The logical law of polar questions

[Peter Olcott]

The logical law of polar questions

When posed to a man whom has never been married,
the question: Have you stopped beating your wife?
Is an incorrect polar question because neither yes nor
no is a correct answer.

All polar questions (including incorrect polar questions)
have exactly one answer from the following:
1) No
2) Yes
3) Neither // Only applies to incorrect polar questions

As far as I know I am the original discoverer of the
above logical law, thus copyright 2015 by Peter Olcott.

Permission to copy and freely distribute the above
is hereby granted as long as it is distributed in
its entirely including this license agreement.

[DKleinecke]

As other people have observed - this is not valid. There is, by
definition, no third alternative.

The question is unfair because of the presuppositions people make but
the answer is "no" unless the person being asked (assumed male) has
a wife whom he used to beat but no longer beats.

[Peter Olcott]

On 2/20/2015 12:18 PM, DKleinecke wrote:
> On Friday, February 20, 2015 at 9:38:48 AM UTC-8, Peter Olcott wrote:
>> The logical law of polar questions
>>
>> When posed to a man whom has never been married,
>> the question: Have you stopped beating your wife?
>> Is an incorrect polar question because neither yes nor
>> no is a correct answer.
>>
>> All polar questions (including incorrect polar questions)
>> have exactly one answer from the following:
>> 1) No
>> 2) Yes
>> 3) Neither // Only applies to incorrect polar questions
>>
>> As far as I know I am the original discoverer of the
>> above logical law, thus copyright 2015 by Peter Olcott.
>>
>> Permission to copy and freely distribute the above
>> is hereby granted as long as it is distributed in
>> its entirely including this license agreement.
> As other people have observed - this is not valid. There is, by
> definition, no third alternative.

An Incorrect Question (IQ) is any question lacking a correct answer from
the
set of all possible answers.

An Incorrect Polar Question (IPQ) is any polar question lacking a
correct answer
from the set of {Yes, No}.

M1 in AdultHumanMales such that M1 has never been married.
M2 in AdultHumanMales such that M2 has stopped beating his wife.
M3 in AdultHumanMales such that M3 has not stopped beating his wife.
1) M1 & M2
2) M1 & M3

Both (1) and(2) come from the intersection of disjoint sets, therefore
neither (1) nor (2) is correct, thus we have a case of incorrect polar
question.

> The question is unfair because of the presuppositions people make but
> the answer is "no" unless the person being asked (assumed male) has
> a wife whom he used to beat but no longer beats.
>

The answer of "no" would logically entail that the man continues to
beat his non-existent wife.

We are not talking within the context of the sloppy imprecision of
natural language where logic errors are often not construed to be logic
errors. We are talking within the context of the precision of
mathematics such that all logic errors are always construed as logic
errors.

[pauljk]

"Peter Olcott" <OCR4Screen> wrote in message news:yJydnXMRpvkZ4HrJ...@giganews.com...

The man's answer "no" is strictly logical, whether he is married or not.
It provides no clue as to his marriage status, so you'd have to make
further inquiries to get more information. The automatic assumption
that he continues to beat a non-existent person is childishly illogical.

pjk

[Peter Olcott]

BZZZZT Bing! Sorry that is the wrong answer !
The question is a preexisting case that has been studied extensively
that is why I used it.

The meaning of the predicate logic variables is entirely sufficient to
determine that the question is incorrect. This meaning was directly
encoded on the basis of the provided descriptions.

[peteo...@gmail.com]

When working on my Liar Paradox proof yesterday I realized that the actual truth value of an incorrect polar question is more aptly named [non-existent] rather than neither.

This new insight directly follows from my clarification of Saul Kripke's use of Kleene’s strong three-valued logic value of Undefined in his famous 1975 paper [Outline of a Theory of Truth]. The Liar Paradox has a Boolean value of non-existent, rather then simply Undefined.

[peteo...@gmail.com]

The question is incorrect on the basis of an incorrect presupposition, because an answer of either yes or no logically entails false (thus contradictory) information.

