Maverick Philosopher

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2010/01/when-is-a-tautology-not-a-tautology.html

When is a logical validity not a pleonams or rhetorical tautology. Use Berry's paradox style subsripts described under Naming Conventions.

Excellent article on the by maverick philosopher on my wiki. He was jibing at uncle Mo , who cut short the entire baiting exercise with : Beer is beer.

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2010/01/when-is-a-tautology-not-a-tautology.html

Bill Vallicella called it a non-tautological expression,which confuses the issues slightly: it remains a tautology, just not tautological proposition. The point is that it isn't always a fallacy to formulate tautologies. Carefully demarcating between assertions, expressions and propositions helps us to discern when somebody is trying to deceive like Wilkins is trying to do.

It was a tautological expression, a stylistic device , not used to formulate an axiom or a formal proposition.

• 1) Beer is beer and therefore monkeys gave birth to humans - tautological proposition.
• 2) Beer is beer. In the context uncle Mo used an expression to say ....not taking the bait ...
• 3) Beer is beer like 1 is 1 - Tautological assertion, logical validity or axiom. Things which are true by definition, assumed as the supportive scaffolding in formulating falsifiable propositions.

This implies that falsifiability is a subset of unfalsifiability. What can be proven resides ultimately in an unproven overarching assumption - Godel's incompleteness theorem.