Hi Dick!
Richard H. McCullough wrote:
>Here's someone else who doesn't like singleton sets,
>and hence doesn't like classes which are individuals.
>
>John Barwise & John Etchemendy (1992), "The Language of First-Order
>Logic",
>Third Edition, Revised & Expanded, Center for the Study of Language and
>Information, Stanford, Page 212
>
> Suppose there is one and only one object x satisfying P(x).
>According to the Axiom of Comprehension, there is a set,
>call it a, whose only member is x. That is, a = {x}.
Ok!
Some students are tempted to think that a = x.. But in that
>direction lies, if not madness, at least dreadful confusion.
Agreed!
After all, a is a set (an abstract object)
Yes!
>and x might have been any object at all, say Stanford's Hoover Tower.
>Hoover is a physical object, not a set.
>So we must not confuse an object x with the set {x},
>called the singleton set containing x.
Indeed!
>Even if x is a set, we must not
>confuse it with its own singleton. For example, x might have any number of
elements in it,
>but {x} has exactly one element: x.
Wait, now I'm confused! How can there be a singleton for the *set* x? Isn't
it crazy to talk about sets, which are themselves included in sets?
Very interested in your answer!
Michael
--
Dipl.-Inform. Michael Schneider
FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik Karlsruhe
Abtl. Information Process Engineering (IPE)
Tel : +49-721-9654-726
Fax : +49-721-9654-727
Email: Michael.Schneider@fzi.de
Web : http://www.fzi.de/ipe/eng/mitarbeiter.php?id=555
FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik an der Universität Karlsruhe
Haid-und-Neu-Str. 10-14, D-76131 Karlsruhe
Tel.: +49-721-9654-0, Fax: +49-721-9654-959
Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Az: 14-0563.1 Regierungspräsidium Karlsruhe
Vorstand: Rüdiger Dillmann, Michael Flor, Jivka Ovtcharova, Rudi Studer
Vorsitzender des Kuratoriums: Ministerialdirigent Günther Leßnerkraus
Received on Tuesday, 12 August 2008 22:40:12 UTC