[SCL] two comments

[John F. Sowa]

Murray,

This is not my definition.  It is McCarthy's definition,
which was adopted by the formal specification community.
It was developed and applied by a large community of
people who know and understand logic, syntax, and formal
specification.  Pat, Chris, and I have found it very useful.

>Spoken with true conviction. But I guess we'll have to agree to
>disagree.

You can agree to disagree all you like, but you are just
demonstrating that you have missed the point.

> I prefer to move forward with a different
> conviction, that while some people may believe that there are
> precise, formal distinctions, this is all a matter of
> language, the
>communication of concepts, part and parcel of the limits of human
>understanding, and that the distinctions made are not found in
>reality itself, that "abstract" and "concrete" are merely labels
>for two poles of a continuum. The question for me is not whether
>it is a continuum, but whether one can grasp either pole.

Please note my 20 years of writings on conceptual relativity,
knowledge soup, and related topics.  I have been talking
about continua and shades of gray, green, and purple for
years when dealing with ways of representing reality.
You can't outturtle me.

This, however, is not an issue about reality.  It is a simple
point of mathematics.  Any branch of mathematics starts with
whatever axioms we please to use.  And this one very simple
choice of axioms that many eminent people from McCarthy on
down have very useful.

Before making pronouncements about turtles, you should do
your homework.  Until you have studied the subject, your
objections are meaningless.

John