ONT Re: Apposite Purposes Of Logical Languages Objectified (APOLLO)
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JA = Jon Awbrey
JC = John Collier
JC: I would add, not any more than 'inconsistent set',
as Jon uses it corresponds to 'inconsistent set'
in informal usage.
JA: I do not know where you party, but I just do not find
the phrase "inconsistent set" used all that much in
informal usage.
JA: Do you really mean to say that sine and cosine
functions are a part of your "informal language"?
JC: In the sense that it is not formal language in your sense.
JC: You are the one who introduced the use of formal
that makes it so that my intended usage can only
be informal.
JA: 1. I did not introduce the use of the word "formal" in the way
nor with the sense that it has in "formal language theory",
indeed, it conflicts with my own preference in the matter,
but I conform to it out of respect for the community that
created this subject. It is a subject that is generally
recognized to have a bearing on the study of complexity.
JC: No doubt. Now you have seen that it causes
persistent confusion on this list. Please
consider the community you are addressing.
An inquiry into cause can be worth pursuing.
My hypothesis would be that the confusion
was present before I arrived on the scene.
JC: Please recognize that general connection and any connection
through formal language theory is rather tenuous. There are
some relevant results, but it is hardly necessary to go through
formal language theory to deal with them. There are several more
general and less terminologically tendencious approaches, such as
canonical systems (Post) and information theory (Chaitin).
Those are interesting matters ... another is symbolic dynamics.
All of them depend on something more or less equivalent to the
theory of formal languages just to get off the ground.
JA: 2. Nothing that this community writes, and certainly nothing that I write,
prevents anyone else from using this or any other word in any way that
they see fit. People can be held responsible only for making sense of
their own usages, not other people's, and that is all that I am trying
to do here.
JC: The first sentence is simply not true if the context is a discussion.
Communication requires using words in at least roughly similar ways.
I tried to convince you that your way of using words was unfortunately
limited and misleading, but your refusal to acknowledge this leaves
little choice, if I wish to continue communicating, to use words the
way you do. I certainly reserve the right to point this out to others,
and it is unclear to me why you find this problematic.
I use words in many different ways, some more fun, some more serious, as do you.
My initial statement in all of these several connections was that "usage differs",
which you promptly derided. So I adduced a few, utterly standard textbook samples
of usage. That, alongside of your example, sufficiently established the point that
usage differs. I then suggested that we might bracket off these troublesome words for
a while or two, and try to form a "langauge independent terminology" (LIT), which term,
"tongue-in-cheek" (T-I-C) aspects aside, I gave a moderately reasonable explanation of.
That still sounds like a good plan to me.
JC: I don't understand your last sentence. It sounds like Humpty Dumpty to me.
I meant that I am trying to make sense of my own usages, that is to say,
those that I have acquired, adopted, or inherited, most often willi nilli
and quite unwittingly, from a diversity of usage communities, intellectual
disciplines, and (sub)cultural traditions. It's foolhardy, I know.
JA: 3. Yes, it is true, and it often happens, anybody can venture an opinion
on the likely consequences of certain usages, but most folks go their
own way, anyway.
JC: Another not so clever evasion of the issues. An inconsistent set of sentences
is a set of sentences all of which cannot be true at once. In some restricted
cases the same idea can be caught with "a set of sentences which jointly allow
any sentence to be derived". But there are exceptions, as I showed you, both
to the necessary and sufficient side.
That is not an evasion, it is just an observation. Please, no wagering.
You have provided another sample of how you think to use these words.
Repetition will not change the fact that usage differs, unless you
have hit on a plan to obliterate the usage of others thereby.
For my part, I think that a problem of interest begins here,
that usage differences are themselves a phenomenon that
bears investigation, and I have spent a bit of time
developing the "differential calculus of usage"
as tool that might have a bearing on the task.
JC: Some ways of going are simply erroneous, other ways are of limited scope.
This is not rocket science, as they say.
True, True, Zum Zum.
JC: Are you another of these men who absolutely has to have the last word?
What a pickle!? How can I answer without becoming guilty as charged!?
I guess that I must defer to the charge of a far better oracle than I --
| I know you are,
| but what am I?
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