Matthew, (01)
Thanks! A couple of comments follow: (02)
On Sat, 2010-09-11 at 07:17 +0100, Matthew West wrote:
> Dear Patrick,
>
> > > > In
> > > > logic a term is just some string used as an identifier for some
> > thing. It
> > > > does not do its job if it identifies more than one thing.
> >
> > I understand the theory but who determines the one thing that is
> > identified by a "term" used as you define it?
>
> MW: The author of the ontology. To misquote Alice "When I use a term it
> means exactly what I intended it to mean, nothing more, nothing less."
>
> MW: To be fair I should be a little more precise. I have in model theoretic
> terms been talking about the intended interpretation. A logical theory may
> have any number of possible interpretations. However, in each
> interpretation, each logical term represents just one thing.
> (03)
But isn't that true for linguistic terms as well? (04)
That is any one speaker/user of a linguistic term intends for the
linguistic term to represent just one thing. Yes? (05)
The problem with linguistic terms being that we have very large and in
some cases historical sets of them and little reliable guidance on the
"one thing" that any particular user may have meant. (06)
> MW: Now the question of linguistic terms representing more than one logical
> term (and vice versa) is something one can build a logical theory about. The
> linguistic terms are signs that may have different interpretations in
> different contexts, and it is perfectly possible to develop a theory of how
> this happens (and example can be found in ISO 15926), but to do this you
> need to distinguish between logical terms and linguistic terms, not confuse
> them.
> (07)
So, logical terms are ones that represent only one thing and what they
represent is according to the author of logical statements using those
terms. (08)
Curious what do we do about interpretation of logical terms of
historical authors of logical statements? (09)
Agreeing that logical terms, in a particular interpretation, represent
only one thing, but how do we decide which one thing it represents? (010)
Or to put it differently, when does cultural, social, historical
distance become great enough that logical terms become linguistic terms
because we lack the information to say what "one thing[s]" they
represented? If ever? (011)
Hope you are having a great weekend! (012)
Patrick (013)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (014)
|