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To: Tares
You are confusing an english word with a logical operator.

No, I'm not. What you are mish-mashedly referring to is the very problem of "domain of discourse" I have been referring to constantly. If you use different meanings of "like", you are referring to different domains of discourse and pretending logical operators apply across these domains.

Many ancient greek riddles and 12th century proofs of God's existence rely on this trick. It's true, I didn't say "tap, tap, no straying from the subject", but that is generally assumed by mathematicians in talking formally about sets.

Your argument, if examined in the light of day, should convince you that you are a little confused here. How can you claim "like" has several different meanings, and in the same breath, claim that "like" is just a shorthand for a series of logical operators?

When you use the world "like" in the sense of drawing an analogy, in fact, that is precisely it's logical weakness. What you are doing with the "like" operator is intentionally mixing domains of discourse, because intuitive insight may be a more important than preserving logical precision.

1,506 posted on 12/11/2002 12:22:04 PM PST by donh
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To: donh
Your argument, if examined in the light of day, should convince you that you are a little confused here. How can you claim "like" has several different meanings, and in the same breath, claim that "like" is just a shorthand for a series of logical operators?

Because for each meaning there is a different series of logical operators and attributes being operated on.

What you are doing with the "like" operator is intentionally mixing domains of discourse, because intuitive insight may be a more important than preserving logical precision.

The overall domain is the domain of thought. Thought about football and thought about homicide do not use different sets of logical operators, only the sequences of operations and the terms operated upon differ.

1,512 posted on 12/11/2002 2:06:22 PM PST by Tares
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