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Re: [ontolog-forum] FW: mKR2IKL

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:48:48 -0400
Message-id: <533A4530.8010702@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Bruce and Dick,    (01)

Bruce
> I'd say she [Ayn Rand] figured this stuff out before the days of
> of computer science,  when the subject [abstraction] was still
> pretty blurry.    (02)

No.  The foundations of computer science (logic, set theory,
automata theory, recursive functions, lambda abstractions,
decidability, computability, production rules, etc.) were
developed in depth in the late 19th and early 20th century.
By 1940 -- several years before the first electronic computers
-- those details were thoroughly analyzed and published.    (03)

In fact, C. S. Peirce published a paper on "Logical Machines" in
1887 in the _American Journal of Psychology_.  He discussed the
mechanical machines by Babbage and the mechanical machines for
doing Boolean reasoning.  Around the same time, he wrote to one
of the designers of those machines and recommended electrical
circuits instead of mechanical linkages, and he included circuit
designs for AND and OR.  See    (04)

    http://history-computer.com/Library/Peirce.pdf    (05)

In the conclusion, Peirce compared the logical machines to the
Jacquard looms.  That was significant because the punched cards
used to control the Jacquard loom also inspired Hollerith to
design punched card machines to tabulate the 1890 census.    (06)

Dick
> I have explained the  meaning of "::" several times previously.
>
>           proposition name :: proposition    (07)

If you want to give a name to a proposition, then give it
a name like p or q.  The following names just create confusion:    (08)

> Consciousness :: I am conscious.
> Existence :: Existence exists.
> Existence :: entity, characteristic, proposition isa existent;
> Identity :: existent has characteristic;    (09)

In each case, the name on the left is an English word whose meaning
is related to the proposition on the right in a different way.
That is definitely not helpful.    (010)

>  I summarize the many pages where she talks about...    (011)

Don't summarize "many pages".  Just take *one page* and translate
every English sentence as precisely as possible to your notation.    (012)

When you are forced to take every feature of every sentence into
account, you must really be precise.  After you do that, ask
somebody else who had not read the original to translate your
notation back to English.  Then ask a third party to compare
the two.  That would be significant.    (013)

All that summarizing is far less valuable than being able
to represent one page precisely -- in a way that another
person could reconstruct the original meaning.    (014)

John    (015)

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