Re: SUO: RE: SUMO - predicate vs relation

[Bill Andersen <andersen@ontologyworks.com>]

On 12/20/01 15:06, "Ian Niles" <iniles@teknowledge.com> wrote:

> 
> Bill,
> 
> 'Predicates' in the SUMO are not "linguistic tokens"; they're
> proposition-forming operators.  This may not be an ideal terminological
> choice, but we needed to be able to distinguish this subclass of relations
> from concept-forming operators (known as 'Functions' in the SUMO).

I have to admit I'm really confused now.  I take a proposition to be an
abstract object that is the bearer of some truth value.  Do you mean what I
mean or do you take propositions be linguistic constructs?

So, is it the case that instances of Predicate denote functions (or
relations) on entities that result in such propositions?

First off, it's not clear that we're not talking about linguistic tokens
here.  Even if we're not, putting a whole theory of the structure of
propositions into the SUMO is a pretty heavy metaphysical burden, don't you
think?

In addition, under the "proposition-forming operator" interpretation, a
binary predicate would correspond to a function of two arguments, and would
thus be a ternary, not a binary, relation.  So now you have this:

  (subclass BinaryPredicate TernaryRelation)

This is getting very confusing.

 .bill