Re: SUO: The lattice of theories + language-games
Cathy and Bill,
That is an important issue, which I won't be able to address right now,
since I have to catch a plane this afternoon:
> In this section, John points out very clearly the way in which the
> meaning which a term has depends not just on the way in which it is
> explicitly defined, but on the way in which it is *used* in concrete
> situations, the exigencies of which can produce previously unanticipated
> and arbitrarily large shifts of meaning at any time (as with the
> nice example John gives of isolated tribes who encounter 21st century
> cultures and within the space of a single generation manage to talk in
> their own language about the new culture and technology.) Much of the
> adaptation and meaning-shifting, he suggests, is driven by metaphorical
> thinking - an imaginative and creative thinking-style notoriously
> difficult to formalise.
But in a talk I'll be giving on Saturday, I address some aspects of the
topic, and I discuss an actual *implementation* (Bill, please note!)
that uses this approach. Following are the slides:
http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/souprepr.htm
John Sowa