by JLS
for the GC
JONES was commenting on "iff", and the iff entry in wiki has a later section on "analogs", which includes:
"Other words are also sometimes emphasized
in the same way by repeating the last letter; for
example "orr" for "Or and only Or" (the exclusive
disjunction)".
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I must say that my favourite defense of the Griceian reading of "or" as ALWAYS inclusive comes from Wood´s review in Mind, of a textbook on symbolic logic! I have discussed elsewhere with Tapper et al.
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In any case, it amuses me not so much the "orr", but the "and only", which attaches to "or" -- "or and only or" -- in the way in which "and only" attaches to "if" to deliver "if and only if".
There are some points in the wiki entry that may be worth considering. They suggest that "if and only if" is perhaps too ordinary a phrase and that one should not DREAM that it corresponds to ")(". They also seem to prefer "iff" to read, "precisely if", which, even if more Latinate, seems less verbose or rhetorical than "if and only if"?
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That one is awful!
ReplyDelete"If and only if" makes sense.
"Or and only or" is a pleonasm, and its only merit is that it provides a use for that nice word.
[If we must attach a meaning to "only A or B" the it will mean "not anything else other than A or B" which is not a description of any possibly operation in a boolean algebra since "F orr T" would then fail to have a truth values].
Similarly "orr" is a secondary abomination, owing its origin (I suppose having been used in Wiki we must now count it has having an origin) to the first abomination.
The terms to use are "exclusive or" and "xor", which make sense.
RBJ
Or ("of course") "neq" for "not equivalant", which is the same thing as xor.
ReplyDeleteRBJ
Yes. Good we share a view about an abomination or two. I suppose what irritates me about "or and only or" is the 'and'. But then, the intrusive 'and' should also irritate me in 'if AND only if' (which Jones does not see as an abomination).
ReplyDeleteOne woud like the 'or' to multiply or strengthen alla:
"or or only or"
rather than as
"or AND only or"
-- but by the same token,
"if" should get strengthened as
"if if only if"
rather than as Jones's favoured "if AND only if".
Or something.