Re: General semantics
From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 12:15:54 -0300
Message-ID: <4bf400b1$0$11813$9a566e8b_at_news.aliant.net>
>
> I'd say the breakthrough that made Codd famous was that he saw clear,
> straightforward ways to implement his structures, as well as his
> assimilation of several classical techniques. They had general
> usefulness even if there remains much in human experience that they
> don't capture, eg., emotion, ethics, sensory feelings. I suppose you
> could say that Codd's relations 'fall flat' when it comes to imparting
> feelings but that wasn't his purpose. I don't mean that as a joke,
> personally it's my main reason for trying to maintain a
> 'machine-centric' view when talking about db theory - the other
> territory is too ephemeral, eg., the 'models' we talk about can't
> replicate anything but themselves.
>
> No doubt Alfred Korzybski couldn't have been hip to the machinery that
> Codd was but putting that aside the question for me would be what
> implementation might his writing imply, something akin to Codd's or
> something else?
>
> Eg., I'd be curious as to who first talked about unary relations, which
> seem an essential part of Codd's breakthrough. Seems to me that
> anything 'new' needs to be compared to what Codd wrote (though
> apparently he had such a practical bent that he saw no need for nullary
> relations).
>
> (I don't remember seeing them in Bertrand Russell's 'Introduction to
> Mathematical Philosophy' which might also be interesting to some of us.
> Like Korzybski, he came before Codd and Kent's generation, I think he
> might have stopped writing on such topics by the time Godel made his own
> breakthrough. I don't know if he gave up because of various logical
> difficulties or just found other interests, maybe he saw similar
> obstacles to machine 'understanding', eg., how could a machine ever
> smell? Even that's a presumptuous question since we know that humans
> can never smell the way Rosie the dog can.)
Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 12:15:54 -0300
Message-ID: <4bf400b1$0$11813$9a566e8b_at_news.aliant.net>
paul c wrote:
>> Nilone wrote: >> >>> On May 18, 11:19 pm, Erwin <e.sm..._at_myonline.be> wrote: >>> >>>> And I fail to see what "general semantics and it's correspondences to >>>> the relational model?" has to do with this delusionary nonsense of >>>> "relations being flat". >>> >>> I read "multi-dimensional order" as "n-dimensional data structure", >>> and it seemed to me that Korzybski aptly described the relational >>> model and its possible application to language and mental models of >>> empirical data. As I progress through the book, I find that >>> perspective reinforced. >>> >>>> But in natural language, it is perfectly normal and perfectly >>>> acceptable to employ idiomatic expressions and figurative speech. In >>>> discussions which are supposed to be scientific, that is much less the >>>> case. >>> >>> I suspect this thread leans too far into the philosophical for the >>> regulars of c.d.t. I derive my desire to understand the relational >>> model from its value as a metaphysical model of reality. >> >> Have you read William Kent's /Data and Reality/ ?
>
> I'd say the breakthrough that made Codd famous was that he saw clear,
> straightforward ways to implement his structures, as well as his
> assimilation of several classical techniques. They had general
> usefulness even if there remains much in human experience that they
> don't capture, eg., emotion, ethics, sensory feelings. I suppose you
> could say that Codd's relations 'fall flat' when it comes to imparting
> feelings but that wasn't his purpose. I don't mean that as a joke,
> personally it's my main reason for trying to maintain a
> 'machine-centric' view when talking about db theory - the other
> territory is too ephemeral, eg., the 'models' we talk about can't
> replicate anything but themselves.
>
> No doubt Alfred Korzybski couldn't have been hip to the machinery that
> Codd was but putting that aside the question for me would be what
> implementation might his writing imply, something akin to Codd's or
> something else?
>
> Eg., I'd be curious as to who first talked about unary relations, which
> seem an essential part of Codd's breakthrough. Seems to me that
> anything 'new' needs to be compared to what Codd wrote (though
> apparently he had such a practical bent that he saw no need for nullary
> relations).
>
> (I don't remember seeing them in Bertrand Russell's 'Introduction to
> Mathematical Philosophy' which might also be interesting to some of us.
> Like Korzybski, he came before Codd and Kent's generation, I think he
> might have stopped writing on such topics by the time Godel made his own
> breakthrough. I don't know if he gave up because of various logical
> difficulties or just found other interests, maybe he saw similar
> obstacles to machine 'understanding', eg., how could a machine ever
> smell? Even that's a presumptuous question since we know that humans
> can never smell the way Rosie the dog can.)
If you mean my Rosie, she still smells a little like skunk, which is probably achievable for most humans. ;) Received on Wed May 19 2010 - 17:15:54 CEST