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I am currently reading "On Interpretation" by Aristotle, and in the section 7 there is the following statement:

If, however, both predicate and subject are distributed, the proposition thus constituted is contrary to truth; no affirmation will, under such circumstances, be true. The proposition ‘every man is every animal’ is an example of this type.

From what I understand all-to-all mappings are not possible. Is this generally considered to be true? For example, what about "every rainbow is every color"?

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  • What is the meaning of "every P is every Q"? Commented Jul 15, 2024 at 19:26
  • Presumably "?p:P. ?q:Q. p is q", for whatever meaning of "is" one has in mind ("is" a white horse a horse?). If "is" is to be interpreted as set-theoretic equality, then that sentence is true iff P and Q are subsets of the same singleton set {o}. Commented Jul 15, 2024 at 19:30
  • @NaïmFavier a singleton set is even better counter example here. Commented Jul 15, 2024 at 20:38
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    In a nutshell, a more "philo-logically correct" reading is "Q belongs to every P" instead of "Every P is Q" where the relation between the universal is expressed with "belongs to every" ("belongs to some"). Commented Jul 16, 2024 at 7:14
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    @spacemonkey "For example, what about "every rainbow is every color"?" What does that even mean? Every rainbow is of every colour, yes, but that's is something else entirely. Every X is every Y is true if and only if there is only one X and one Y and X = Y. Commented Jul 16, 2024 at 16:04

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There's an ambiguity in the term 'is' that we should be wary of. "X is Y" can be taken to mean:

  • "Object X is a member of class Y", or…
  • "Object X is imbued with property Y"

"Every man is every animal" is of the first type, while "every rainbow is every color" is of the second. You can usually see this if you replace the subject term 'every' with 'each', i.e.:

  • "Each man is every animal" is obviously nonsense, because it's trying to say that each man is a member of every animal class
  • "Each rainbow is every color" makes perfect sense, because it's saying that each rainbow has the property of containing every color.
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  • What difference do you make between a class and a property? You missed an obvious meaning of "is" (equality, as in "2 + 2 is 4"). Commented Jul 16, 2024 at 17:04
  • @NaïmFavier: It's nomenclature, I suppose. We could equally well say "Each rainbow belongs to the class of objects that contain every color". But note the difference is the way the predicate is distributed. In the first case, each class of animal has to be distributed to each human; in the second case, one class (the class of objects that contain every color) is distributed. Commented Jul 16, 2024 at 17:23
  • @NaïmFavier: btw, the relationship between math and syllogistic logic is tenuous and arcane. Let's not get into that. Commented Jul 16, 2024 at 17:24
  • I don't see why "In the first case, each class of animal has to be distributed to each human; in the second case, one class (the class of objects that contain every color) is distributed.". Both sentences have the same interpretation (?x:X.?y:Y. x has property/belongs to class y), it's just that the first sentence is obviously false and the second one obviously true. Every class of colour is "distributed" to every rainbow. Commented Jul 16, 2024 at 17:38
  • @NaïmFavier: This is where the confusion lies. A rainbow does not belong to the class "objects that are red". Rainbows belong to the class "objects that contain red" If we were to distribute the predicate to say "Rainbows belong to the class "red objects" and the class "blue objects" and the class "green objects" that would be false. But we can say "rainbows belong to the class "objects containing red" and the class "objects containing blue", etc, because all those classes belong to a single super class "objects containing all colors" Commented Jul 16, 2024 at 18:22
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If every element of the domain maps to every element of the range, you don't have a function, you have a relation, which is a superset of the functions.

Functions may be injective, bijective or surjective, but they always map one element of the range onto one element of the domain.

The concept of a relation is completely legitimate, but it's not a function.

Here

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  • Are you interpreting "is" as "may be related to"? That seems a bit far-fetched. Commented Jul 16, 2024 at 14:50
  • Which occurrence of "is" are you referring to? Commented Jul 16, 2024 at 18:54
  • The one in the title of the question. Commented Jul 16, 2024 at 18:56
  • No, absolutely not. Aristotle is perfectly clear. We're specifically talking about the difference between relations and functions. Reverse that downvote.This place is just like Reddit. Commented Jul 16, 2024 at 19:07
  • No we're not. You're talking about that, and I'm trying to understand why. In a relation between X and Y, every element of X may be related to any element of Y. In a function X → Y, every element of X is related to exactly one element of Y. This seems quite distant from the topic of the question, "every X is every Y". Commented Jul 16, 2024 at 19:23

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