SUO: Re: SUO Topic :> Definition Of Utility
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Topic :> Utility 2. <JA, 04 Dec 2003, 07>
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Matthew West sends a 13kb message --
not very concise if you're going
to start counting bytes, Matthew! --
that contains only this much new
in the way of fresh information:
MW: OED has for utility:
| The fact, character, or quality of being useful or
| serviceable; fitness for some desirable purpose or
| valuable end; usefulness, serviceableness.
MW: The particular utility in question is not to have repeated
discussions about what a term might mean when it is used in
a particular context, because that has been agreed up front.
Matthew,
You force, er, oblige me to open up a whole new Category (QV pending)
just to compass and countenance the pattern of dyscourse that I have
finally at long alas! come so patently to recognize running on here.
But on the upside let me start by saying this much that gives me hope.
I am glad that we share the habit of looking up even familiar words
in the dictionary in order to glean some newly refreshed sense of
their everyday meanings. But that is not the end of the process
for anybody who is concerned to develop the operational meanings
of the words, as we engineering and procedure-hat-wearing types
are especially concerned to do in the present application frame.
A sign transition from the substantive term "Utility" to the set
of adjectival terms {"Fit", "Serviceable", "Useful"} is in this
case little more than an exercise in word association, somewhat
more constrained than a free association would be, but it does
nothing toward a practical definition unless you already have
practical definitions of these other interpretants, in effect,
only if you already have "effective" testers in your toolbox
for the metering out of Fitness, Serviceability, Usefulness.
In this more empirical, operational, practical, testable light,
let us now reexamine the question that you dodged at this site:
JA: | Does the being of an X consist in it's possessing a particular
| "set of properties" (SOP), independent of it's being called by
| the name "X", or does the being of an X as such consist solely
| in it's being named as such?
As you may recall, or not, we began with X = Issue, and pretty
much wore that out before I finally gave up waiting for simple
1-ary answer to a straitfwd 2-ary question. I decided to give
you the benefit of the 2-plicity, and was beginning to imagine
that perhaps it was the fault of the peculiar word in question.
Then you pulled a fast one, and switched the subject so deftly
on me that I went to my weary pillow -- they used to call that
Projection in my Psych though not my Maths programs -- with my
head still spinning dizzily, and not on the more usual account.
But I'm nada if not persistent, so I will trek.bak more slowly,
and pin down the axis whereon your entropic torque was applied.
But elsewhere, ever elfsware ...
Jon Awbrey
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http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/mighty/history.html
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