Re: D1. Separate computer science ontology from philosophical ontology
Rob,
Whenever disagreements about words arise, the simplest solution is
to avoid using those words and restate the issues in other terms.
RF> If you say Wittgenstein's games can be objectively recorded,
> we first have to argue about the meaning of objective (of which
> I think there are not a few already in the SUO archives.)
Instead of arguing about the word 'objective', I'll simply use the
criterion of being observable by a disinterested third party who
examines evidence of the kind that would be admissible in a court
of law or scientific publication.
RF> I do not submit to the authority of dictionaries. They are in
> my experience very poor guides to "meaning." Most admit as much
> by filling themselves with examples.
I agree that all reference sources contain errors, and I would
never regard a definition in the OED or MW 3rd to be beyond
criticism. But as a starting point for discussion, they are
not bad, and they're better than most of the definitions that
have been proposed on this and other email lists.
When I said that those definitions are derived from objective
evidence, I meant that the corpus of citations used by the
editors of a good dictionary satisfies the criterion I stated
above: observable by a disinterested third party, not based
on somebody's intuition or feelings. Perhaps the person who
wrote an actual definition might have used intuition, but a
court of law or a scientific inquiry could go back to the
original corpus of citations to resolve any dispute.
RF> Most [dictionaries] admit as much by filling themselves
> with examples.
Those examples are actually selections from the original corpus
of evidence. And any dispute about the accuracy of a definition
is resolved by citing more evidence of the same kind -- further
citations that may have been missing from the original corpus
or not throughly analyzed by the editors of the dictionary.
RF> Either way, my answer to this thread is: don't separate
> computer science from philosophical theory. If for no other
> reason than because you don't need to.
I certainly agree. And this is an excellent point of agreement
on which to end this thread.
John