|
|
Posted by Davιmon on 10/17/54 11:44
dorayme arranged shapes to form:
> In article <541jg3-mpa.ln1@ophelia.g5n.co.uk>,
> Toby Inkster <usenet200604@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> DavΓΒ©mon wrote:
>>
>>> Lists with no items? That doesn't make any sense to me at all!
>>
>> The mathematical equivalent for the UL element would be what is called a
>> "set".
>>
>> A set is a group of numbers/shapes/letters/vectors/whatever. Some examples
>> are the set of all positive integers, the set of letters that directly
>> follow vowels in the alphabet, and the set of all people called Kevin.
>>
>> The set is an abstract concept, and can be dealt with mathematically, in
>> many cases without worrying about how many (if any) elements it contains.
>
> Indeed, a main point here being that a class or set can have no
> members. One can have a building that no one has yet occupied or
> fled from, or a club that has yet to get a member or no longer
> has members. It is thought by some that classes exist
> independently of their members. And so they can exist without
> members at all.
>
Of course a building exists without people in it - in exactly the same way
that "a list of people who are in an empty building" does not. ie. I can go
and look at the "building", I cannot look at an empty list, I can look at
the space where that list might appear - but calling that a list is like
calling an empty lot a building...
>
> But questions about number are quite prevalent in and out of
> philosophy and mathematics:
>
> In Farewell My Lovely, a Raymond Chandler thriller, Marlow, over
> the phone, says to Moose Malloy, something like, "Have you heard
> of Baxter Wilson Grayle?" and Moose replies "How many people is
> that?"
lol!
Of course, "Have you heard of Baxter, Wilson and Grayle?" would more
clearly signify multiple entities in the way that "Baxter Wilson Grayle"
does not. However, there is also the option which is that "Baxter, Wilson &
Grayle" refer to a collective entity (a firm of solicitors perhaps) and I'm
quite sure they would have argued for and against "Wilson, Grayle & Baxter"
and "Grayle, Baxter & Wilson", because being a list, sequence is important.
--
DavΓ©mon
http://www.nightsoil.co.uk/
Navigation:
[Reply to this message]
|