SUO: Re: On The Supreme Supertype Of The Iceberg
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Phil, & All,
Re:
> Perhaps a better word for the supreme supertype could
> be "referent", meaning that which can be referenced.
The term "referent" has long been used to describe that which
"is being referenced", not just that which "can be referenced",
for which one would probably need to use the term "referencible".
The catch is that reference is commonly understood --
and by "commonly" I mean by the common lot of us
"fallible and mortal finite information creatures",
who have not the benefit of a "God's Eye View" (GEV)
or even the next best thing, a detached cartesian ego --
to be relative to some sensible context of discussion,
often enscounced more formally in the admittedly cramped
devices of a "universe of discourse" (UOD) or any of the
other modes of deliberate limitation and very reasonable
restraint that are popular in today's modern model theory.
But since it will hardly present any novelty to you that
the world o' being and the world o' talking can hardly be
be disentangled from each other, I will only be reminding
you of utterly trite facts when I say that there is still
another way of "contextualizing" and "relativizing" these
acts of reference, our ways of "talking about being" (TAB)
that we dare to refer to as "ontologies", that some of us,
some of the time, all too forgetful of our better judgment,
still fall into the blissful fantasy of imagining to be an
experience of pure being in and of itself. And this other
way of "relativizing reference" is none other than through
the medium of "sign relations", in which the role, but not
the essence, mind you, of "being referred to" is referred to
as the role of an "object", as in the "object" or "objective"
of a sign, a text, a thought, a conception, or a discussion.
Of course, there is nothing new in this.
And since everybody here, even those who earnestly believe
that the world o' logic was created on a Tuesday afternoon
in 1901, or 1879 at the earliest, is painfully aware of the
troubles that will be visited on our heads if beings such as
we fallible and mortal finite information creatures, especially
relative to this frame of our desire for effective and efficient
computational systems, vaunt ourselves to the height of arrogance
that would take in vain the name of an "absolute" (= non-relative)
supertype, with a sense pretended to be sufficient to every season
and every purpose under heaven, that is to say, not taken with the
requisite grain of a saliently circumscribed and a relative salt --
well, I scarcely need to remind everybody here of the folksy wisdom
of trying to understand these terms as referring to relational roles
and not as marking the absolute essences of beings, stuff, or things.
But I tire you with reminiscences.
Another Time,
Jon Awbrey
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