Russell (1961: 554):
Finite things are determined by their boundaries, physical or logical, that is to say by what they are not: 'all determination is negation'.
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In Systemic Functional Linguistics, this relates to the notion of valeur in system networks. The valeur of a feature is its relation to other features. In a binary system, each feature is defined by its relation to the other.
In linguistics, this notion is attributed to Ferdinand de Saussure, who was said to be influenced in this regard by the philosopher William Hamilton, who believed that 'the mind could only grasp an idea by distinguishing it from something that it is not'.
(But compare Aristotle's P is ~[~P].)
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