Doug F and Steven, (01)
DF
> My guess is that Doug referred to a logical formalism & that
> John's understanding was that FOL was meant. (02)
I had not seen the actual test, and Doug L mentioned that the
test involved writing something in logic. It's possible that
I might have told him about a test that I had given in a course
that I had taught. (03)
In the mid 1980s, I was visiting a major university, where I taught
a graduate-level course in the comp. sci. department that used my
1084 book as the text. The only stated prerequisites were "knowledge
of first-order logic and context-free grammars." (04)
For the first homework assignment, I gave the students 10 English
sentences, which they had to translate to FOL. But only one person
got all 10 correct, and he was just auditing the course, since he
had recently earned his PhD. (05)
It's quite possible that I mentioned that story to Doug L, and he
responded with his story. As I recall, he didn't explain in detail
what kind of logic test he assigned, and I might have assumed that
his test was similar to mine. (06)
SEZ
> Whatever it is, relying upon a dictionary definition is ridiculous.
> Dictionaries define nothing, they are reports of usage. (07)
As I said, dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. But I have
known and worked with professional lexicographers, and I have a high
regard for their knowledge and professionalism. (08)
SEZ
> Unattributed dictionary's are dangerous since they institutionalize
> bad ideas and mistakes (09)
The definitions I used were not unattributed. They were from the
Free Merriam-Webster online, whose definitions are identical to
the definitions in their Collegiate dictionary -- and those
definitions are based on the Unabridged MW. (010)
As useful resource for developing an ontology, I would prefer
the definitions in the MW or the OED to the great majority of OWL
ontologies on the WWW. (011)
SEZ
> This, my friends, is why you need an epistemology: a general theory of
>knowledge. (012)
I agree that both epistemology and ontology are important for Kn Rep.
Following is a brief article I contributed on the subject: (013)
http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/5qelogic.pdf (014)
And while we're speaking of lexicography and Peirce, I'd like to quote
from CSP's letter to B. E. Smith, the editor of the Century Dictionary: (015)
CSP
> The task of classifying all the words of language, or what's the same
> thing, all the ideas that seek expression, is the most stupendous
> of logical tasks. Anybody but the most accomplished logician must
> break down in it utterly; and even for the strongest man, it is
> the severest possible tax on the logical equipment and faculty. (016)
Peirce worked as an associate editor of the _Century Dictionary_,
for which he wrote, revised, or reviewed over 16,000 definitions --
more than any other editor of that dictionary. (017)
I believe that it's not a coincidence that Peirce produced some of
his most profound writings in his later years -- after he had done
that work in writing all those definitions. (018)
John (019)
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