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Article 1679 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Is semiotics an "informal logic"?
Message-ID: <5721@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 27 Nov 91 19:26:13 GMT
References: <1454@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> <36XNBB3w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 46

In article <36XNBB3w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM> rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richard Carlson) writes:
>> }Try Dowty, Wall, and Peters' "Introduction to Montague Semantics", or
>> }Keenan and Faltz' "Boolean Semantics for Natural Languages", or, more
>> }elementary, Martin's "Elements of Formal Semantics".
>> 
>> Good suggestions, but there are hundreds of books that  deal with
>> formal semantics.
>
>There aren't hundreds.  In the Emory University library, books
>dealing with "formal semantics" have the same call number as books
>in "general semantics" (the Korzybski enterprise) and semantics
>generally.  And there aren't many.

Perhaps it's better not to take "hundreds" literally, but there
are a fair number of such books.  They won't necessarily be listed
under "formal semantics".  You'll have to try linguistics, logic,
and philosophy under various, not always predictable, subcategories.

>Frankly the whole enterprise of formal semantics, to the extent
>that I understand it, seems wrong. Language is a dialectical
>structure, or at least a structure based on binary oppositions of
>various kinds at the various levels: phonological, syntactic and
>"semantic."

Why should there be any difficulty in dealing with binary
oppositions formally?

> How can ideas from a non-dialectical system --
>mathematics and logic seem to be more like "mechanisms" than
>"structures" -- be applied without modification to a dialectical
>system?

Who says they have to be applied without modification?

If you start by describing language as a dialectical system,
then to deal with using an approach that it not itself dialectical
will require either (1) finding an equivalent non-dialectical
description or (2) adapting the approach to deal with the
dialectical description.

>The statements "5 > 2" and "It was hotter yesterday than
>it was Saturday" have only a superficial resemblance.

Would a formal semantics have to equate them?  I think you
may be confusing "simplistic formal semantics won't work"
with "formal semantics won't work".


