SUO: Re: Abstraction, Analogy, Example, Icon, Metaphor, Model, Morphism, Paradigm, Prototype, Simulation

[Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>]

Bill Burkett wrote:
> 
> Matthew:
> 
> > [MW]  Of course the basis is data models, rather than FOL type stuff,
> > but as I am increasingly realising the gap between the two is narrower
> > than most people think.  It is just that very few try to cross it.
> 
> I am surprised to hear you make this observation because I would have
> thought this would have been self-evident.  Data models, schema languages,
> FOL, knowledge representation languages - broadly speaking, then all have
> the same purpose:  to specify the syntactic form of externalized knowledge
> for computational manipulation.  It is ultimately the purpose of the
> computational manipulation that governs the design of the language.
> 
> Bill
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> William C. Burkett                             562-495-6500x13
> Product Data Integration Technologies, Inc.    562-495-6509
> 100 W. Broadway Suite 540                      wburkett@pdit.com
> Long Beach, CA, 90802 USA                      http://www.pdit.com
> ------------------------------------------------------------------

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Bill,

I am always surprised when somebody makes an observation that is self-evident.
But I think that maybe you are engaging in just a little bit of wishful seeing
if you observe anything approaching self-evidence from the data we have in view,
most especially with respect to the tenet -- that I, myself, hold near and dear
to my own "way of thinking" (WOT) -- namely, that:

| It is ultimately the purpose
| of the computational manipulation
| that governs the design of the language.

Tossed out as anything other than a "standard operating principle" (SOP) to Cerberus,
and remote as hell from any sort of "standard operating procedure" (SOP') that we who
are about to dine would be able to break our bread over and to serve up on our parsing
tables, I do not see much cognizance of the difference-that-makes-a-difference between
the one burning brand of inf-earnest good intention -- you know where that gets you! --
and the lambda-goshen saving grace -- with an eye to its ultimate tele-comm-union? --
of this, our <next-to-the>* last sup-per.  Not that I have abandoned all hope yet,
else why would I keep up the faith that it takes to keep on making my entry here?

Just to bring this Down to Earth, or Up to Purgatory, let me instance
for you a class of concrete examples from my own experience, though
the names will perforce of politeness need to be changed to protect
the Innocent (no, not that one).

I once had frequent occasion to speak with a class of professionals
who I shall classify under the ?anonymous_?anno-dominus_?eponymous
epi-gnomen of "logical or conceivable knowledge engineers" (LOCKE's),
many of whom had never written a program of any complexity, but who
would quite expertly cite me the results of "logical equibblence"
and "complicity theory", saying things like:

| All Logically Equivalent Languages And Theories Are Indiscernible.
| All Polynomial Time Algorithms Look Alike To All Us Rational Folk.

But, if you sat them down in front of a computer screen and showed them, say,
an O(n^2) AlGoreRhythm -- you know, the one who really invented the InterNet --
spewing out its lines of output, ever, so, slow-ly, so, in-crea-sing-ly, slow-ly,
as it scrolled down the page, then you could watch them get just as digit-figity
and ready to be somewhere, be anywhere else, as any other human, all too human
and mortal pragmatician of the programming craft would.

Now, you would you think this would make an impression on some of them.
Well, guess again.  No, the love of abstraction in preference to reality
is such that I actually had one of these folks say to me:

| But the behavior that we see before us can only be an
| approximation to the actual complexity of the problem.

The practical reality of the actually running program is
only an approximation to the ideal reality of the theory!

True Story.

Now, of course, to be fair, I kind of get the drift of what
this person was trying to say, but still, the very idea that
inverts the relation between real and ideal -- the very idea!
It made me appreciate just how different perspectives can be.

And I am "shocked" -- in the Claude Rains or "ScareQuo" sort of way --
to hear opinions of a similar ilk being enunciated in this location --
hey, it does not mean that we can't be at the beginning of a beautiful
friendship 'n' everything, but still, well, we'll always have Peirce.
But I am "shocked" not so much in a more literal way because this is
a prevalent, even dominant view in places far beyond DesCartesBlanca,
and so I believe that there is nothing to do but to face up to its
presence, its logical implications, and its practical consequences.

I have no prior theory that says that the "pragmatic equivalence classes" (PEC's)
must always refine the "logical equivalence classes" (LEC's), indeed, I think that
I can see as many places where the former classes constitute a coarser partition
than the latter classes, and so I think that their refinement relationships from
subdomain to subdomain are probably worth a closer examination.

Many Regards,

Jon Awbrey

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