>Chris,
>
>Fine. We can all agree on that:
>
> > I certainly agree that ontological considerations might
> > play a role in the choice of an appropriate formalism.
>
>And the converse is also true: the formalism can affect
>or bias the choice of ontological categories and the
>way they are developed, studied, and used. (01)
Well, its hard to argue against a "can", but I
think this point is easily overblown. I would
say, in response, that a judicious and reasonably
sophisticated use of FOL is capable of expressing
any ontological view that can be described in
English; that there is no *inherent* ontological
bias in FOL. From which it follows that we should
not conclude, from observations such as this,
that we need to be actively searching for better
formalisms, or feel obliged to use a variety of
'more suitable' formalisms for various
ontological perspectives. (02)
So for example, Ingvar Johansson wrote:
" I happen to think that the dominance of first-order
predicate logic in the brains of many analytic metaphysiciains mislead
them into false ontologies. They take away the difference between
natural kinds and properties (since it is not visible in 'Fa'), and they
do not allow different modes of existence (since these cannot be seen by
means of the existential quantifier)." (03)
Well, maybe: but even if this phenomenon (a) does
indeed sometimes happen, and (b) really is an
error - which of course is open to endless
debate, as it has been for the last two millennia
- it is not *impossible* to make these
distinctions in FOL. Natural kinds can be viewed
as a special type of logical property, for
example:
(F a) & (IsNaturalKind F)
or, one could adopt a description-logical style
of expression and distinguish between mere
logical predication (F a) and natural-kind as a
special relation of class membership (Kind a F),
perhaps with an axiom which relates natural kinds
to their weaker (merely extensional) associated
predications: (04)
(forall (x y)(if (Kind x y)((propertyOf x) y) ) (05)
(all axioms written in the CLIF dialect of ISO Common Logic). (06)
As for "modes of existence", I confess to being
one of those with a misled brain, not
understanding what is meant by this phrase; but I
am sure that if it were to be explained more
thoroughly, I could find a way to render it into
FOL reasonably briskly. (07)
Pat (08)
>John
>
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