Re: SUO: ELP's summary of MRW's standards experience
On Sun, Jun 22, 2003 at 04:12:53PM +0100, Pierre Grenon wrote:
> > In my case, I prefer to avoid the words "universals" and
> > "particulars" because they have accumulated too much associated
> > baggage over the years. Instead, I prefer to use the terms
> > "predicate" (or concept and relation type) and "instance".
>
> This is a bad habit. Predicates, concepts, types, and universals are
> all of very different kinds of thing. They are related and there are
> correspondances but it is lazyness or doctrine (to use a rather
> neutral term) which leads to identification.
>
> Note that predicates are linguistic items while universals or
> particulars, assuming you recognize them, are entities.
John uses "predicate" to indicate a semantic entity (property or
relation). It is true that this is not a completely idiosyncratic usage
in the history of logic, but it is now largely out of favor. I have on
numerous occasions suggested to John that he just stop it, but old dog,
new trick, apparently. At the least, the term is ambiguous, and that
alone is good enough reason to avoid it. I myself have started using
"predicate symbol" to indicate the linguistic thingies and "property"
(or "class", as the case may be) for their semantic values for this very
reason.
> > [JS:] I use the term "monadic predicate" as a synonym for property.
A particularly bad instance of the terminology. In most logic texts
(and I would claim for most researchers in logic, philosophy, and AI)
monadic predicates are linguistic items. John, why do you want to risk
confusion and misunderstanding by insisting on this archaic, or at least
ambiguous, terminology? Why don't you just cut it out? We all know
you're no slave to logical fashion, but your faithfulness to the Old
Ways in this instance does more harm than good.
> This is unfortunate. You are bringing too much confusion here and imho
> you are mixing language and reality...
To be clear (as I think you'd agree), John himself is not confused about
anything here, but he risks being considered confused because of his
terminology.
Chris Menzel