asserts as to the _other_ portion of the
Class "ducks," viz. "Mrs. Bond has no gray ducks _out of_ this village".
In the Appendix I have given a new version of the Problem of the "Five
Liars." My object, in doing so, is to escape the subtle and mysterious
difficulties which beset all attempts at regarding a Proposition as
being its own Subject, or a Set of Propositions as being Subjects for
one another. It is certainly, a most bewildering and unsatisfactory
theory: one cannot help feeling that there is a great lack of
_substance_ in all this shadowy host----that, as the procession of
phantoms glides before us, there is not _one_ that we can pounce upon,
and say "_Here_ is a Proposition that _must_ be either true or
false!"----that it is but a Barmecide Feast, to which we have been
bidden----and that its prototype is to be found in that mythical island,
whose inhabitants "earned a precarious living by taking in each others'
washing"! By simply translating "telling 2 Truths" into "taking _both_
of 2 condiments (salt and mustard)," "telling 2 Lies" into "taking
_neither_ of them" and "telling a Truth and a Lie (order not specified)"
into "taking only _one_ condiment (it is not specified _which_)," I have
escaped all those metaphysical puzzles, and have produced a Problem
which, when translated into a Set of symbolized Premisses, furnishes the
very same _Data_ as were furnished by the Problem of the "Five Liars."
pg-x
The coined words, introduced in previous editions, such as "Eliminands"
and "Retinends", perhaps hardly need any apology: they were
indispensable to my system: but the new plural, here used for the first
time, viz. "Soriteses", will, I fear, be condemned as "bad English",
unless I say a word in its defence. We have _three_ singular nouns, in
English, of plural _form_, "series", "species", and "Sorites": in all
three, the awkwardness, of using the same word for both singular and
plural, must often have been felt: this has been remedied, in the case
of "series" by coining the plural "serieses", which has already found
its way into the dictionaries: so I am no rash innovator, but am merely
"following suit", in using the new plural "Soriteses".
In conclusion, let me point out that even those, who are obliged to
study _Formal_ Logic, with a view to being able to answer
Examination-Papers in that subject, will find the study of _Symbolic_
Logic m
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