Pat wrote:
"If you respond with more insulting and content-free emails, I will not
respond to them. If you continue to make technical errors in your postings, I
will continue to correct them. "
Let me asure you once more, I highly esteem your views and
respect your long intellectual committment and dedication to the hard cause
of science, be it logic. I apologize for any equivocation.
But if you are charging you opponents for some 'technical errors', try to
show a good example. For instance, see at your contradictory comment
[first techique for nonsensical effects] on my statement: [As such,
everything is connected with anything.}
PH: Well, that is obvious incorrect, unless you understand 'connected' so
broadly that it becomes meaningless. Certainly in the physical world, there are
things that have no possible causal connection to one another
(events outside one another's light-cone.)
ASHA: Check up yourself how you created your favorite nonsense situations:
where in the statement, "everything is connected with anything", you
found a causal connection, when i try to tell you that there are many and many
forms of relationships...
with all due respects,
Azamat
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, February 13, 2009 9:10
PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum]
Relationship: n-ary vs binary
On Feb 13, 2009, at 8:20 AM, Azamat
wrote:
Pat,
I think you are very good
as the devil's advocate, and highly appreciate you provocations and
stimulations.
All I do in this forum is to try to correct what seem to be
obvious errors or inaccuracies which I see in emails, with a view to keeping
the technical level of the discourse here up to professional standards. I hope
that we all will do the same whenever we see errors or
misunderstandings.
To better your critical
skills, let me share some observations:
1. Avoid quibbling-niggling,
pettifogging over small things;
Small things are often critical in technical discussions,
however. As has often been said, its easy to make large, vague observations.
The devil is in the details.
2. View ideas in the whole
context;
3. Review your understanding of
nonsense.
Funny you should mention Lewis Carroll. The Alice books were
the first stories my mother read to me, when I was perhaps three years old,
and I have read them many, many times since and now almost know them by heart.
Edward Lear is another potent source of meaningful and poetic
nonsense.
However, I am not quite sure what your point is here. Do you see the
business of this Forum as that of composing amusing literary
fantasies?
There is nonsense (stupid, bad)
and nonsense (intelligent, good). The samples of the latter are when the
parts make sense, while the whole is senseless, or vice versa. The case of
the former, when you know nothing about some domain of knowledge, say, real
ontology, then all its things will sound nonsensical; they are not
intelligible and understandable since transcend somebody's narrow mind, his
cognition, beliefs and
perception.
No doubt. However, I think I can reasonably claim to know a
fair amount about ontology, the subject, in any of its meanings.
If some big ideas, as reality
and its aspect, relation, beyond you kin and understanding, this will
make nonsense for you, for your particular mind, however
well-seasoned. I state as below: [relations are classified with
respects of their nature, mode of existence, the numbers of the relatives as
well as formal properties as transitivity, symmetry,
reflexivity.] If you are missing the clear meaning, then it is
nonsense for you mind, nothing can be done here.
Now, I state [a relation
can exist apart from the terms it
relates]
I agree. We seem to hold this view in common, in opposition to
the extensionalists among us.
, for it is [the principle
of order making the whole physical universe go: space-time,
forces, matter-energy relationships, fundamental interactions, physical
laws, all are natural kinds of
relationships.]
Well, not exactly. There are of course "matter-energy
relationships" and many other kinds of relationships in physics. But physical
laws are not themselves relationships. THey may well involve mentioning
relationships in order to be stated: E=MC|2 comes to mind, for example, which
uses the equality relation. But the laws themselves are not relations. But
perhaps this is being too pettifogging for your taste.
Again, you can't get
the meaning of it, another nonsense for your specialized mind. For it
may still believes the relation is an entity without a reality, that
the relation exists when the terms it connects
exist.
Another source of nonsense to be
mentioned is #2, when one is missing to see ideas, concepts, statements in
the whole context. This is a lore: "Many relations relate things of
different kinds."
A "lore" ? Do you mean to say it is false (as your previous
email asserted, and to which I responded) or that it is so obviously true that
everyone already knows it?
Answering to the discreet
questions of Ravi S, i specified:
[As such, everything is connected
with anything.
Well, that is obvious incorrect, unless you understand
'connected' so broadly that it becomes meaningless. Certainly in the physical
world, there are things that have no
possible causal connection to one another (events outside one
another's light-cone.)
For the sake of analysis, it is
commonly identified two types of
relationships
It is? By whom, doing what kind of analysis?
: simple, pure or
homogeneous, and complex, heterogeneous.
The first type is composed
of the same kinds of things as the relatives:
1. substances related with
substances, individuals with individuals, objects with objects, as space
relations;
2. states with states; qualities
(quantities) with qualities (quantities);
3. changes with changes,
processes with processes, actions with actions, events with events, as
causality and time relations;
4. relationships with
relationships, as analogy and proportion.
The second type deals with
different levels of relatives:
1. whole/part, with many
different sorts;
2. universal/particular, as
generalization or instantiation;
3. class/member, as membership or
subsumption.]
Im afraid I find this pathetically simplistic.
If you respond with more insulting and content-free emails, I will not
respond to them. If you continue to make technical errors in your postings, I
will continue to correct them.
Pat Hayes
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