SUO: Re: More Documentation, Please!?
Phil Jackson wrote:
>
> Dear Matthew, and SUO Group in general,
>
> Along the lines that you have proposed below,
> I think it would also be a good idea for the
> SUO group to collectively, iteratively develop
> a web-based SUO Glossary of specialized ontological
> terminology (e.g. defining phrases like "4D Endurantist")
> including any terms that might be invented and then used
> frequently within SUO correspondence ...
>
> One way to do this would be to use www.quickbase.com,
> to very easily set up a database of terms that people
> could update dynamically.... I thnk I could do this
> very easily -- Do others think this is a good idea,
> and if so, is there another, better way that it
> should be done?
>
> Regards,
>
> Phil Jackson
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is
> limited. Imagination encircles the world." - Einstein
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Standard Disclaimers. www.philjackson.prohosting.com
¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤
Phil, & All, ...
There is a very generic, very hard, very interesting problem
that arises in the effort to do what you propose. Although
such a database would be very useful with respect to those
linguistic niches that do not overlap, the really tough
nuisance to master successfully rears it ugly heads in
those more infernal regions of syntax where different
folks use the very same strokes to represent very
different aspects, beings, characters, and so on,
in the world.
I think that this issue is not unrelated to what Quine
calls the "radical indeterminacy of translation" (RIOT).
In the end, I think you will discover -- I predict that
you will find, that is -- that it will be the small words,
the apparently innocuous words, that reside within this
"polymorphously perverse" core of sign usage, that will
defeat your average effort at "information fusion" (IF).
As it happens, I have spent quite a spell of time trying to
think about what sort of conceptual framework could be used
to organize such potentially conflicting senses and usages,
and this is precisely the point of my recommendation of the
so-called "pragmatic theory of signs" (PTOS), intended to be
a way of embedding many variant usages of signs within the
frame of a triadic "sign relation", in a sense, nothing but
a 3-column relational database, one that could be assembled
at first empirically, but later constitute the subject of
theoretical analysis, modeling, and reflection.
Many of my earliest, most tentative proposals to this group
were along these lines, offered for the sake of beginning
to resolve some of the many usage differences to which I
almost immediately became sensitive on first joining up.
Of course, I am rather more de-sensitivized now! Still,
here are some links to these early attempts:
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00618.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00645.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00653.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00684.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00694.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00728.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00729.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00731.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00750.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00757.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00786.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00792.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00829.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00894.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01111.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01130.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01193.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01224.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01338.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01363.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01376.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01390.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01424.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01477.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01561.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01590.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01641.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01670.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01704.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg01737.html
You will, of course, be able to recognize that the things
I am saying here are far from being any kind of a novelty.
Acting on them, however -- I think that might yet qualify
as a thing that is new.
Many Regards,
Jon Awbrey
¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