Re: SUO: ELP's summary of MRW's standards experience
Chris,
As usual, I agree with you about the need to distinguish
predicates as semantic thingies from predicate symbols.
The point of my note to Pierre was that the terms universals and
particulars have been used in so many different and confusing ways that I would
not recommend that we continue using them
in discussions of ontological issues (except in historical
references to old-timey debates).
As an alternative, I believe that we should make use of the
formalism that has been developed for representing ontologies
in languages of the Common Logic (CL) family -- KIF, CGs,
tranditional infix notation for predicate calculus, OWL,
and perhap CycL and other notations.
For any statement in English or other NL, I prefer to show
a translation into the formalism that is being used to
represent the semantics of the NL statement and to minimize
the amount of metalevel verbiage -- especially because the
semantics of that verbiage is usually far more confusing than
the semantics of the logic.
That doesn't mean that we should dispense with philosophical
analysis and discussions. On the contrary, I believe that
such discussions are essential. But I do believe that taking
philosophical terms out of a context in which they were defined
and tossing them around as if they had a well-accepted meaning
is extremely dangerous.
John