English Language Learners Asked by Lerner Zhang on September 17, 2020
Beethoven did outlive many people who were the same age as Berlioz.
I’m reading the book Probability Theory: the Logic of Science written by E. T. Jaynes. I was confused by the wording “logically contradictory”. I mean here. Maybe I made a mistake. I didn’t get the meaning of that sentence/counterexample in this statement:
If A implies B then a false propposition implies all propositions, and if we tried to interpret this as logical deducibility, it would follow that every false proposition is logically contradictory. Yet the proposition: ‘Beethoven outlived Berlioz’ is false but hardly logically contradictory.
By the same age as Berlioz(11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869, died at 66 years old) does the author mean 66? Or any age in one year between 1803 and 1827? Or maybe anything else? I guess what the so-called “logically contradictory” means is A => A bar(A implies the opposite of A itself)?
PS: Beethoven(1770-1827, died at 57 years old)
Outlive simply means to continue living after another has died; it does not imply anything about the age of either party.
I certainly expect that my children will outlive me
I outlived my opponent
The original sentence:
Beethoven did outlive many people who were the same age as Berlioz
...says that Beethoven died after many people who were younger than him.
Looking at the wider context, it looks as though the author is trying to clarify their language (ironic, given how confused this text becomes!). They're saying that the statement "Beethoven outlived Berlioz" is false (because Beethoven died before Belioz), but this is only known empirically (because we know the details of both mens' lives), not logically. It is not logically impossible for Beethoven to have outlived Berlioz; we can only know Beethoven did NOT outlive Berlioz from historical accounts.
Answered by Werrf on September 17, 2020
To "outlive" means to live or exist longer than someone or something:
I can't really tell what "the same age" particulary means here but my suggestion is that is means 'similarity in age' or maybe a 'stage of an age' (~45 to 65 is a middle-aged person).
It's a false conclusion to think that the statement ‘Beethoven outlived Berlioz’ is a logical contradiction rather than a false assumption.
Answered by SovereignSun on September 17, 2020
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