Catching up on this thread, and several sub-threads: (01)
a) The point about a three-d object in a 2-D world was not about
embedding things in contexts, but about a technical problem of when a
proposition becomes a non-proposition because some term in it ceases to
have meaning. This is significant in formal specification for software,
where one has to deal with side effects of illegal values sent to
procedures. In "Systematic Software Development in VDM" (VDM = Vienna
Development Method), Cliff Jones uses the Logic Of Partial Functions
(LPF) a three valued, monotonic extension of classical logic, which,
incidentally, seems to be a quantization of fuzzy logic. Specifications
are then designed to always to evaluate to True or False, even where
some intermediate results evaluate to *. In Z, the problem is avoided by
imposing/assuming an order of evaluation. (02)
b) From a natural language view, I might take "Pat is sleeping" to mean
something like, "please don't make to much noise, or you might wake him
up". Sentences in natural language have (ultimately) the function of
influencing human behaviour, rather than modelling the world, and only
do the latter when specifically making such a claim. In data modelling,
this relationship between language and behaviour is absolutely
fundamental to effective data exchange - in this I support David Hays
mutterings about the data modelling/management/database community. This
thinking also lies behind the ontologies that are being used as part of
number of fairly significant data exchange projects for various DoD's. (03)
c) I have not read Sister Miriam Joseph, but some years ago I did read
though a fairly traditional text book of Porte Royal logic only to find
that the entire book reduced to six simple statements in set theory. (04)
Sean Barker
0117 302 8184 (05)
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