[EM] Many things wrong with Richard's claims

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Where to start? These argument-faults range from general principles
to specific definition interpretations. I'll start with the most general,
and then skip around.

Blake said that mathematicians say that if a statement says nothing
about a certain proposition, then it's saying something true about
that proposition, and that therefore that should be accepted as true
on EM. For that reason, when I talk about the problem that Richard
found, I'll state it both ways, with and without Richard's & Blake's
assumption. I'll later come back to Blake's claim again, however, to suggest 
a better way to achieve what that assumption may be trying to achieve.

Richard said that my statement #3 contains a fallacy, that it isn't
true. I suggest that we look at what Richard's claim means. Abbreviations 
that I use are: "Frontrunners" means the 2 candidates who
get the most votes in the election. "Tie" means a 2-way tie for 1st place in 
the election.

Depending on whether we accept Blake's claim, and Richard's claim
that's based on it, Richard is saying one of the 2 following things:

A. He agrees that if i & j are frontrunners, then if there's a tie
it's between them, but he denies that if it's true that i & j are
frontrunners then it's true that if there's a tie it's between them.

B. He agrees that if i & j are not frontrunners, then if there's a tie
it's not between them, but he denies that if it's not true that i & j
are frontrunners, then it's not true that if there's a tie then it's
between them.

Is that self-contradiction, or what?

Richard says my statement #3 isn't true because if there's no tie,
then (according to Richard & Blake) it's true that if there's a tie
it's between i & j, even if it's not true that i & j are frontrunners.
That's because he claims that if a statement says nothing about a
proposition, then it's saying something true about it. Does that sound
convincing enough to accept the absurd self-contradiction in B above?

But even if we agreed with Richard on this, the fact that we have to
choose between 2 unacceptable conclusions suggests that there's something
wrong with the approach.

Still accepting Richard's notion of how Bart's Pij definition is worded
(I'll get to that later), I took it to have a different meaning.
To me it meant "In the event that there should be a tie, it would be
between i & j."

In other words, I took it as a general statement, one that doesn't
become paradoxical and meaningless nonsense if there's no tie.

That's why, yesterday I worded it: "If there is/were a tie, it is/would
be between i & j.  (use the verb before the "/" if there is a tie, and
the verb after the "/" if there isn't a tie).

More later,
Mike Ossipoff
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