My first example of an incorrect polar question (derived years ago) is
What time is it (yes or no)?

[Franz Gnaedinger]

There are several possible answers to the above question, for example
a sober one

I have never beaten a woman

or an ironic one

My wife sucks at playing chess, I beat her almost all the time,
but occasionaly she beats me, and then she is very proud ...

Language is spoken by real people, warm-blooded human beings, not by
deep-frozen robots.

[peteo...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, September 14, 2016 at 8:54:21 AM UTC-5, Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
> On Friday, February 20, 2015 at 6:38:48 PM UTC+1, Peter Olcott wrote:
> > The logical law of polar questions
> >
> > When posed to a man whom has never been married,
> > the question: Have you stopped beating your wife?
> > Is an incorrect polar question because neither yes nor
> > no is a correct answer.
> >
> > All polar questions (including incorrect polar questions)
> > have exactly one answer from the following:
> > 1) No
> > 2) Yes
> > 3) Neither // Only applies to incorrect polar questions
> >
> > As far as I know I am the original discoverer of the
> > above logical law, thus copyright 2015 by Peter Olcott.
> >
> > Permission to copy and freely distribute the above
> > is hereby granted as long as it is distributed in
> > its entirely including this license agreement.
>
> There are several possible answers to the above question, for example
> a sober one
>
> I have never beaten a woman
>

It is like the question:

What time is it (yes or no)?

It has no possible correct answer because:
(1) The answer is restricted to yes or no.
(2) Either yes or no affirms a false presupposition.

[Franz Gnaedinger]

On Wednesday, September 14, 2016 at 4:18:57 PM UTC+2, peteo...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> It is like the question:
> What time is it (yes or no)?
>
> It has no possible correct answer because:
> (1) The answer is restricted to yes or no.
> (2) Either yes or no affirms a false presupposition.

Are you my personal dictator forcing me to answer a nonsense question
as if it were a real and serious question? I will answer such a question
with irony, or even in a caustic manner, which are part of the various
tools natural language offers.

[peteo...@gmail.com]

It is a matter of logical construction such that a correct answer is non-existent. One only need comprehend that, endless disagreement is pointless.

[peteo...@gmail.com]

On Friday, February 20, 2015 at 11:38:48 AM UTC-6, Peter Olcott wrote:

3) Non Existent // Only applies to incorrect polar questions

Examples of Incorrect Polar Questions:

1) What time is it (yes or no) ? // Type mismatch error

2) When posed to a man whom has never been married, the question: Have you stopped beating your wife? Is an incorrect polar question because neither yes nor no is a correct answer. // Both yes and no affirm a false presupposition

3) Is the length of the blue whale in your living room greater than sixty feet? // Both yes and no affirm a false presupposition

4) Is the following sentence true or false: [This sentence is false]
// Derives its Boolean value entirely based on comparing this same Boolean value to False before this Boolean value exists.

[Franz Gnaedinger]

On Thursday, September 15, 2016 at 3:32:28 PM UTC+2, peteo...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Examples of Incorrect Polar Questions:
>
> 1) What time is it (yes or no) ? // Type mismatch error
>
> 2) When posed to a man whom has never been married, the question: Have you stopped beating your wife? Is an incorrect polar question because neither yes nor no is a correct answer. // Both yes and no affirm a false presupposition
>
> 3) Is the length of the blue whale in your living room greater than sixty feet? // Both yes and no affirm a false presupposition
>
> 4) Is the following sentence true or false: [This sentence is false]
> // Derives its Boolean value entirely based on comparing this same Boolean value to False before this Boolean value exists.

Why would anybody answer a silly question of that sort with yes or no?
Language is a tool of life, not a symptom of an obsessive compulsive disorder.

[Franz Gnaedinger]

On Thursday, September 15, 2016 at 2:50:43 PM UTC+2, peteo...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> It is a matter of logical construction such that a correct answer is non-existent. One only need comprehend that, endless disagreement is pointless.

