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PH: To say that all things are *connected* with anything is just plain
false, at least in the English I speak.
Pat, you are again pettifogging. Review your English as well. In plain
English, the relation defined like:
"When two objects, qualities, classes, or attributes, viewed together
by the mind, are seen under some connexion, that connexion is called a
relation." ( Augustus De Morgan)
1. Avoid
quibbling-niggling, pettifogging over small things;
2. View
ideas in the whole context;
3. Review
your understanding of nonsense;
4. Use the
language intelligently.
with due
regards,
Azamat
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2009 6:13
AM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum]
Relationship: n-ary vs binary
On Feb 13, 2009, at 2:23 PM, Azamat wrote:
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...
Relationship does not mean the same as connection.
Relationships can be defined between any entities whatever, even nonexistent
ones (I am shorter than Sherlock Holmes). "Connection", at least in my dialect
of English, indicates a means by which one thing might influence or be
influenced by the other in some way. This for example one might argue that one
event cannot have caused another because there is no connection between them:
but there certainly are relationships between them, for example purely
temporal relationships.
To say that all things *can be* related to anything is true but vacuous.
To say that all things *are* related to anything is arguable, and depends on
one's view of what constitutes the existence of a relation. (It is for example
a provable truth in classical higher-order logic, but is not true in Common
Logic.) To say that all things are *connected* with anything is just plain
false, at least in the English I speak.
Best wishes
Pat
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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