Sometimes one wants a word like "un-negation" or "de-negation"—a word for the sentence "s" as it relates to "~s". For instance, when teaching logic, one wants to say that if one is asked to prove a negated sentence, one's best bet is often to prove a contradiction from that sentence's un-negation. I just found out that there is a handy word for this. It's "negand". Shiny! I never knew that. So one can say things like:
Last time I needed a word for this in class, I talked of "s" as the "de-negation" of "not-s", but "negand" is much better.
- Believing a negative proposition is the same as disbelieving its negand.
Last time I needed a word for this in class, I talked of "s" as the "de-negation" of "not-s", but "negand" is much better.
2 comments:
Oh, I see! Operators takes operands, so negators takes negands. But then I don't think it's quite right to talk of the negand of a proposition; only of a negation. So, if r is ~s, then there is no "negand of r", but there is a negand of the "~" operation.
Right: only some propositions have negands, just as only some propositions have conjuncts.
Post a Comment