#also: Russell... & Carnap... & entirely too many others

[marta-bee]

As a former (academic) philosopher, I'm always chuckling whenever a Tumblr poll lists "I'm bald" as an option to just see the results.

See, there's a controversy in philosophy of language revolving around the sentence, "The present king of France is bald." Is it false? Well, if you round up all the bald things in existence, the present king of France is certainly not among them - because there isn't a king of France, France is a republic. But logic tells us, if X is false, not-X should be true. At least according to some, that would mean "The present king of France is not bald" would be true, which is also not the case since --again-- there is no present king of France. If you collected all the not-bald things, the present king of France would emphatically not be among them either.

Let me tell you I have listened to arguments about this utterly, completely stupid point until my ears bled. It's probably a big part of why I got into medieval phil-lang and not its mid 20th century counterpart. I still find the specialty fascinating. Just not, you know, *gestures*

And every time I see one of you happening froods say you're bald, I get flashbacks to the wars. Followed quickly by the urge to giggle. Thank goodness it's not my problem to untangle any more.