From: mtx014@cck.cov.ac.uk (Robert Low)
Subject: Re: Noah's ark incompatible...with Noah's ark?
Reply-To: mtx014@cck.cov.ac.uk
Organization: Plato's rest home for the incurably geometric
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 17:27:05 GMT

I already botched a reply to this once, but what the heck,...


>In article <mtx014.711617595@leprss.gsfc.nasa.gov>, mtx014@cck.cov.ac.uk (Robert
>Low) writes:
>> Attack follows:
>> deleted.
>> Attack over.

>  I acquiesce to your overwhelming logic.

I knew you'd have to...

>  I'm not tagging a "not" on the end.  As far as the second quote goes, I am
>carrying over a pattern from the previous sentance.  In the first the idea is
>just that the animals are understood to be unclean.

You aren't tagging a "not" on the end; you are inserting an
"unclean" in the middle, in such a way as to change the
entire meaning of the passsage. And look at the passage!
Gen 6:9-22 is an outline of the entire flood narrative,
and no mention of the clean/unclean distinction is made until
the next passage. I still say that given that much freedom
to insert glosses, *no* text can be regarded as inconsistent.
You have more-or-less defined the concept away.

I have somewhat more serious things to say about consistency
just below.



>[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!

>  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".

*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. 

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".

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.)
--
Robert Low  email(JANET): RobLow@uk.ac.coventry.cck
	    smail : Mathematics Department, Coventry University,
		    Priory Street, Coventry CV1 5FB, England.
Keep an open mind---but not so open your brain falls out.