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Sortal vs Null - What's the difference?

sortal | null |

As nouns the difference between sortal and null

is that sortal is (philosophy) a type of universal that defines a particular sort of object while null is zero, nil; the cardinal number before einn.

As an adjective sortal

is (philosophy) of or pertaining to a sort.

sortal

English

Adjective

(-)
  • (philosophy) Of or pertaining to a sort
  • * {{quote-book, 1690, John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, section=, chapter=Chapter III: Of General Terms
  • , passage=But, it being evident that things are ranked under names into sorts or species, only as they agree to certain abstract ideas, to which we have annexed those names, the essence of each genus, or sort, comes to be nothing but that abstract idea which the general, or sortal (if I may have leave so to call it from sort, as I do general from genus), name stands for.}}
  • (philosophy) Having the character of a
  • * {{quote-journal, 2008, date=January 8, John E. Sarnecki, Sortals for Dummies, Erkenntnis, url=, doi=10.1007/s10670-007-9094-6, volume=69, issue=2, pages=
  • , passage=The possession of sortal concepts is a prerequisite for philosophers like Wiggins or Lowe in determining the nature and extent of our referential capacities. }}

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (philosophy) A type of universal that defines a particular sort of object
  • * {{quote-book, 1974, , Subject and Predicate in Logic and Grammar, isbn=0416821901, page=135, pageurl=http://books.google.com/books?id=qX8OAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA135
  • , passage=And central to this notion is the distinction, among semantic types of g -words, between sortals on the one hand and non-sortal general-character-specifiers on the other}}

    Derived terms

    * sortalist * sortalism * sortalize * nonsortal

    See also

    * Sortals in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

    Anagrams

    *

    null

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A non-existent or empty value or set of values.
  • Zero]] quantity of [[expression, expressions; nothing.
  • (Francis Bacon)
  • Something that has no force or meaning.
  • (computing) the ASCII or Unicode character (), represented by a zero value, that indicates no character and is sometimes used as a string terminator.
  • (computing) the attribute of an entity that has no valid value.
  • Since no date of birth was entered for the patient, his age is null .
  • One of the beads in nulled work.
  • (statistics) null hypothesis
  • Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Having no validity, "null and void"
  • insignificant
  • * 1924 , Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove :
  • In proportion as we descend the social scale our snobbishness fastens on to mere nothings which are perhaps no more null than the distinctions observed by the aristocracy, but, being more obscure, more peculiar to the individual, take us more by surprise.
  • absent or non-existent
  • (mathematics) of the null set
  • (mathematics) of or comprising a value of precisely zero
  • (genetics, of a mutation) causing a complete loss of gene function, amorphic.
  • Derived terms

    * nullity

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • to nullify; to annul
  • (Milton)

    See also

    * nil ----