..Q
-
quantification
- the use of a quantifier
-
quantifier
- a linguistic construct in which an assertion is made using a variable which ranges over some domain of discourse
- see also:
- universal quantifier
-
quiddity
- the essence of a person or thing
(see also: [Quine87])
- quine
- the verb "to quine" was coined by the tortoise in Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach [Hofstadter80] as the name of a process devised by W.V.Quine which is helpful in explaining Gödel's proof of the incompleteness of arithmetic [Gödel31].
To quine a phrase is to form a larger phrase or sentence (or nonesense) by writing the phrase first in quotation marks, and then once more without the quotation marks.
In brief, to precede the phrase by its quotation.
- For example, the phrase "yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation", when quined gives:
"yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation
a variant of the liar paradox.
This technique is used (together with gödelization) to explain Gödel's construction of a sentence of arithmetic which asserts its own unprovability.
- quine corner
- The symbols "
" and "
", used by W.V.Quine as Gödelizing braces, are sometimes known as "quine corners".
The expression formed by enclosing an expression or formula of first order arithmetic in quine corners (as in 45+7=50) is a "shorthand" for the Gödel numeral of the enclosed expression and therefore denotes the relevant Gödel number.
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created 1999/9/16 modified 1999/9/17