SUO: Re: Critique Of Non-Functional Reason
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| A. Automated Reasoning (AR)
|
| The standard will be suitable for automated logical inference
| to support knowledge-based reasoning applications.
|
| B. Inter-Operability (IO)
|
| The standard will provide a basis for achieving Inter-Operability
| among various software and database applications.
Remarks having to do with A or B will be tagged "A" or "B".
Comments on the integration of A and B will be tagged "AB".
Summary Of The Thread Up To This Point
I stated the following thesis, which I regard as
highlighting a strikingly obvious, if somewhat
surprising phenomenon:
| Thesis. Mathematics and its applications in physics
| and the other special sciences are serving moderately
| successfully to describe the world as we know it today,
| while logic lags behind in a largely ineffectual state.
I think that it is abundantly evident that this state of affairs
is one of the most serious difficulties that we have to address in
choosing and in using any logical formalism as a primary medium for
specifying the outlines of the intended standard.
In answering the solitary objection that I received to this thesis,
I clarified the point of it along lines that I will now attempt to
restate in the following way:
I am not criticizing the idea of logic, the idea of FOL, or even
the idea of KIF. Criticizing the idea of such things is futile.
It is too much like trying to criticize the idea of apple pie.
Who could be against the idea of logic, no matter what order,
and who could be against the idea of anything that sounds so
fine as a "knowledge interchange format"? Certainly not I.
That is not even the range where the target of my remarks
is set up. No, the idea of apple pie does not contain
arsenic, or botulism, or MetaSynGenetic (MSG) apples,
but a real apple pie just might.
Accordingly, I have distinguished at the present juncture a couple of
appreciably more concrete layers of implementational and institutional
realization at which I intend to continue directing my critical and my
remedial efforts, namely, the levels of:
1. Families Of Notations And Implementations (FONAI's).
2. Institutions Of Notations/Notices/Notions (ION's).
The first has to do with the parametric families of syntax,
semantics, pragmatics, and proof styles that we opt for,
usually remain biased by, and choose to implement.
The second has to do with the ways in which a community of inquiry
is bounded by the culturally embedded institutions that determine
a given selection of conceptual and notational options.
A surprising phenomenon calls for an explanation.
I will reprise my initial attempts at accounting
for this anomaly when I next continue my summary.
Jon Awbrey
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