Dunjie, a one of the more prolific thinkers of weird ideas that I have as a friend asked me;
Is it possible to create a filter that traps the small things while letting the big things pass through? Or a hole that is a size that allows big particles to pass through without the small ones doing the same?
What he has just asked, is not at all a Physics inquiry or stuff dealing with scientific possibility but one that questions logical premises. I explained that it is not possible unless you redefine big and small. For all I know, ‘small’ is a size that can be considered the sub-set of ‘big’ so unless the definition goes the other way round, whatever proposed can never be possible. We all know that if you have a hole big enough for something big to enter, anything smaller than this big thing will be able to pass through so it is valid to say that logically, the ‘small’ is within the premise of the ‘big’. While it is nice to think you can circumvent many humanly impossible task with science, it is never possible to undermine logic.
The same, therefore, applies to formulation of arguments. The definition in the line of arguments must all be consistent or you will get statements like “Nobody is Perfect. I am Nobody. Therefore, I am Perfect”. Or that, “Nothing is better than A1. F9 is better than Nothing. So F9 is better than A1.” In both cases, the ‘Nobody’ and ‘Nothing’ bears different definitions or meanings in the first and the second statements so they cannot be equated or used as the link for the concluding statements. Logic have to be obeyed and we should identify the premise to provide ourselves the context where we can draw upon the most appropriate answer.