RE: SUO: RE: SUMO - predicate vs relation
Bill,
See my comments below.
-Ian
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Andersen [mailto:andersen@ontologyworks.com]
> Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2001 1:53 PM
> To: SUO
> Subject: Re: SUO: RE: SUMO - predicate vs relation
>
>
>
> 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?
This way of putting it sounds okay to me.
>
> 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?
Hmmm. I don't see that there's a heavy metaphysical burden here. There are
all sorts of ways of cashing out the notion of proposition - some benign,
some Platonic.
>
> 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)
Well, this sort of maneuver is possible in the case of any relation. For
example, if one claims that fatherhood is a relation between two entities, a
father and an offspring, someone can retort that there are actually three
items here, the two original entities plus the relation of fatherhood. Once
the three items are posited, someone is free to claim that there is actually
a quaternary relation here, one specifying that fatherhood is the connection
between the two original entities. Of course, this can go on ad infinitum,
since it's always possible to objectify relations or, in Pierican terms, to
transform secondness into thirdness.
But really, I think all of this takes us far afield of my original,
innocuous intention, which was just to have a means of distinguishing
operators that result in sentences from those that result in terms. Surely,
this isn't as controversial or as confusing as you make it out to be...
>
> This is getting very confusing.
>
> .bill
>
>
>