Re: Reification

>Drew,
>
>I'm not sure I understand all the the implications of your arguments
>about reification.
>What if I write
>
>  (implies (is Reification Great) (likes Drew Reification) )
>
>I do not use quoting here,
>still the outer parenthesis seem to have a quite different meaning than
>the inner parenthesis :
>I do *not* assert anything about Reification being great nor you liking
>it,
>though I *do* assert the implication.

You need to distinguish between what an expression MEANS (what it 
refers to in an interpretation) from what gets ASSERTED. The meaning 
of the inner parentheses is that a relation holds between two things; 
the meaning of the implies is that its value is false if the 
antecedent (is Reification Great) is true and the consequent (likes 
Drew Reification) is false, otherwise it is true. Both of these are 
to do with truth.
The usual assertion convention is that asserting an expression is 
claiming that the expression is true. (Some systems require an 
explicit 'asserts' and assume that anything not explicitly asserted 
is just kind of lying there.) That applies just as much to asserting 
and 'inner' triple like (is Reification Great) as it does to a more 
complex expression. Asserting it says it is true. What that says 
about the subexpressions depends on the connectives, but it can get 
quite complicated.  The only case where asserting a complex 
expression is similar to asserting the subexpressions is when the 
topmost connective is conjunction.

>My understanding is that Triples do have the same "power" as the outer
>parenthesis,
>while reification only has the "power" of inner parenthesis.

Whatever that means, it isn't what reification means.

Pat Hayes

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Received on Friday, 6 April 2001 15:51:35 UTC