Tag: "particular statements"

The Existential Fallacy

“It is a curious feature of logic that statements which refer to the whole of a class do not actually tell us whether there are any members of that class.” Madsen Pirie This sentence introduces the principle of logic according to which statements that refer to the whole of a class, known as universal statements, do not necessarily provide information about the existence or non-existence of members of that class. For example, the statement “All dogs are mammals” is a universal statement that refers to the class of dogs and the class of mammals. While this statement tells us that

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