- The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
- The result of the discussion was: no consensus. Kbdank71 13:36, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Propose renaming Category:Sentential logic to Category:Propositional logic
- Nominator's rationale: Renamed -- the two names are completely synonymous, however, "propositional" appears to be more popular and consistent with the article, and template heading.Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 03:05, 28 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Absolutely correct move, and long overdue. I work in a part of mathematical logic that is relatively unrelated to propositional logic. I have never heard of "sentential logic" outside Wikipedia. Note that sentential logic already redirects to propositional logic, and compare: [1] [2]. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:12, 28 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Notified category creator with ((subst:cfd-notify))
Cgingold (talk) 09:47, 28 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Oppose: The term "sentential logic" and "sentential calculus" are widely used outside of Wikipedia. To a lesser extent "statement logic" and "statement calculus". The nature and existence of "propositions" is controversial. --Philogo (talk) 14:42, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Have you looked at the two Google Scholar searches I linked above? Google Books gives weaker results, but with the same tendency: sentential logic finds 715 books, propositional logic 1620 books. But I must correct myself. I just discovered that Chang & Keisler use the term "sentential logic"; I simply forgot this.
- I have no idea what you mean that is controversial. Is this about some philosophical distinction? --Hans Adler (talk) 15:08, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- The controversial issues with "proposition" are not sufficient to negate the overwhelming use of propositional over sentential. It is a good observation however.Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 18:08, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- The category was originally created by CBM. I asked him, and he explained to me that his idea was (in my words) that "sentential" is more inclusive than "propositional", even though most authors regard them as synonyms. It sounds convincing, but it doesn't seem to have worked in practice because people didn't understand the distinction. --Hans Adler (talk) 10:42, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- "proposition" is not synonymous with "sentence" nor even with "meaningful declarative sentence" nor "statement" claims to the contrary notwithstanding. There is no agreed definition of "proposition" and the existence of such things has been widely disputed since at least the time of Quine. Some authors appear to use the term "proposition" as synonymous with ""meaningful declarative sentence" others with the "meanings" of meaningful declarative sentences. The use of term "sentential" as opposed to "propositional;" (I believe) was precisely to avoid reference to the controversial "proposition". I suggest we proceed with care rather than haste. --Philogo (talk) 14:16, 31 March 2009 (UTC) See e.g. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Formal_Logic/Merged_Versions/Sentential_Logic#issues:[reply]
Elsewhere in Wikibooks and Wikipedia, you will see the name 'Propositional Logic' (or rather 'Propositional Calculus', see below) and the treatment of propositions much more often than you will see the name 'Sentential Logic' and the treatment of sentences. Our choice here represents the contributor's view as to which position is more popular among current logicians and what you are most likely to see in standard textbooks on the subject. Considerations as to whether the popular view is actually correct are not taken up here.
--Philogo (talk) 15:08, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- (ec) I am really wondering what's going on here. I am fairly sure that your distinction is not relevant for mathematicians. The canonical book for model theory was once Chang & Keisler (1973), who had "sentential logic", now it is Hodges (1993), who has "propositional logic". Hodges has a theological as well as mathematical background, and I have always found him exceptionally consistent and reliable in his choice of terminology. I would have hoped that he takes such philosophical criteria into account, but perhaps he missed this one or just followed the general practice among mathematicians.
- To get some clarity I searched for books that mention both "propositional logic" and "sentential logic" and were published since 2000. [3] One thing I found was Gabbay, "Logic with Added Reasoning": "It may be confusing that we speak of propositional logic but talk little of propositions. In fact we shall be doing our logic on sentences rather than propositions. Even then we shall only be dealing with sentences that make statements (as opposed to a sentence that asks a question). It would perhaps be less confusing to call it sentential logic instead of propositional logic but the latter name is more common." If I understand this correctly, a proposition is an equivalence class of sentence under a certain (dubious) equivalence relation.
- There is also Kleene, "Mathematical Logic": "This part of logic is called propositional logic or the propositional calculus. We deal with propositions through declarative sentences which express them in some language (the object language); the propositions are the meanings of the sentences.2" The footnote says: "Hence some writers call this part of logic 'sentential logic' or the 'sentential calculus'."
- The "The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mathematics and logic" is inconsistent in its usage, but uses "propositional logic" more often (10:3). The index of volume 1 of "Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science" has a 12:2 ratio.
- Barnbrook (2002), "Defining language" is a linguistic book that quotes someone (Schnelle) who may be making a distinction similar to what Carl has in mind, but it's far from clear and Schnelle, too, seems to be a linguist. [4]
- Overall I am getting the impression that almost nobody makes a distinction and that "propositional" is more popular even among philosophically oriented authors. The minority of authors using "sentential logic" is probably big enough to allow us to use the term, but I am not yet convinced that we should do that. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:23, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- again http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Formal_Logic/Merged_Versions/Sentential_Logic#issues puts it well:
- What should logic take as its truth-bearers (objects that are true or false)? The two leading contenders today are sentences and propositions.
