Group J Math assignment

Kisejjere Rashid 21/U/11543/EVE

Devote Boniface. 21/U/06323/EVE
Ngong Abraham 21/X/20170/EVE
Namayanja shamillah 21/U/12360/EVE
Namullembe Tracy. 21/U/09871/EVE
Definite descriptions
A definite description is a denoting phrase in the form “The X” i.e. it is
made up of a definite article “The” and a common noun “X”. The
definite description is proper if “X” applies to a unique individual or
object. Examples of definite descriptions include; the first person in
space, the biggest planet in the solar system and the first president of
Uganda.
Russell’s theory of definite descriptions
Definite descriptions were introduced by Bertrand Russell in order to
solve puzzles in the philosophy of language such as the puzzle of
existential statements and the bald king of France.
Russell’s analysis:
According to Russell the statement “F Is G” implies that there is exactly
1F and they’re G.
Russell claimed that while definite descriptions seemed to behave like
names, they actually took a much different form.
He claimed that phrases like “every man”, “no woman” and “some
girls” aren’t about a particular thing but they depend on what the
domain of discourse is. He also claimed that the article “The” should be
thought of as a quantifiable phrase.
Example
Consider the statement: “The president of Britain is black”. Logically
that statement is wrong because Britain has no president and at the
same time the overall leader isn't black. So if we try negating the above
statement it becomes "The president of Britain isn't black", which is
also wrong because Britain still has no president. But for a statement to
be a logical statement either it's original statement or negation should
be true. Russell solved such an issue as follows;
According to Russell the above statement entails that;
 Something is the president of Britain and
 There is only one president of Britain,
 The thing that is the president of Britain is black.
Introducing predicates:
Let K – “president of Britain ”
B – “Being black”.
There is an x such that K(x), and for any y, if K(y) then y is numerically
identical to x, and B(x)
[
∃ ( x ) ( K ( x )(
∀ ( y ) [ K ( y ) → x= y ]) B
) ( x) ]
So according to Russell for the statement “The president of Britain is
black” to be true it must meet the above the predicate. And since we
know that the statement is already wrong if now we negate it using
Russell’s theory it’s negation now becomes true. So Russell’s theory
solves this problem.

One of the fails of Russell’s theory is when the problem we are trying to
solve has multiple forms e.g. the statement “I think the lecturer is
good” according to Russell’s theory this phrase would mean that there
is only one good lecturer which is wrong because there are a lot of
lecturers in the world, luckily the quantifier domain restriction solves
this issue.
In conclusion, the nature and logic of definite descriptions continues to
be another controversy among philosophers and linguistics.
One point rule
The one point rule is useful in dealing with existential quantifiers. It
states that if you have an existential quantified statement and part of it
pins down an exact value for the quantified variable then you can
remove the quantification and replace the variable with the value
wherever that variable appears in the rest of the statement.
Informally the rule says that if we are able to find at least one value in
the domain of a variable for which the statement is true, then we could
as well eliminate the quantified statement, substitute the value in place
of the variable in the predicate and make it into a proposition.
Example
Consider the statement
“There exists an integer n which is even”
This is represented as;
∃n : Z • n mod 2=0

Since n = 8 satisfies the property stated above, then we could as well

substitute 8 in place of the n in the predicate according to the one point
rule.
The equation is equivalent to
8 ∈ Z 8 mod 2=0

The first conjunct checks that the term is member of the right set; it is
usually easy to discharge that check. Then, you are left with just the
part of the predicate in which the substitution has been made i.e. 8
mod 2 = 0
The one point rule is majorly applied in the proving of conclusions
involving the use of interface laws.
e.g.
Given the following statements
∀ n: Z • n + 1 > 0 → n ≥ 0
∀ n: Z • n ≥ 0 → n > 0
∃ n: Z • n > 3
In this set of statements, we start with the existential statement and
apply the one point rule by trying to find a value that satisfies this
statement. Let us choose n = 4. Since 4 > 3, we could eliminate the
existential statement and use 4 in place of n in the other statements.
The first statement now becomes 4 + 1 > 0 ⇒ 4 ≥ 0. using hypothesis
syllogism on the first and second statement we arrive at a statement 4
+ 1 > 0.