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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