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To: The_Reader_David
In many contexts in the natural use of English, just as in intuitionistic logic, NOT(NOT P) is weaker than P.

In my laptop, NOT(NOT P) = P

145 posted on 03/13/2013 5:04:24 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Elsie
Of course in your laptop NOT(NOT P) = P: computers are built on Aristotelian logic.

It's outside of laptops, in the use of English by native speakers of English, that "She's not unattractive" turns out to be an oblique "damning with faint praise" sort of non-compliment about a woman's appearance, definitely not equivalent to saying she's attractive. This actually is a way of dealing with (and when used as in the last example, playing on) a problem that doesn't arise in laptops: vagueness. There is not sharp universal standard of attractive vs. unattractive as regards feminine pulchritude, just as there is not a universal sharp standard for common vs. uncommon in discussing a behavior or social phenomenon (the original matter in this thread which hyper-Aristotelians jumped on).

The gap between what everyone would regard as common, and what everyone would regard as uncommon, the space where folks would quibble with one saying "We'll I've seen a lot of it, I think it's common" and another saying "What? There's hardly any of that. . .now this [other, nearly universal behavior] is common," is what provides the distinction between the natural language use of "not uncommon" and "common": "not uncommon" denies that the phenomenon is what would generally be agreed to be uncommon, while not asserting that it is what would generally be agreed to be common.

160 posted on 03/14/2013 7:05:10 AM PDT by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)
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