ONT Re: Effective Logical Formalism -- Literature Notes
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
ELF. Literature Note 2
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
| 1. Model-theoretic Semantics
|
| A model-theoretic semantics for a language assumes that the language refers
| to a 'world', and describes the minimal conditions that a world must satisfy
| in order to assign an appropriate meaning for every expression in the language.
| A particular world is called an interpretation, so that model theory might be
| better called 'interpretation theory'. The idea is to provide a mathematical
| account of the properties that any such interpretation must have, making as
| few assumptions as possible about its actual nature or intrinsic structure.
| Model theory tries to be metaphysically and ontologically neutral. It is
| typically couched in the language of set theory simply because that is the
| normal language of mathematics -- for example, this semantics assumes that
| names denote things in a set IR called the 'universe' -- but the use of
| set-theoretic language here is not supposed to imply that the things in
| the universe are set-theoretic in nature.
|
| R.V. Guha and Patrick Hayes,
|"LBase: Semantics for Languages of the Semantic Web",
| W3C Working Group Note, 10 Oct 2003.
|
| http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/NOTE-lbase-20031010/
Gary, Jack, John, Murray, et al.
I thought that it was a bang-up start to remind the reader that we are
interested in using language to describe a world. Even if that hardly
resolves all the problems as to what indeed, and what in turn, we mean
by "world", it does supply us at the outset with the several senses of
context, direction, and focus that we can use to orient our discussion.
That has provisionally decided me to view this text as a potential
contribution to our efforts to describe our world, in those senses.
Let me now pick over the initiatory paragraph and make a note
of the bones of its anatomy that I know from prior experience
are likely to be the sources of some contention in the upshot.
The word "interpretation", like its cohorts in this Garden --
among whose legion is enumerated "meaning" and "semantics" --
is known to be spoken with a forked tongue, that is to say,
with many meanings, not to be intentionally recursive, but
guilelessly and hopelessly, inviting interpretation itself.
To keep from going nuts about this brand of problematizing,
I can think of two tactics that have served me in the past:
A. Draw on the resources of common grounds.
B. Draw a distinction and mark it in signs.
These two tactics go hand in hand, as the signs that
we draw on to determine a distinction in due measure,
are often found lying about and on our common ground.
Jon Awbrey
__|__
_|_
_
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o