[SCL] Re: ontology, modularity, terminology: once more into the <bracken>

[Jon Awbrey]

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TT = Tanel Tammet

TT: Since the ontology vs module vs theory discussion has received so much
    attention on the SCL list, I'd propose to avoid all these words in the
    SCL wherever we can.

TT: Instead, we could -- at least in most cases -- speak about "SCL text".

TT: A file contains SCL text, not an ontology or a theory or a module.

TT: SCL text may import SCL text, not an ontology or a  theory or a module.

TT: A header (brr ...) describes SCL text, etc.

TT: "SCL text" is  properly neutral and exact, without carrying unwanted
    and unclear connotations as ontology, module and theory all do.

tanel,

there is nothing wrong with these suggestions,
but they do not address the problem at stake,
which has to do with relating the way that
one "community of interpretation" (coi)
may happen to settle on using a given
or taken set of signs with the ways
that other coi's happen to settle
on using what may well, or ill,
be overlapping sets of signs.

the extent to which adducing more signs to a given text --
anaclitics, diacritics, enclitics, epithets, excipients,
expletives, headers, inflectives, pleonastics, prefixes,
suffixes, ad infinitum -- can and cannot either further
constrain or else but serve to open up the interpretive
possibilities even further, that is the question here.

an approach to the problem of definition that says:
"let's avoid the subject of definition outright"
is needles to say a rather popular one in some
circles that just keep going in circles.  but
i'm sure you didn't mean to suggest that out.

right?

the accumulated wisdom on modularity, as this accumulator has accumulated it,
the word being standard fare in the comp sci curriculum for umpteen years now,
goes a bit like this:

modularity is where you find it, but the quality of modularity is strained elsewhere.
tis good to notice it where you find it.  tis bad to impose it where it does not fit.

ja

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