From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gis.net>
Subject: Re: BHA: Typos
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 18:55:13 -0500


Hi y'all--

Thanks Mervyn & Howard for your efforts to explicate (exonerate?)
"ineliminable."  I think I get your point(s), but frankly I'm not convinced.
It seems to me that the difficulty is more than the double negatives (though
Howard's right about that).  I think also it's the level of generality at
which the statement is pitched.  RB's statement that "In an open world
neither inconsistency or incompleteness are ineliminable" would make more
sense (to me anyway) if it read "In an open world neither inconsistencies or
incompletenesses are ineliminable."  I can see how specific, concrete
inconsistencies and incompletenesses may be eliminated, but not
inconsistency or incompleteness *in general*.  This is what makes me balk
and suspect a typo.  (Even the plural is problematic, but it's clearer than
the fully-blown abstraction.)

By the way, Mervyn, I think Gary had me in mind, not you.  ;->

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-gis.net
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce




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