Subject: Re: A visit from the Jehovah's Witnesses From: lippard@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard) Distribution: world,local Organization: University of Arizona Nntp-Posting-Host: skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41 Lines: 26 In article , kmr4@po.CWRU.edu (Keith M. Ryan) writes... >In article suopanki@stekt6.oulu.fi (Heikki T. Suopanki) writes: >>:> God is eternal. [A = B] >>:> Jesus is God. [C = A] >>:> Therefore, Jesus is eternal. [C = B] >> >>:> This works both logically and mathematically. God is of the set of >>:> things which are eternal. Jesus is a subset of God. Therefore >>:> Jesus belongs to the set of things which are eternal. The first premise and the conclusion are not properly translated as identity statements, since the "is" in those statements is the "is" of predication rather than of identity. Instead, they should be translated using a predicate letter. Using "g" to designate God and "j" to designate Jesus, and the predicate letter "E" for the property of being eternal, the first premise is Eg and the conclusion is Ej. The second premise appears to contain an "is" of identity, in which case it can be properly symbolized as j = g. But your remark that "Jesus is a subset of God" suggests that strict identity is not desired here. If, however, the first premise means that all members making up the set God have the property of being eternal, the same conclusion follows. Jim Lippard Lippard@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU Dept. of Philosophy Lippard@ARIZVMS.BITNET University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721