Yeah, that one’s always bothered me too. I think the difference in meaning from colloquial “implication” and logical “material implication” are also involved in the raven paradox.
So the statement that “all ravens are black” can be taken as “if RAVEN then BLACK”. Is this statement true? If you see a black raven then trivially yes, if you see a white raven then trivially false (via counter example).
However if you see a non-raven, it is evidence for the truth of the statement because it doesn’t go against it: not-ravens being black-or-not-black both reduce the universe of possible objects without proving not-black-ravens exist.
Or something like that, I think it’s stupid too. Trinary logic can adopt a more sensible (IMHO) definition of implication that makes A being false always lead to the third value (usually defined as indeterminate or neither-true-nor-false).
Yeah, that one’s always bothered me too. I think the difference in meaning from colloquial “implication” and logical “material implication” are also involved in the raven paradox.
So the statement that “all ravens are black” can be taken as “if RAVEN then BLACK”. Is this statement true? If you see a black raven then trivially yes, if you see a white raven then trivially false (via counter example).
However if you see a non-raven, it is evidence for the truth of the statement because it doesn’t go against it: not-ravens being black-or-not-black both reduce the universe of possible objects without proving not-black-ravens exist.
Or something like that, I think it’s stupid too. Trinary logic can adopt a more sensible (IMHO) definition of implication that makes A being false always lead to the third value (usually defined as indeterminate or neither-true-nor-false).