- Sentences. These consist of a string of words and perhaps punctuation. The sentence 'The cat is on the mat' consists of six elements: 'the', 'cat', 'is', 'on', another 'the', and 'mat'.
- Propositions. These are the meanings of sentences. They are what is expressed by a sentence or what someone says when he utters a sentence. The proposition that the cat is on the mat consists of three elements: a cat, a mat, and the on-ness relation.
--Philogo (talk) 15:52, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- As a mathematician, I am not interested in "truth-bearers". I think I heard the word the first time a few weeks ago here, from you. The distinction between sentences and propositions, while I can see it, is of no interest to me. I can understand that it matters to you, I understand why you prefer sentences to propositions, and I understand why you want to call it sentential logic if you work with sentences rather than propositions. But I think it wouldn't be a big problem to call it propositional logic even if you really work with sentences. The only source I found that gave a rationale for using the term "sentential logic" used "propositional logic" anyway, saying it is more common.
- In my opinion, unless we actually present both "propositional logic" and "sentential logic" as two slightly different beasts – and that's not really an option because the overwhelming majority of sources say they are synonyms – we should standardise on one of the two terms. The fact that the majority of sources prefer "propositional" (it's obvious from the statistics, and Gabbay says so explicitly) is a strong reason for me to prefer propositional.
- If you want to make us standardise on the rarer term, or not standardise at all, based on a distinction that doesn't even make sense in my world, then you need to convince me that it's very important in your world, that my impression of the sources is false, or that most philosophically oriented sources that use "propositional logic" are obsolete, wrong or irrelevant, or at least that there is a strong push from "propositional" towards "sentential". In that case I will think of all the original logic terminology that has become mostly obsolete in mathematics and is still used in philosophy and be prepared to swallow the bitter pill of having to use an unfamiliar term in the interest of keeping the basic logic articles unified.
- "Bitter pill" sounds a bit like hyperbole, even to myself, but it if we consistently use the "sentential" terminology, then for the mathematics aspect of our articles it means that Wikipedia will be pushing a minority terminology for reasons that most mathematicians won't understand or accept as valid. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:26, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I do not think that we can be sure of making an article better by making it more or less interesting to a particular editor "as a mathematician" or "as an X" for any X, nor just because an editor "prefers" it. I propose we agree any preferred terminology in the (as yet empty) section of [Wikipedia:WikiProject Logic/Standards for notation]. The crietera for a preferred terminology, I would suggest, is not to be determined by what editors find of interest" or "familiar". If there exist more than one term for the same thing, we can always put one terms in parentheses preceeded by "also called". On this partilcar issue
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Formal_Logic/Merged_Versions/Sentential_Logic#issues: claims (rightly or wrongly):
Our choice here [sentential] represents the contributor's view as to which position is more popular among current logicians and what you are most likely to see in standard textbooks on the subject.
As far as I can see most books take
sentences (strings of words or symbols and perhaps punctuation) as being the subject matter but sometimes refer to them as propositions or statements, and sometimes, even when they do not, still call the logic propositional logic. We shold bear in mind that we are disssing here what the CATEGORY is. We
might decide that "propositional logic" and "tautolgy" are in the category "sentential logic". No doubt if we had an aricle called "natural bhistory" we might put it in the category "biology" rather than "nature" or "history". --
Philogo (
talk) 13:33, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
[reply]
- Philogo I agree with SO MUCH of what you are saying! I agree with Hans quite a bit also. I am usually the one advocating that we should do what is right in principle given the meaning of the terms rather than what the apparent pragmatics dictate. Furthermore, I think mathematicians absolutely should take their cues from analytic, ordinary language philosophers as to what terms they should adopt. However I almost never see "sentential" anywhere in the literature. I am certainly open to creating two articles and two categories and expanding on their distinctions. I hope the content should ever be so developed. In the meantime we should go with one or the other. I'm mostly thinking of the people trying to find it and look it up. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 14:05, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Philogo, I don't know why you are repeating the Wikibooks quotation all the time. We don't consider Wikipedia articles reliable, and Wikibooks is much less reliable because the project is much less active. Just look at the history of that page. (Or do you know the author? A Google Scholar search didn't turn up anything useful.) If you assert that it is your expert opinion that philosophers are moving towards "sentential" I am much more inclined to believe it than when you are just quoting a random web page with no authority. But if you want to make use of my trust in your expertise, please take into account that the only reliable source so far that speaks about this says the opposite, and that the search results and Gregbard's and my intuition also point in the opposite direction.
- In any case I would agree with aborting this CfD and continuing the discussion elsewhere, with no deadline, and with the understanding that we are discussing the handling of "propositional" vs. "sentential" in general, not just in the name of this category. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:53, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Yes I agree Hans, and the place for this discussion is surely Wikipedia:WikiProject Logic/Standards for notation#Terminology. If we all agreed there what terminology we should use then articles can be edited/written accordingly, wihout flare ups (e.g. over wffs). You will see I have "seeded" that section by cribbing a lot from the stuff on the talk page you wrote some time back. Go take a look --Philogo (talk) 23:09, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.