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Re: [ontolog-forum] Editor COE view of a new list of categories

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 12:33:46 -0400
Message-id: <469CEF6A.1030007@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Pat,    (01)

I'm traveling now, and I don't have my copy of the convenient
selection from Tarski's papers with me.  But he does not do
that in his 1933 paper or the more philosophical paper of 1944,
which is on my web site.    (02)

JFS>> But if the issues for any empirical subject were indeed
 >> "blindingly obvious", Tarski would have given some examples.    (03)

PH>> And he did.    (04)

Where?  He certainly did not do so for "Snow is white", and I
could not find any other example.    (05)

PH> As did Russell, Quine and others.    (06)

Could you please go through any of the publications by Russell
or Quine and find one empirical example in which they started
with an empirical subject and specified the sets D and R of
the domain.  I realize that they did such things for mathematical
subjects, and I also realize that they have waved their hands
about for a lot of empirical issues.  And I also realize that
many people in comp. sci. and AI (e.g. Lenat) have specified
actual sets.  But please show me where Russell and Quine have
taken a single empirical subject (or even one complete sentence
in English) and specified the sets D and R.    (07)

PH> One does not have to go into all this detail in order to apply
 > a Tarskian semantics.    (08)

Just saying that there exists unspecified sets D and R does not
constitute an example.  I'm not asking for all the detail, but
just one example, even a toy one, by Tarski.    (09)

PH> He probably didn't because he thought it was so obvious that
 > it didn't need to be given any exposition. Quine seems to have
 > taken a similar view.    (010)

In other words, they're hand wavers.  They did do the detailed work
for mathematical subjects, but if it was so "blindingly obvious" for
empirical subjects, why didn't they work out one serious example?    (011)

John    (012)



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