Consequentia Mirabilis

[Raymundo Morado <cbmvax!uunet!IUBACS.BITNET!pucc.PRINCETON.EDU!MORADOJ>]

Chris Dollin <kers@HPLB.HPL.HP.COM> writes:
>"Not to decide is to decide". [...]
>It may not have all the connotations of the original, but how about treating
>it as ``There are no events-of-not-deciding''? [...]
>The context in which the proverb might be used (when a decision is being
>avoided for whatever reason) seems to make both the original form, and my
>revised one, equally appropriate, although not equivalent (in any logical
>sense).

 Very good observation, Chris. And there might even be a logical sense in
which they ARE equivalent. I quote from A. N. Prior:

   From the law of excluded middle it follows that whatever is implied
   by its own denial (that is, what we are compelled to affirm even when
   we try to deny it) is true. (The later Schoolmen called this the
   _consequentia mirabilis_.  (The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, V p. 461)

 In logical pseudo-code,

 (x) { [~Is_an_event_of_deciding(x) -> Is_an_event_of_deciding(x)]
       = Is_an_event_of_deciding(x) }

which is an amusing exercise for introductory logic courses.