On 10/22/2015 12:22 AM, Thomas Johnston wrote:
> As I understand him, John Sowa thinks that ontological commitment is
> _pragmatically _associated with the "Some" quantification; and indeed,
> the history of logic in the last century has demonstrated that FOPL,
> under that assumption, is a powerfully expressive formal language. (01)
To be precise, I believe that it's important to distinguish
the ontological commitments (at least informally) independently
of whatever version of logic you adopt. (02)
When you choose a logic (or a collection of related logics) for
any application, you need to recognize how the built-in features
of that logic are related to your assumptions (axioms). (03)
> I think that ontological commitment is a matter of the content
> of theories, and can't be read off their logical form. (04)
I would say that every version of logic has some implicit
ontological commitment, and it's possible to analyze the logic
in order to determine what the commitment is. I doubt that
you can define a logic that has less commitment than FOL.
Aristotle's version, for example, has more commitment. (05)
To open another "can of worms", I'll start a new thread
about essences and modality -- and the commitments of
modal logic(s). (06)
John (07)
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