Re: [ontolog-forum] (no subject)

[Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx>]

On Feb 12, 2009, at 3:48 PM, Chris Partridge wrote:

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Subject: RE: [ontolog-forum] Relevance of Aristotelian Logic
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:49:28 -0000
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John,

CP> I think John was espousing in an earlier set of emails (in

relation to Aristotelian syllogisms), which is that logic is

a formalism for describing the way the world is - or more

grandly, what exists. And that in some way the form of the

logic reflects the structure/nature of the world.

I didn't claim that logic reflects the structure of the world,

but that logic in combination with an ontology can be used to

describe someone's conception of the structure of the world.

Apologies. I may have been a little unclear. My point was intended to be the
well-known one that it is extremely difficult to eradicate ontological
commitment from a form of representation - and that the form of a logic
being used for description is likely to imply some ontological commitment to
the form of what is being described.

In some absolute sense this has to be correct, but I think FO logic comes about as close as anything can to having no ontological commitment. It can be described quite succinctly: the world consists of entities which stand in relationships to one another; and there is at least one entity.  And that is all. NOthing is said or presumed about the nature of the entities, or of the relationships. That seems to me about as minimal an ontic commitment as it is possible to have.

Pat H

And you are right, you did not
explicitly make this point, though hopefully you do not disagree with it.

So, for example, in the case of the syllogism, the form of the syllogism
reflects the transitive nature of the subsumption/subtype relation between
types in the world.

Chris



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