Re: Mr. Bird, negation, and *ivorousness

On Thu, 7 Aug 2003, John Cowan wrote:

> I think the reason for my intuition that statements of the form "Mr. Bird
> is *ivorous" are false is that "is *ivorous" has a negation in it.
> If "X is carnivorous" means "X does not [contradictory negation] eat plants",
> then "Mr. Bird is carnivorous" is false, since there he is, over there,
> eating birdseed. And mutatis mutandis, "Mr. Bird is herbivorous" is also
> false. These follow from the (I hope) uncontroversial view that if a
> statement is true (false), its contradictory negation is false (true).


We might define carnivorous as "never eats plants", or as "has internal
organs designed for eating meat and will get sick if it eats plants". If
the former ranges over all incarnations of Mr. Bird then we have trouble.
But it's easy to see that Mr. Bird appears in the form that satisfies the
latter.


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