Editing Ontology:Q539 (section)

== Usage notes ==

This Item refers to the narrow set of truth values used in formal logic: <b>true</b> versus <b>false</b>. It may also refer to a generalized notion of a boolean data type as used in mathematics or computer programming.

The exact forms of "true" and "false" used by a particular definition or implementation of booleans are not as important as the particular requirement that a statement be answered with a truthy versus falsy value, such as 1 versus 0 or any number greater than 0 versus 0 or [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hehner  only one of the two mathematical objects "up" and "down"].

It is important to note that any system of proposition-based logic which requires binary truth values will function differently from a system which does not. A system requiring binary truth values tends to require individual propositions to be much longer and explicitly specify the exact definitions of every single word or phrase and social context of every sentence, while a system using non-binary truth values may be able to adapt more easily to statements embedding specific contexts and definitions in the way that most natural-language statements made in daily life generally do.

=== Truth value examples ===

* <i>On earth, acceleration due to gravity is always the same and equal to about 9.8 meters per second per second.</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>Assuming that the definition of death includes cardiac arrest, people cannot come back to life.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Fiction teaches people life lessons. I specifically mean "sometimes".</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>Black people in the United States experience structural racism. I specifically mean "some of them".</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>W.E.B. DuBois experienced structural racism.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Black people in the United States experience structural racism. I have not specified how many, and I am delivering my statement to a Tory.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Trotskyists will never believe in mainstream Marxism-Leninism. I have not specified which ones, and might be talking about Nikolai Bukharin.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Trotskyists will never believe in mainstream Marxism-Leninism. I am talking about people like Alan Woods.</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>Hypothetical person Alice exists. Alice is a trans woman. I have not yet met her.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Hypothetical person Alice exists. Alice is a trans woman. She said she chose the name Alice and the pronoun "she" recently.</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>The United States will become a workers' state. I have not specified a date or how I know.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>The United States will become a workers' state. I mean this in the sense that humanity does not currently have a Materialist model of what processes will prevent it from ever happening.</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>The United States became a workers' state in 1947.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Alex is non-binary. Alex is male or female.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Stalin's Marxism is not Leninism. I am using the Trotskyist definition of Leninism which says exactly that.</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>Stalin's Marxism is not Leninism. I mean this in the sense of what most people in the world would say.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Colonialism is in our minds. I mean this in terms of how humanity could have stopped it from ever happening in 1800.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Colonialism is in our minds. I mean this in terms of a theory of how to achieve individual mental health by getting rid of internalized prejudices.</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>Green is the color of sorrow. I am talking about my own poetry.</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>Green is the color of sorrow. I am talking about solarpunk art.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>The United States is a powder keg. I am talking about any physical-world interaction in Florida.</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>The United States is a powder keg. I am talking about a university philosophy department.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. This is an occurrence, but I will not give a definition of what is happening.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. By this, I mean that depressing notions of gloom and sadness which sink so low they feel like they have no description catch inside us and burn angrily and as a result trauma affects our lives.</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>Firestar left his human owners to join ThunderClan. I am talking about the <cite>Warriors</cite> book <cite>Into the Wild</cite>.</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>Firestar left his human owners to join ThunderClan. I am talking about the real world.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Sans is Ness. I am talking about the <cite>Mother</cite> series.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>I live in the real world. There is a dragon in my garage. Every time you test it I will move the goalposts.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>I live on planet Pern. There is a dragon in my shed. I checked.</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>Twilight Sparkle has free will. I am referring to the background assumptions inside the TV show.</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>Twilight Sparkle has free will. I am referring to whether Twilight as an independent mind literally writes the next episode.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>There exists a worldwide god. According to my own definitions of "god" and "experience" I experienced god.</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>There exists a worldwide god. I have an atheist, a Buddhist, and a Muslim in the room who do not believe in this god. Every time they ask for test results I will move the goalposts.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Capitalism is the best system. I mean in terms of creating the most United States people and eradicating the most Russians from Eurasia.</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>
* <i>Capitalism is the best system. I mean in terms of being baseline adequate for keeping republics in one piece for more than 200 years.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Everyone should vote for social-democracy. By this I mean that doing what is ethical will make people satisfied.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Everyone should vote for social-democracy. By this I mean that I have good reason to believe that voting can be predicted to decrease the number of public anti-Whiteness protests, which I do not explicitly endorse.</i> Truth value: <b>False.</b>
* <i>Everyone should vote for social-democracy. By this I mean that <b class="caps">if</b> everyone is part of the same population in the first place <b class="caps">then</b> it would be beneficial to populational unity to get as many people as possible to unify into a progressive subpopulation.</i> Truth value: <b>True.</b>


[[Category:S0 Conceptual Patterns]]  <!-- tag to suppress extra spacing. page ends here.
TTS-unfriendly, search-friendly numbers:  Q539
en-GB words:   generalised  categorisable -->