Monday, May 23, 2016

Briefly On Symbolic Suggestiveness: Chicago, Denver, New York

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The author states that

'Suggestiveness should never be allowed to interfere with logical clarity or elegance.

For instance, if we wanted to state that Chicago lies between New York and Denver, we might well use C for Chicago, and D for Denver, but to use NY for New York would be confusing, because, if we use Roman capitals for elements, the use of two letters would suggest some combination of two elements.' (59).

It could be viewed as suggesting two locations, for example.

'If we wanted a more suggestive symbolism than A, B, C,...' (59).

This would not be the most effective symbolism when documenting cities. In this example, the 'C' as the third city listed,for New York, could be confused with the 'A' for Chicago, the first city listed, because Chicago begins with the English letter 'C'.

Langer suggests for this set either:

C, D, and N

or

C, D, and Y

not

C, D, and NY (59)

I would prefer

C, D, and N to state that Chicago is between Denver and New York

Therefore for an example, adding

R=Dr. Russ

And the cities I have visited from that statement

v= Has visited
nv+ Has not visited

Notice as Langer has with her examples such as 'ch' for chess and 'br' for bridge (54-58), these are stated as elements in small letters in order to not be confused (hopefully) with the cities stated with large capital letters.

R v N

R nv C

R nv D

LANGER, SUSANNE K (1953)(1967) An Introduction to Symbolic Logic, Dover Publications, New York.