[Corpora-List] Query-By-Example (QBE) -like GUI to query corpora ...

[John F. Sowa]

On 11/30/2010 9:04 AM, Albretch Mueller wrote:
>> The point I make in this paper is that logic and ontology are both
>> abstractions *from*  language --*not*  the foundations for language.
>
> Exactly!!! I would just change the wildly overused and overrated word
> "abstractions" for -generalizations- and I explain in that draft of
> my paper how it happens. There is absolutely nothing "abstract" our
> semiosis/communication

We largely agree.  The disagreement arises from two polysemous words:
'generalization' and 'abstraction".  I used the word 'generalization'
in the sense that X is a generalization of Y iff every Y is an X.
In that sense, a natural language is neither a logic nor an ontology,
but it includes many such things as "language games" or Sprachspiele,
to use a Wittgensteinian idiom.

And I used 'abstraction' in the sense of 'taking away'.  The various
logics and ontologies that people have developed over the years are
language games that have been extracted from NLs and stripped of all
the complexities (or "riches") of their native habitat.

To use Wittgensteinian terms, I would say that formal logics and
ontologies are "language games" (Sprachspiele) that can be played
with the words and syntax of NLs.  But a full NL has an open ended
number of Sprachspiele beyond those that have been formalized so far.

>>> Take, say, all current pop culture songs and do all the parsing and
>>> annotating you want and then tell me what is the content/lyrics/melody
>>> of the next hit
>> No human being on earth can do that.  It should not be a criterion for an intelligent system.
>
> Actually this "we" (socially, culturally meant) do all the time,
> e.g., when one authors anything...

No author has been able to do that.  That ability would be worth
billions in the entertainment industry.

> But probably I am not
> thinking of an "intelligent system" and when you say "system" I take
> it as some mechanically/syntactically circumscribed device

I used the word 'system' as a generalization (in the sense above)
that would include living organisms and artifacts that are capable
of behaving like living organisms.

John

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