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Article 1427 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Is semiotics an "informal logic"?
Message-ID: <1991Nov19.235721.5652@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 20 Nov 91 04:57:20 GMT
References: <1454@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> <36XNBB3w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
Lines: 41
Nntp-Posting-Host: zariski.harvard.edu

In article <36XNBB3w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM> 
rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richard Carlson) writes:

>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."  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?  The statements "5 > 2" and "It was hotter yesterday than
>it was Saturday" have only a superficial resemblance.  The notion
>">" has a precise meaning while the idea of "hotter" is a
>comparative built on a binary opposition (hot vs. cold) and
>inherently fuzzy.

As said Alonzo Church, "Principia Mathematica" is as much a part of English
language as "Paradise Lost".

>I may pull a Derrida and not respond to any critique because I
>don't think I know enough detail to understand a well-articulated
>reformulation.  But just viewing things from a very high level of
>abstraction, it _looks_ to me as if "formal semantics" is, as
>currently used, almost oxymoronic.

As said George Orwell, ignorance is bliss.

'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`
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: Connais pas! Connais pas!                                 think    :
:                                                             so     :
: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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