Bhartrhari's Paradox
futilitycloset.com
Bhartrhari's Paradox
1–10 of 84 posts
Re: Bhartrhari's Paradox
#2Are there actually things that cannot be named?
Any such thing could easily be assigned some such "Phenomenon 8x306Q".
If any two people agree to call it that and use that to succesfully discuss the thing, then that is a name for the thing.
Otherwise nothing can be named. Is the cat in your house really a cat, or is it a Felis catus? How can we be certain that it's not a gato or a кот? If the cat in your house is indeed a кот, gato, Felis catus, and cat, then Phenomenon 8x306Q can certainly be Penomenon 8x306Q as much as it is "familial bonds strained by misdeeds" or whatever the things we're naming is.
Re: Bhartrhari's Paradox
#3Are there actually things that cannot be named? Any such thing could easily be assigned some such "Phenomenon 8x306Q". If any two people agree to call it that and use that to succesfully discuss the thing, then that is a name for the thing. Otherwise nothing can be named. Is the cat in your house really a cat, or is it a Felis catus? How can we be certain that it's not a gato or a кот? If the cat in your house is ind…
The proof is simple: there are countably many names, but uncountably many real numbers. Hence, some real numbers must be unnameable.
Re: Bhartrhari's Paradox
#4Are there actually things that cannot be named? Any such thing could easily be assigned some such "Phenomenon 8x306Q". If any two people agree to call it that and use that to succesfully discuss the thing, then that is a name for the thing. Otherwise nothing can be named. Is the cat in your house really a cat, or is it a Felis catus? How can we be certain that it's not a gato or a кот? If the cat in your house is ind…
The proof is simple: there are countably many names, but uncountably many real numbers. Hence, some real numbers must be unnameable.
Are there countably many names? Countably sayable, perhaps, but I don't recall seeing any limitation to word length in the spec. See: "Below is the full 189,819-lettered word for 'titin':" at https://cw39.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/longest... as an example.
Surely if we can have a 189,819 lettered word we can have a million billion trillion lettered word or an uncountably lettered word. They'd be used in the same way as the really long numbers in that we'd give them some other handier name that collides when not given context. e.g. In spoken language pi/pie are often confused if the conversation does not already have a mathematical context and no one says 3.1415926535... conversationally just as no one uses the lenghtier version of chitin and no one would use the uncountably long name for some uncountably long number.
Re: Bhartrhari's Paradox
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
The proof is simple: there are countably many names, but uncountably many real numbers. Hence, some real numbers must be unnameable.
Are there countably many names? Countably say able, perhaps, but I don't recall seeing any limitation to word length in the spec. See: "Below is the full 189,819-lettered word for 'titin':" at https://cw39.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/longest... as an example. Surely if we can have a 189,819 lettered word we can have a million billion trillion lettered word or an uncountably lettered word. They'd be used i…
names have to be finite in length. i think that's pretty obvious
Re: Bhartrhari's Paradox
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there countably many names? Countably say able, perhaps, but I don't recall seeing any limitation to word length in the spec. See: "Below is the full 189,819-lettered word for 'titin':" at https://cw39.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/longest... as an example. Surely if we can have a 189,819 lettered word we can have a million billion trillion lettered word or an uncountably lettered word. They'd be used i…
names have to be finite in length. i think that's pretty obvious
I don't see how that's any more obvious than the suspicious claim that numbers can have only so many digits.
Re: Bhartrhari's Paradox
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
names have to be finite in length. i think that's pretty obvious
I don't see how that's any more obvious than the suspicious claim that numbers can have only so many digits.
A number is not in the first place its digit sequence. A number like pi is in the first place the ratio of a circle's diameter and its circumference, and only incidentally a certain (infinite) decimal expansion. A name is in the first place something you say, hence the thing you say has to be (at least theoretically) sayable.
Re: Bhartrhari's Paradox
#8I'm open to the idea that some things are unnameable but would need an example :)
Re: Bhartrhari's Paradox
#9The Herzbergers' paper: https://sci-hub.ru/10.1007/BF00202726
Re: Bhartrhari's Paradox
#10I'm open to the idea that some things are unnameable but would need an example :)
I'll write you as soon as I can