The phrase "propositional calculus" sounds like it is difficult and only of interest to absolute geeks. In fact it is merely the rules of logic. When someone tries to convince somebody of something it is the rules that are applied to determine if the argument makes any sense. Many of these rules are not intuitively obvious to the casual observer. I feel that the world would be a better place if the propositional calculus were taught in elementary school. It is something that eveyone should have some familiarty with. The PC defines what makes sense and what does not.

One thing that the propositional calculus says is that a statement must be falsifiable to mean anything. This means that if there is no way that a statement may be proven wrong, the statement has no information. For example if I were to say "Shit happens" there is nothing you could say that would indicate that "Shit does not happen." This does not mean that "Shit happens" is true, it means that it is a semantic NULL. It has said nothing. An example of a statement that is falsifiable is relativity. Relativity makes a prediction for the precession of the perihelion of the planet Mercury that is better than that of Newtonian Mechanics. If the prediction were worse than that of Newton's, relativity could be disregarded.

If you watch daytime talk TV, or perhaps programs that champion lost causes or ones that attempt to convince you of really silly stuff you will see the abuse of the propositional calculus. They will make a non-falsifiable statement and dare anyone to disprove it. Since the statement can not be refuted, they expect you to believe it. I can not prove that the Easter Bunny does not exist, but that does mean that you should believe in the critter.

Sometimes a logical flaw may hide in semantics. For example:

Nothing is better than God

Rye bread is better than nothing

Therefore rye bread is better than God

Obviously something is wrong here. The major premise is true, the minor premise is true, but the conclusion is totally meaningless. Where is the flaw.

I will give you my answer in a second. Let me say that better men than I have said my answer is wrong, but the solutions they gave me were less satisfying than my own.

I categorize this as a redistributed middle fallacy. Namely the word "nothing" as used in the major premise does not mean the same thing that it means in the minor premise. Insidious!

When analysing something like this, it is sometimes helpful to state the problem in an abstract manner where the words do not mean anything. The above syllogism may be restated as:

B > C

A > B

Therefore A > C

When stated this way, everything rings true. If we say that A=Rye bread, B=nothing and C=God and our second example is true, then the first example should be true also, but this is not the case. The difference between the two is that the second syllogism carried no semantic baggage.

You can send me e-mail at

RobertOelrich@Worldnet.att.net

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