Adrian Walker wrote:
> What seems to happen is that the meanings of the words, and of
> sentences, lie in the relations between sentences a used.
>
Yes, indeed. (I'm assuming Adrian means "as used" -- which is the whole
point.) (01)
John Sowa wrote: (02)
> Yorick mentioned Cyc as an example, for which the definitions of the
formally
> defined categories have changed over the past 24 years. Therefore,
those
> categories are no more precise than typical NL word senses. (03)
That may be true, and we can't catalog all those cases in which that may
be true. But, I think part of what we stand to gain is that the more
formal representations are *different* and, perhaps, more useful than
natural language for different purposes, including representing
relationships among ideas (for example, among Agent-Action-Object
triplets and more expressive statements about reality -- perhaps
"sentences" in Adrian's terms) and finding those representations more
reliably when the natural language is less than clear or usable for
those purposes. Certainly would seem to help translation to other
languages, too. (04)
The truth/reality may indeed change, making any formal representation of
that reality effectively invalid over time. But sometimes you just want
today's formal representation of reality. There's nothing inherently
wrong with "disposable representations of reality." (05)
Thanks for pointing out Wilks' paper, John. (06)
Phil Murray
The Center for Semantic Excellence
Blog: http://economyofmeaning.wordpress.com/
Web site: http://semanticexcellence.org (07)
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