Quote:
Originally Posted by bns  Well you bring up an interesting point. Here's my take.
Let's adjust the definition of 'wet' a bit.
1. Having the properties of water.
2. Has water on it. (e.g. the towel is wet)
I think #1 is the appropriate one for the statement "water is wet." Clearly, water has the properties of water. It's a tautology. That being the case, I think the statement "water is wet" works just fine. "Having the properties of" is much more clear than simply "like" and avoids the confusion that you mention. |
That's a good solution... I like that approach. A couple thoughts:
It's not clear that tautologies are true statements. A common view is that mathematical statements are neither true nor false. IMO a mathematical axiom like '1=0' is perfectly valid, just not very useful. Maybe one could think of it as a degenerate case like '1=0 (mod 1)'. In this case "Water is wet" could be neither true nor false.
Also, IMO the object/property way of talking is also reducible to the more basic concepts of 'similiarity' and 'difference'. For example, if something is brown and solid, we don't call it water. IOW we classify things into object catagories, to begin with, based on similarity and differences. Then we call something a property if there's a similarity between all the objects.