What do contrapositive and contranegative mean and when are these used with respect to positive and/or negative?
I specifically have this article in mind. The word contranegative is used in the fourth paragraph.
4 Answers
From contraposition
Contraposition is a logical relationship between two propositions, or statements. For example, take the following (true) proposition: "All bats are mammals." We can restate that as "If something is a bat, then it is a mammal." The contrapositive is, "If something is not a mammal, then it is not a bat."
I assume the reverse apply to contranegative.
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1+1: This is a term from logic. N.B. The term "contranegative" isn't really used, as the positive is more about position than polarity.– RobustoCommented Jul 12, 2011 at 10:02
I don't think there's "contranegative". Neither dictionary.com nor wiktionary gives it, and at this very moment, the word-check is drawing a red line under the word "contranegative".
"Contrapositive" is anything that has to do with "contraposition", or :
placed opposite or against
It's used to contrast against something else.
answered Jul 12, 2011 at 8:30
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Well, though not frequent, there are references to contranegative e.g. jstor.org/pss/20016604– UnreasonCommented Jul 12, 2011 at 8:33
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Hm..... It seems to have some sort of thing to do with mathematics only. Commented Jul 12, 2011 at 8:34
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@Ham, or more specifically logic - books.google.com/… ; do notice that contraposition and contrapositive also come from logic.– UnreasonCommented Jul 12, 2011 at 9:30
They're terms from deontic logic (which isn't fun). I don't think it's really relevant to the topic of the paper, so he's probably mashing words in from other topics of interest.
Based on context, I think he's just trying to sound smart. He means to say he'll concentrate on the positive rather than the negative. "Contranegative" doesn't have a definition that I know of. However, if it was a thing I think it should be the negation of the converse of a conditional statement. Statement: if A then B: A -> B Converse: if B then A: B -> A Negation: it's not the case that if A then B: ~(A -> B) -> Contranegative: it's not the case that if B then A: ~(B -> A)
