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Re: [ontolog-forum] {Disarmed} Re: OWL and lack of identifiers

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 09:09:09 -0400
Message-id: <46388D75.1060906@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Patrick and everybody else who has questions about logic,    (01)

I strongly endorse the following point by Pat Hayes:    (02)

 > To give [Topic Maps or any other notation] such a semantics
 > is not to 'logify' it, or rule out its use by humans (in fact,
 > despite the dark reputation of logic, we found that giving
 > RDF a precise formal semantics actually helped many real live
 > people, including developers, not least by providing quick
 > ways of resolving otherwise interminable debates.)    (03)

Yes, indeed.  And C. S. Peirce, the inventor of the usual
algebraic notation for logic, wrote the following    (04)

    http://www.peirce.org/writings/p119.html
    How to Make Our Ideas Clear    (05)

He published this paper in the _Popular Science Monthly_
in 1878, and the title emphasizes his main point.  Following
is a quotation from it:    (06)

    The very first lesson that we have a right to demand that
    logic shall teach us is, how to make our ideas clear; and a
    most important one it is, depreciated only by minds who stand
    in need of it. To know what we think, to be masters of our
    own meaning, will make a solid foundation for great and
    weighty thought. It is most easily learned by those whose
    ideas are meagre and restricted; and far happier they than
    such as wallow helplessly in a rich mud of conceptions.    (07)

I like the phrase "rich mud of conceptions" -- that is an
excellent description of all the discussions in this forum
that are "wallowing helplessly" in some vague notion that
we need a notation that is not logical.    (08)

John    (09)


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