The Uses of Argument (1958), which inadvertently made him a founding father of argumentation theory, criticises the way that philosophers treat reasoning as a chain of time-free written propositions rather than as a practical technique used by real people in particular situations.
Ockham, however, tends to see mental propositions as logically ideal or, in modern parlance, 'canonical'.[8] The problem with spoken and written propositions is that because they depend on the meaning conventions of fallible users, they fail to be universal and logically perspicuous.
Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica advocacy group, wrote Proposition 45 and collected signatures to get it on the ballot.
He flashed a smile at his attorney, Mike Romano, who directs the Three Strikes Project at Stanford Law and helped write Proposition 36.
A Republican-appointed judge, Judge Walker, wrote: "Proposition 8 both unconstitutionally burdens the exercise of the fundamental right to marry and creates an irrational classification on the basis of sexual orientation".
But, as of the time of this writing, a federal Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down the Proposition, writing, "Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.
For example, Buridan, Sophismata VIII.13, concerns the ingenious proposition 'Socrates knows the proposition written on the wall to be doubtful to him', where it is supposed that this proposition is the only proposition written on the wall, that Socrates sees it and is in a state of doubt about its truth, and that furthermore Socrates knows he is in that state of doubt.
If no real proposition matches spoken, written, and mental propositions that are false, what is grasped when we understand the meaning of a false proposition?
"All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same-sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation 'marriage,' " the judge wrote, adding, "Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gay men and lesbians in California".
He cited page 77 of the opinion, in which Reinhardt writes that "Proposition 8 operates with no apparent purpose but to impost on gays and lesbians, through the public law, a majority's private disapproval of them and their relationships, by taking away from them the official designation of 'marriage,' with its societally recognized status".
