From: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Subject: Re: Noah's ark incompatible...with Noah's ark?
Reply-To: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Organization: Ministery of Silly Walks
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 22:21:54 GMT

In article <mtx014.711739625@leprss.gsfc.nasa.gov>, mtx014@cck.cov.ac.uk (Robert
Low) writes:
> >[more stuff yet further off the subject]
> >> The point that both Mike and I were trying to make is that
> >> with sufficient freedom to interpolate addenda into the
> >> text, one can harmonize absolutely anything. But you end
> >> up with a valueless text, because you can make it mean anything
> >> you want to; that is (I think) why he was questioning
> >> the value of the procedure you seem to be advocating.
> 
> You seem not to be concerned with this point, but I
> find it very important. *If* the text is God given and
> authoritative, the meaning is very important. Such harmonizations
> make great changes to the apparent meaning of the text. How do you
> know what the authoritative meaning of the text is? If you
> can't tell, what does it mean to say that the text is consistent?
> What does it mean to have an authoritative but unintelligible text?
> By the rules you are using, I can make any text consistent; but
> the interpretation I attach to most texts won't have much to do 
> with the author's intention!

  I'm not getting stuck on this point, I just don't really see what it has to
do.  If you wan't to discuss the reasonableness for interpretation, and to what
limits one should extend, okay.  It has nothing to do whith what I was talking
about, and it doesn't belong on t.o.  I will be happy to discuss it on t.r.m
where it fist in considerably better with the charter of the group.

> >  Well, by symmetry, the freedom given for denial of contradiction is equal
to
> >that given for denial of tautology (a self truth).  The meaning of
contradiction
> >you seem to be wanting is not the one usually used.  If you wan't to
redefine
> >the meaning of contradiction feel free, but state it explicitly.
> 
> OK: a natural language contradiction is a sentence that
> is obtained by substituting sentences for letters in
> a contradiciton in the propositional calculus.
> (A ^ B) ^ (A => ~B) is a contradiction in propositional calculus.
> (I've used ^ for "and", ~ for "not", and => for "implies".
> 
> A is the proposition "Noah took exactly one pair of each animal"
> B is the proposition "Noah took one pair of the clean ones, seven
> pairs of the unclean".

  The argument is about the word "exactly" in proposition A.

> *Without harmonizing glosses*, proposition A is a  logical 
> consequence of 6:19-22. B is a logical consequence of Gen 7:1-5.
> I think that we can agree that A => ~B, and that without
> harmonizing glosses, 6:19-22 together with 7:1-5 give
> A ^ B. 

  If you want to keep that "exactly" in there.  Without it A => ~B is a matter
of interpretation (opinion?).

> What I don't think we seem to be able to agree on is what
> constitutes an interpretation. As far as I'm aware, an
> interpretation of a sentence should be a map from the
> symbols in the sentence to something "real" (like a collection
> of sets and relations). You seem to think that an interpretation
> may equally well be an map from the sentence *plus any other
> symbols you think appropriate* to the "something real".

  What we need is a set of facts, and a set of unfacts to indicate what to drop
in place where the statements are.  True for those in the facts bin, False for
those in the unfacts bin.  Sentances in neither must be left for
interpretation.

  "If the sky is green then I am a martian" is not a tautology, but it is true
if we allow that "the sky is green" is an unfact.  If it is left unkown it is a
"can't tell" by the definition I gave earlier.  This can only be a contradiction
if "the sky is green" is a fact and "I am a martian" is an unfact.

> If you want to extend model theory in this way, that is your 
> privilege. But please explain what you mean by an interpretation.
> (I think you are guilty of an amphiboly here, in that I
> think you are mixing up "interpretation" in the model-theoretic
> sense, with "intepretation" in the sense of "an exegetical
> explanation of a passage". "Interpretation" has a rather
> specific meaning in logic, which your interpretations do not
> conform to.)

  By interpretation I mean the transference of the phrases into their logical
equivalents.  This is encompasses both the logical and exegetical processes. 
The two things are too intertwined to be easily separated in this context.

***********************************************************************
* Warren Kurt   *  "In our country we have those three unspeakably    *
* vonRoeschlaub *   precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of    *
* kv07@iastate  *   conscience, and the prudence never to practice    *
*               *   either." - Mark Twain                             *
***********************************************************************
Newsgroups: talk.origins