On Tue, 16 Sep 2008, Pat Hayes wrote:
> [John wrote:]
>> We have argued about that point before, and logicians and
>> philosophers have taken many different positions on it.
>
> Actually there seems to be a fairly robust and widely accepted
> consensus that semantic structures can be parts of reality.
>
>> Although I do not believe that the real world *is* a model,
>> it is at least conceivable that some people might make that
>> claim.
>
> It is simply true that many people have made that claim: or more
> often, made that assumption, taking it as obvious. (01)
>From an earlier post, it might look like Pat and I disagree about this,
but I don't think we do. I believe that all Pat is saying is that
Tarski-style models can be constructed out of real world objects and
(extensions of) real world relations in such a way that, as far as they
go, they directly represent reality as it is; they don't just contain
"formal surrogates" of real world objects or the like (as I recall John
putting it once). But, given that a Tarski-style model (in contemporary
model theory) is *literally* an n-tuple of a certain sort, I think Pat
would agree that they are not *literally* parts of (physical) reality
but rather structurally very accurate representations of reality. (02)
-chris (03)
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