[SCL] Re: Formal_Semantics =/= Semantics

[Jon Awbrey]

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JA = Jon Awbrey
JS = John Sowa

JS: I am not putting anything "sub rosa":

JA: I look forward to the appropriate footnote.
    But I am puzzled that you appear to think
    that a proper description of the process
    in question ought to be kept sub rosa,
    and not an integral feature of the
    way that Common Logic represents
    itself to the common populace.

I retract the inflammation.  But let's be honest.  There is a whole lot of
confusion in the popular imagination about these questions, to some extent
exaccerbated by the peculiar fashion of speech that formal folks fall into,
which may work very well among those who've been through the same ringers,
but which tends to need more careful exposition before it can have a hope
of becoming an exoteric resource.  In times past there were any number of
ways to avoid this onus, but it looks like those days are gone for good.

JS: I am ompartmentalizing the various tasks.  The CL task is very specialized,
    and it does not and was never intended to address broader issues of meaning,
    semeiotic, or whatever one might call it.

Clear statements like that are extremely helpful.
I suggest that their substance be inserted into
the formal documentation of the CL Standard.

JS: The proposed standard will be a short, succinct specification
    for formal languages and interfaces that exchange information
    while preserving the very limited kinds of truth conditions
    specified by a Tarski-style model-theoretic semantics.

The precise formal sense in which syntactic arrows f : X -> Y,
in particular, where Y = LOS (Language Of Sets), can properly be
said to "exchange information" or to "preserve truth conditions",
along with the scope and limits of "Tarski-style model-theoretic
semantics" will need to be clarified a great deal more if folks
are not to mistake their prospective formal senses with common
ideas and even other technical uses of words like "information",
"model", and "truth".

JS: Please look at the Z standard, the final draft
    of which you can get from Frank Farance.  It is
    a very dry, very boring presentation, which does,
    unfortunately, make an occasional lapse by using
    the word "meaning" once or twice.

I am unclear, from the discussions that I have seen so far
on this and the CL list, what exactly Z has to do with S/CL.

JS: For the CL draft, which we are planning to produce by May, I will do my best
    to keep it as dry and boring as the Z standard.  In addition, I will ensure
    that the word "meaning" does not occur anywhere in the document.  Furthermore,
    I will include a definition of the word "semantics" which will say that for
    the scope of the document, it is intended as an abbreviation for the term
    "model-theoretic semantics" and that it should not be confused with the
    broader sense of meaning or semantics as used in ordinary language.

Oh, if Z is intended merely as a style model, then I have lots and lots
of them that are undoubtedly every bit as dry and as boring to model on.

JS: This is not putting "meaning" sub rosa.
    It is banishing it completely from the
    document.

A forthright statement like that is all I ask.
I shall model my contributions on its honesty.

Jon Awbrey

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http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/mighty/history.html
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