more complex sentences; put together using names and predicates. Our fol uses lowercase a-f and n1, n2, . Names in logic are called individual constants as opposed to variables. Names must refer uniquely and always refer to its object. An object can only have one name. Predicates stand for properties/relations, give us declarative sentences w/names. When we put a into p(x) the result must always be p(a) with a truth-value. Arity: predicates have a fixed number of names (unary/binary/ternary) Prefix notation: taller(claire,max) = claire is taller than max | t(c,m) Infix notation: a=b is the relation of identity instead of =(a,b) Truth values are dramatically impacted by the order of ind. Socrates is older than plato vs. plato is older than socrates. In language, we refer to objects indirectly; max"s father is amusing ; not given a name.
