ONT Re: Apposite Purposes Of Logical Languages Objectified (APOLLO)
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We have our formal object, that is, an object of a certain form.
We are speaking, in global terms, as if this object were indeed
the object of denotation by any one of several formal languages,
some of which we have enumerated and settled in the type ZOL(2).
We may say, more pointedly, that the well-formed expressions of
these formal languages denote the elements of our formal object,
that is to say, in one interpretation, the nodes of the lattice
that we may interpret as boolean functions of the type B^2 -> B.
Where is this object? Is that question even apt?
Or does it betray a misapprehension of its point?
I cannot say. One thing's for sure, though, the
object does not appear to be localizable in just
the same way that the tokens of its signs may be.
We note these signs here and there, respectively,
I on my screen and you in your respective medium,
but the object is not to be seen in any such way.
Still, we speak of it, and we are not such fools,
so there you have it, it must exist, in some way
or another.
From a certain perspective, the situation does not
really appear all that different from all of those
times when we use signs to converse about material
objects in the material world. In fact, the point
of view that may be recognized as "formal realism",
which says that forms are real, and by this "real"
to say that forms have properties and real effects,
if you look at what it actually means in practical
terms, claims nothing more or less than this, that
speaking of form and speaking of matter aren't all
that different, not in the way that the signs must
denote the respective forms and matters as objects.
If that seems like a digression, it was really more
of a reflection on an issue whose pertinence I will
now indicate. One of the first things that we need
to reflect on is this ineluctable circumstance that
all we see here is naught but signs, in other words,
that everything we have used so far to indicate our
object, or any other, no matter what its supporting
material may be, serves the end of denoting objects
in the role of signs and never in the role of these
objects themselves, except, just now, when I called
especial attention to them. But let us excuse that,
for now. The time for metadiscussion is ever later.
Until Then,
Jon Awbrey
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