Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

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Skepdick
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Re: Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

Post by Skepdick »

PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:56 am That is a very lame answer considering you already acknowledged English "verbs" and "nouns".
Are you really this daft?

I didn't acknowledge English verbs and nouns.
I acknowledged formal verbs and nouns.

If you think formal languages and English are equivalent, then why are you speaking to me in English and not C++?
PeteOlcott
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Re: Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

Post by PeteOlcott »

Skepdick wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 8:32 am
PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:56 am That is a very lame answer considering you already acknowledged English "verbs" and "nouns".
Are you really this daft?

I didn't acknowledge English verbs and nouns.
I acknowledged formal verbs and nouns.

If you think formal languages and English are equivalent, then why are you speaking to me in English and not C++?
Formalizing Natural Language at the source code level uses words as the finite strings.
PeteOlcott
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Re: Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

Post by PeteOlcott »

Skepdick wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 8:28 am
PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:52 am Like I already said GUID's.
That solves absolutely nothing. The computer may have unique identifiers, but humans don't.

We infer meaning from context, we don't (need to) use GUIDs.

If I knew the GUID for the meaning of Bachelor (unmarried man), distinct from the GUID for Bachelor (person who wholds a bachelors degree).
If I could keep the GUID of every distinct meaning in my head, I could just speak in GUIDs, no?

But I don't speak in GUIDs, because it's easier to construct meaning on as-need basis than to remember GUIDs.
Since we are only taking about formalizing the semantic meaning of natural language words
and not processing expressions of natural language there is no context.
Skepdick
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Re: Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

Post by Skepdick »

PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:23 pm Formalizing Natural Language at the source code level uses words as the finite strings.
I have no idea what that means.

Words in natural languages, such as English, are already finite strings.

What does formalism give us that English doesn't?
Last edited by Skepdick on Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Skepdick
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Re: Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

Post by Skepdick »

PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:26 pm Since we are only taking about formalizing the semantic meaning of natural language words
and not processing expressions of natural language there is no context.
Natural language words do not have a universal meaning that's devoid of context.

Natural languages are flexible, composable. Meaning can be moulded, created and destroyed in real time. The meaning of a word can change from one sentence to the next.

Logic is too rigid and colourless to capture such nuance.
PeteOlcott
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Re: Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

Post by PeteOlcott »

Skepdick wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:43 pm
PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:26 pm Since we are only taking about formalizing the semantic meaning of natural language words
and not processing expressions of natural language there is no context.
Natural language words do not have a universal meaning that's devoid of context.

Natural languages are flexible, composable. Meaning can be moulded, created and destroyed in real time.

The meaning of a word can change from one sentence to the next. Natural language is dynamic, evolving and ever-changing - quit trying to reduce it to colourless Mathematics.
The word {dog} has its meaning composed of the meaning of the words used to define it.

The meaning of natural language is so flexible that the meaning of a word can deceptively change from one sentence to the next. When ever atomic meaning of each word is anchored in a GUID, this kind of deception ceases to be possible.
Skepdick
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Re: Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

Post by Skepdick »

PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:48 pm The word {dog} has its meaning composed of the meaning of the words used to define it.
That's recursive. What meaning do the words which define the word "dog" have?
PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:48 pm The meaning of natural language is so flexible that the meaning of a word can deceptively change from one sentence to the next.
That's a feature, not a bug.
PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:48 pm When ever atomic meaning of each word is anchored in a GUID, this kind of deception ceases to be possible.
If the meaning of each word is anchored to a GUID, then the word "dog" is no longer composed of the meaning of the words used to define it - it's now composed simply by the GUIDs which reference it.

Is there any GUID in your system that has no ingress edges? e.g a word that has some "inherent" meaning?
If your answer is "no" - then your graph is cyclical.
PeteOlcott
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Re: Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

Post by PeteOlcott »

Skepdick wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:50 pm
PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:48 pm The word {dog} has its meaning composed of the meaning of the words used to define it.
That's recursive. What meaning do the words which define the word "dog" have?
Recursive with depth and breadth comprised of millions of meaning postulates until the exhaustively complete human degree of comprehension of the meaning of all of the words has been fully composed.
PeteOlcott
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Re: Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

Post by PeteOlcott »

Skepdick wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:50 pm
PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:48 pm The meaning of natural language is so flexible that the meaning of a word can deceptively change from one sentence to the next.
That's a feature, not a bug.
That "feature" would otherwise result in the extinction of the species.
Only after Tarski has been refuted and a universal True(X) predicate
derived, can automated systems screen out the damn lies of the news cycles.
PeteOlcott
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Re: Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

Post by PeteOlcott »

Skepdick wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:50 pm
PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:48 pm When ever atomic meaning of each word is anchored in a GUID, this kind of deception ceases to be possible.
If the meaning of each word is anchored to a GUID, then the word "dog" is no longer composed of the meaning of the words used to define it - it's now composed simply by the GUIDs which reference it.

Is there any GUID in your system that has no ingress edges? e.g a word that has some "inherent" meaning?
If your answer is "no" - then your graph is cyclical.
Each GUID corresponds to a unique meaning. My earliest specification of this idea was an ISO standard dictionary that has ISO standard subscripts for each of the different sense meanings of a word.

{Thing} is the root of the knowledge tree. It is defined by its constituents.
Skepdick
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Re: Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

Post by Skepdick »

PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 4:53 pm That "feature" would otherwise result in the extinction of the species.
Only after Tarski has been refuted and a universal True(X) predicate
derived, can automated systems screen out the damn lies of the news cycles.
And what happens when humans decide "fuck your system!" and we change "true" to mean "false" ?
Skepdick
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Re: Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

Post by Skepdick »

PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 4:58 pm {Thing} is the root of the knowledge tree. It is defined by its constituents.
If the root node is defined by its constituents, then what are the constituents defined by?

Infinite regress? Oops.
PeteOlcott
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Re: Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

Post by PeteOlcott »

Skepdick wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 7:05 pm
PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 4:53 pm That "feature" would otherwise result in the extinction of the species.
Only after Tarski has been refuted and a universal True(X) predicate
derived, can automated systems screen out the damn lies of the news cycles.
And what happens when humans decide "fuck your system!" and we change "true" to mean "false" ?
That is already happening when the Trump administration defines alternative-facts.
Gullible fools buy it and the rest know it is deception.
PeteOlcott
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Re: Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

Post by PeteOlcott »

Skepdick wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 7:29 pm
PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 4:58 pm {Thing} is the root of the knowledge tree. It is defined by its constituents.
If the root node is defined by its constituents, then what are the constituents defined by?

Infinite regress? Oops.
The root node has a hierarchy of sub-types and a list of properties.
These are all outgoing directed graph edges. Acyclic directed graphs
can't be infinite anything.
Skepdick
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Re: Overcoming Quine's objection to the analytic / synthetic distinction

Post by Skepdick »

PeteOlcott wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2020 7:53 pm The root node has a hierarchy of sub-types and a list of properties.
These are all outgoing directed graph edges. Acyclic directed graphs
can't be infinite anything.
Pete, what is the semantic of a "thing" ?
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