Why, then, do you endlessly disagree on the richness and vitality of natural
language, and on the proven theorems by Gödel and Turing? Meanwhile you have
seventeen parallel threads in sci.lang, repeating ever the same claims wherein
you disagree with both natural language and modern logic.

[peteo...@gmail.com]

I am designing the completion of the Cyc Project:
http://www.cyc.com/thing/

[peteo...@gmail.com]

I am completing the process of mathematically formalizing the set of immutable underlying semantic meanings that natural language is based upon to complete the design of the Cyc Project. http://www.cyc.com/thing/

[Mike Duffy]

On Thu, 15 Sep 2016 23:48:57 -0700 (PDT), Franz Gnaedinger wrote:

> Language is a tool of life, not a symptom
> of an obsessive compulsive disorder.

In a way, life itself is an obsessive compulsive phenomenon.

[Franz Gnaedinger]

Life evades the compulsion of thermodynamics via the basic intelligence
of language that I consider the means of getting help, support and
understanding from those we depend upon in one way or another, on whatever
level of life. Working together, coordinated by language, we achieve more
than if we were all on our own, we need less energy for the same task,
or can achieve more with the same amount of energy. That is where the
negentropy of life comes from, intelligence in the form of very basic
language, in my opinion a feature of life.

[Franz Gnaedinger]

> Life evades the compulsion of thermodynamics via the basic intelligence
> of language that I consider the means of getting help, support and
> understanding from those we depend upon in one way or another, on whatever
> level of life. Working together, coordinated by language, we achieve more
> than if we were all on our own, we need less energy for the same task,
> or can achieve more with the same amount of energy. That is where the
> negentropy of life comes from, intelligence in the form of very basic
> language, in my opinion a feature of life.

Freud believed that life began with one single cell. In my opinion,
life began when transitory cell-like structures (organic molecules
protected by a hull of lipids) learned how to communicate with each other
in a most basic way, motivated by an internal coherence that later on
developed into our survival instinct. Language, in my opinion, is a basic
feature of life, and linguistics - in a wider sense than in sci.lang -
might well become a key science of our time.

[Mike Duffy]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2016 00:29:42 -0700 (PDT), Franz Gnaedinger wrote:

> Life evades the compulsion of thermodynamics via the basic intelligence

> of language [...] That is where the negentropy of life comes from,

I agree about the intelligence part, but not about the language part.

The negentropy that is produced as a by-product of an intelligent entity
who is deliberately contriving to reduce his own entropy (i.e. staying
alive, growing, generating progeny, modifying his environment) is, I
suppose an alternate definition of life at a very abstract level.

But even non-communicating bacteria are alive.

[Franz Gnaedinger]

Bacteria _do_ communicate! When one of them finds a yummy greasy spot
in a sink, for example, it calls its colleagues, and they gather there!
The human body contains ten times more bacteria than body cells, in all
some two or three kilograms, while the eucariotic cell is a lucky
symbiosis of bacteria (Lynn Margulis). Cells do communicate by exchanging
molecules, ions, and photons, although they are nothing more than bundles
of bacteria.

[Franz Gnaedinger]

On Friday, September 16, 2016 at 2:10:45 PM UTC+2, peteo...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> I am completing the process of mathematically formalizing the set of immutable underlying semantic meanings that natural language is based upon to complete the design of the Cyc Project. http://www.cyc.com/thing/

So your final proof and final solution are not final, instead you go on
writing ever new versions. Meanwhile you started thread eighteen with
your empty claims. Never something real, never a program or a useful
app that works, only ever the universal claim that was proven wrong
by Goedel.

[peteo...@gmail.com]

If you notice important details you will notice that I started this thread more than 1.5 years ago.

My final proof that the Liar Paradox is incorrect is final in the sense that it totally explains the whole error of the Liar Paradox for the first time in human history.

[pete olcott]

So if I asked: "What time is it (yes or no)?"

The answer must be (yes or no) and the assessment that it is an incorrect
question in not valid?