SUO: RE: Lifecycle Integration Schema
Dear Jon,
See comment at end.
Matthew West
Principal Consultant
Shell Information Technology International Limited
Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 7934 4490 Other Tel: +44 7796 336538
Email: matthew.west@shell.com
Internet: http://www.shell.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:jawbrey@att.net]
> Sent: 30 September 2003 15:29
> To: SUO; West, Matthew R SITI-ITPSIE
> Subject: Re: Lifecycle Integration Schema
>
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> LIS. Discussion Note 66
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> JA = Jon Awbrey
> MW = Matthew West
>
> Matthew,
>
> I'm not sure I understood your comment below.
> And I need to correct one lapse of a tension,
> to wit, extension, that is liable to lead to
> misunderstanding if not attended to 4th-with.
>
> JA: In this context, then, I listed the following four dimensions,
> that have been recognized over time, historically speaking,
> as providing a frame of reference for describing the
> phenomenon or the problem that we have in view:
>
> JA: 1. The Term.
>
> For example, "sweetness", the noun form of the
> adjective "sweet".
>
> JA: 2. The Concept.
>
> For example, "sweetness", something like a noun in the mind.
>
> JA: 3. The Property.
>
> For example, sweetness, that may also be referred to
> as an intension or a quality of the thing in question,
> though some will make further distinctions among these.
>
> JA: 4. The Set.
>
> For example, the set of sweet things, that comprises
> the extension of either the term "sweetness" or the
> concept "sweetness", according to one's taste.
>
> Cut me a little bit of slack at this point, as I learned this
> bit about
> equivocal names, general denotations, and plural references
> rather late
> in life, long after I had gotten habituated to the
> set-theoretic way of
> thinking about things, and so it's easy to slip up, namely,
> up to a set
> of objects as a hypostatically abstract object in its own
> right or meta-
> category, when in fact a more nominal strategy would not
> admit any such
> things to its theatre of operations.
>
> The right way to say it, in the nominal sense of "right", if
> you choose
> to speak of the extensions of terms and concepts without
> wanting to pay
> the price of buying a token for the type <set>, goes somewhat
> like this:
>
> 5. The Extension of a Term or a Concept.
>
> For example, the extension of the term or the concept "sweet"
> is all of the things in the pertinent universe of discourse,
> or all of the things known at a given state of information,
> of which the general term "sweet" is evalued as being true.
>
> Here I have been careful not to invoke, at least, not formally,
> not in the "object language" as some would say, the apparently
> invidious notion that there is over and above sweet things, an
> abstract object that is what all the (rest of the) world would
> call the "set" of sweet things.
>
> Nevertheless, we are still free, under carefully circumscribed
> engagements of terms, to use our informal language and manners
> of speaking about sets, just so long as we never use, formally,
> what we thus mention in scary quotations.
>
> In this circumloquacious manner, one is supposed to be able to
> say that the extension of the term or the concept "sweet" is
> all of the things in the set of sweet things, without being
> ontologically committed to saying that the extension of the
> term or the concept "sweet" 'is' the set of sweet things.
> Or so it is said. And here we begin to see what really
> burdens the architexture of nominal thinking, not the
> burden of excess ideas but the burden of words, for
> all of the circumlocutions that are necessary to
> maintain its manor are far more encumbering and
> far more exorbitant in their upkeep than the
> few spare economies that may be provided by
> setting the right ideas in the right places.
>
> At any rate, it is still a good idea to start from a nominal start,
> if for no better reason in the end than that it gives us a chance
> to see how the run of "hypostatic abstraction" (HA) gets going,
> and just so long as we do not mistake the starting gate for
> the finish line.
>
> Finally, nobody but nobody would want to say, if they stop
> for a moment to think about it, that the term or the concept
> "sweet" denotes the set of sweet things. It either denotes in
> a singular number the property of being sweet or it denotes in
> a plural number the things that are in the set, but it does not
> denote in a singular number the set itself. Non-nominal thought
> engages the term "set of sweets" for that properly singular role.
>
> JA: And at this point you have said that you see a way
> to dispense with 1 of these 4 dimensions, or maybe
> to collate 2 of them into 1, leaving 3 as the only
> 3 dimensions that we need to save the appearances.
>
> JA: Sound familiar?
>
> JA: My question is: How can we be assured that you are
> collating dimensions, and not just conflating them?
>
> MW: Well if the property is in the axiom, then it may just be
> that it is the piece of work that is left, since we only
> have taxonomic and structural axioms at present.
>
> This is the comment that I did not understand.
>
MW: To put it another way, what is a property?
> Jon Awbrey
>
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