Talk:Proposition

Proposition equals implication?

When I looked up "inverse" in WP, the article begins immediately talking about implications. So I wondered "Are all propositions implications (because it seemed to me that all propositions should have an inverse)? Elsewhere on the web I found propositions being discussed as implications. If philosophy (does it?) commonly uses this equality ("All A are B" is the same as "If something is A then it's B" or "C implies D for some C, D"), or whatever, should that be discussed somewhere here? -lifeform (talk) 05:52, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Lesser of Two Equals

Much of this dicussions deals not with a word but more like an anti-statement made by people who find out that they themselves deal with the proposition but are not targeted by the proponent. What you have thus is a antagonist/protagonist article reffering to the discourse of human kind. As a whole people, this is very suspicious and not to the point of fact. A proper way to put it is that the word deals with risk, not value. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:301:7751:160:863:41AF:35BC:9314 (talk) 14:29, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Accessibility of the lead

I wanted to start discussion on the lead. As stated in my edit summary, my goal was to make the text more accessible to readers without background in the subject, in particular by adding "for example" text. I'm not at all wedded to the particular text I put there earlier today, and I'm very happy to discuss. Botterweg14 (talk) 01:19, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 5 May 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) – MaterialWorks 18:07, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

---

• Proposition → Proposition (logic)
• Proposition (disambiguation) → Proposition

– There does not seem to be a primary topic for this term by pageviews or significance, when compared with referendum (also often called a "proposition"). ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 06:59, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. Firstly, the article Proposition is not restricted to logic, as it considers also linguistic and philosophical aspects. So the disambiguator "(logic)" is too restrictive, and therefore confusing. Secondly, none of the items in the dab page can be reasonably considered as a primary topics. The page referendum mention "proposition" as the term used in some countries for "referendum". This is a regional use, and cannot therefore be a primary topic. D.Lazard (talk) 10:01, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

  All the articles on propositions in Encyclopedia Britannica are categorized under "logic". I'd say it is the primary way it is described. While referendums are only called propositions in the United States, that doesn't disqualify it from being a potential primary topic. An audience of the entire U.S. is a fairly general audience, even if it doesn't reflect the global name. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 10:09, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

  Proposition and referendum are not synonymous. A proposition (a proposal, as to a change in law) may be subject to a referendum (a vote, to accept or reject the proposition). Station1 (talk) 00:15, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. Per D.Lazard. Botterweg14 (talk) 01:28, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
• https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Proposition for March indicates that the hatnote was 10th most commonly clicked link here, with 136 visits out of a total incoming traffic of 33.1k (< 0.5%). I think you need a stronger argument to refute the presumption of primary topic by usage here. --Joy (talk) 12:56, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Reverting IP edits

I'm reverting the recent IP edits in toto since they introduce pervasive mischaracterizations and factual errors, beyond what can be fixed one-by-one. I get that it's frustrating to put work into edits just to see them all undone. I've been in the editor's shoes and I get it, but I don't see a better way of doing things here.

The fundamental problem is that these edits pervasively equate propositions with sentences, e.g. in saying a proposition is a claim in the form of a statement or the proposition "The sky is blue on Earth". This is a fundamental misunderstanding. The relation between propositions and sentences is (simplifying a bit) analogous to the relation between people and names. A pedantic distinction, for sure, but this is after all a philosophy article, and in this case that distinction is the whole point. In addition to this fundamental problem, there are numerous others, for instance text that appears to conflate planets with possible worlds.

I can appreciate that things aren't clear from the current jungle of text, and I definitely share the editor's goal of making the lead more accessible. I don't have any brilliant suggestions about how to do that. When teaching, I have a way of explaining propositions which generally works pretty well, but it adopts more of a particular viewpoint than I think would be fair in a Wikipedia article. I'm gonna ping Phlsph7 for some further suggestions, since I've seen them do a really beautiful job with these kinds of conundrums in the past. Botterweg (talk) 23:34, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. While I'm not opposed to simplifying the article in general and the lead in particular, I agree with Botterweg that several of those changes are not trivial copyedits. Since there are concerns, the changes should probably be discussed here first. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:54, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Merger proposal

See previous proposal from 2013.

I'd like to re-propose the following merger:

• Statement (logic) ➝ Proposition

There are two definitions at Statement (logic): the second being synonymous to (or a subtopic of) this page, the first goes unelaborated in the article.

A paragraph in this (Proposition) article says:

"A number of philosophers and linguists claim that all definitions of a proposition are too vague to be useful... P. F. Strawson, on the other hand, advocated for the use of the term "statement"."

However, from a source cited at Statement (logic):

"Judging from the articles reprinted in Strawson (1971), it would seem that soon after writing ‘On Referring’ Strawson adopted the term ‘statement’ from Austin (p.190), and generally continued to use it over the next two decades (e.g. pp.75-95, 234-49) although by 1957 he had already seen reason to prefer ‘proposition’ (pp.118, 122). In 1964 he toyed with the compromise ‘Statement (proposition)’ (p.217), but in 1970 finally moved to ‘proposition’ (pp.96-115)."

I'll note the same author claims that Sybil Wolfram "consistently adopted" 'statement'.

Noting from previous proposal the existence of Category:Propositions and Category:Statements.

Regardless of the Strawsonian application, I encourage browsing WhatLinksHere, which demonstrates the haphazard use of Statement (logic) by editors seemingly expecting Proposition (or Propositional formula, as seems to be an issue with Proposition as well). Tule-hog (talk) 05:04, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Propositions or statements are relevant to various disciplines. Logic is one of them. The role propositions play in logic is different from the role they play, for example, in philosophy of mind. So there would be some form of justification, at least in principle, for having a separate article on how propositions/statements are conceptualized and used in logic. However, the content of the current article Statement (logic) is not particularly helpful for this purpose and does not really justify having a separate article. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:02, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

• Support. All of the content currently in statement (logic) addresses the same topic as proposition using slightly different terminology, so there's no reason to have separate articles. It could make sense to leave a disambiguation page with links to both proposition and Propositional formula, but I don't have particularly strong feelings about that. Botterweg (talk) 22:32, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
• Support The other, shorter, page starts out by being in essence a disambiguation page between two meanings, and then the rest focuses on one of them, proposition, about which we already have a better-developed article (though there could be some material to merge in, like maybe a better-phrase sentence here, a missing detail there, a citation in the one that is missing in the other, etc.) Statement (logic) should likely be a disambiguation page, and include things like the computer-science/programming meaning.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:40, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Notes

References