Re: lattice of ontology
Azamat,
I agree that the world is the ultimate test of reality:
> Just don't neglect the world as the only true reference frame...
But there is an infinite number of different reference frames
for different purposes by different individuals of different
species. Every one of them is *true* of that aspect of
reality that it addresses.
Following are some excerpts from George Steiner's book
_After Babel_. That is the source of the knowledge soup.
Any approach that ignores that multiplicity has no chance
of coping with the way people think, talk, and write
programs.
Happy New Year,
John
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Steiner, G. (1975/1998). After Babel: Aspects of language
and translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Any model of communication is at the same time a model of translation,
of a vertical or horizontal transfer of significance. No two historical
epochs, no two social classes, no two localities use words and syntax to
signify exactly the same things, to send identical signals of valuation
and inference. Neither do two human beings. Each living person draws,
deliberately or in immediate habit, on two sources of linguistic supply:
the current vulgate corresponding to his level of literacy, and a
private thesaurus. (p. 47, p. 75 of 3rd ed.)
Each communicatory gesture has a private residue. The 'personal
lexicon' in every one of us inevitably qualifies the definitions,
connotations, semantic moves current in public discourse. The concept
of a normal or standard idiom is a statistically-based fiction....
The language of a community, however, uniform its social contour, is an
inexhaustibly multiple aggregate of speech-atoms, of finally irreducible
personal meanings. (p. 47)
We speak to communicate. But also to conceal, to leave unspoken. The
ability of human beings to misinform modulates through every wavelength
from outright lying to silence. This ability is based on the dual
structure of discourse: our outward speech has 'behind it' a concurrent
flow of articulate consciounsness.... In the majority of conventional,
social exchanges, the relation between these two speech currents is only
partially congruent. There is a duplicity.... Thus a human being
performs an act of translation, in the full sense of the word, when
receiving a speech-message from any other human being. (pp. 47-48)