The claim that NC ≠ P is epistemically on par with P ≠ NP: both are unproven conjectures elevated to working assumptions, a practice Quine's holism warns conflates pragmatic utility with ontological commitment.
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P ≠ NP(in computer science and mathematical logic)
One of computer science's biggest unsolved questions about whether certain hard problems are genuinely harder than checking if an answer is correct; the symbol ≠ means 'does not equal.'
Pragmatic utility(pragmatism and philosophy)
Whether something actually works well or is useful in practice for getting things done.
Quine(as a proper name referring to the philosopher whose theory is being discussed)
Willard Van Orman Quine was a 20th-century American philosopher who wrote about how we know things and how language works. In this statement, we're discussing one of his specific ideas about observation.
Working assumptions(philosophy and methodology)
Ideas we treat as true for practical purposes while solving a problem, even if we haven't officially proven them.
conjecture(Used to evaluate whether knowledge structures are internally consistent with respect to agent beliefs)
A possible belief or supposition an agent may hold about what opponents know or believe
ontological commitment(Used to derive that literal truth of 'a is F' entails existence of a)
The criterion by which acceptance of a sentence as literally true commits one to the existence of the objects referred to by singular terms in that sentence, provided the sentence cannot be paraphrased away.