On Jul 15, 2007, at 7:26 AM, John F. Sowa wrote: (01)
> Barry and Wacek,
>
> I agree with Barry about the normal use of natural languages:
>
>> When I say 'the cat is on the mat' I, for one, am not intending
>> to create a model of reality. Rather, I am attempting to say
>> something about reality itself (this very cat).
>
> But I believe that making an explicit distinction between the model
> and reality is important for any application of formal languages,
> especially those that are processed by any computer system. (02)
And for the record, I believe that this is a basic mistake. The
'model' here (ie in Tarski's sense) can *be* a part of reality.
Tarski himself seems to have taken his view by his choice of example:
"Snow is white" is true when snow, in fact, is white. No "model"
there: he is talking about (real) snow and (really being) white.
Similar examples can be found in the semantic writings of (among
others) Quine, Russell, and Strawson. In fact hardly any
philosophers of language seem to have concluded that because our
language only describes part of the structure of the world, that
therefore it must be not about the actual world but instead about
something entirely different, called a "model" of it. (03)
> A Tarski-style model of a formal language (in fact, the title of
> his famous paper explicitly limited it formal languages) is stated
> as a set D of the entities in some domain of discourse and a set R
> of relations over D. The mapping of D and R to reality is often
> unstated, and for any important application, it's usually far
> from obvious. (04)
I disagree. It's often blindingly obvious: the mapping is that D is a
subset of (the things in the) reality and R is a collection of
relationships which hold between the things in D. Like, the real cat
being really on the real mat. (05)
Pat (06)
>
> John
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
> Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-
> forum/
> Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
> To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> (07)
------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973
40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office
Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax
FL 32502 (850)291 0667 mobile
phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes (08)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (09)
|