Richard O'Keefe wrote:
On Feb 19, 2010, at 2:48 PM, Nick Rudnick wrote:
Please tell me the aspect you feel uneasy with, and please give me
your opinion, whether (in case of accepting this) you would rather
choose to consider Human as referrer and Int as referee of the
opposite -- for I think this is a deep question.
I've read enough philosophy to be wary of treating "reference"
as a simple concept. And linguistically, "referees" are people
you find telling rugby players "naughty naughty". Don't you
mean "referrer" and "referent"?
Yes, thanks. I am not a native English speaker, and in my mother tongue,
a referent is somebody who refers, so I missed the guess... Such
statements are exactly what I was looking for... So, as a reference is
directed, it is possible to distinguish
referrer ::= the one which does refer to s.th.
referent ::= one which is referred to by s.th.
Of course a basic point about language is that the association
between sounds and meanings is (for the most part) arbitrary.
I would rather like to say it is not strictly determined, as an
evolutionary tendence towards, say ergonomy, cannot be overlooked, can it?
Why should the terminology of mathematics be any different?
;-) Realizing an evolutionary tendence towards ergonony, is my subject...
Why is a "small dark floating cloud, indicating rain", called
a "water-dog"? Water, yes, but dog? Why are the brackets at
each end of a fire-place called "fire-dogs"? Why are unusually
attractive women called "foxes" (the females of that species
being "vixens", and both sexes smelly)?
:-)) The shape of the genitals, which might come into associative
imagination of the hopeful observer?? (The same with cats, bears, etc.)
[... desperately afraid of getting kicked out of this mailing list ;-))]
Thanks for this beautiful example and, honestly, again I ask again
whether we may regard this as «just noise»: In contrary, aren't such
usages not paradigmatical examples of memes, which as products of
memetic evolution, should be studied for their motivational value?
Let me guess: Our cerebral language system is highly coupled with our
intentional system, so that it helps learning to have motivating
«animation» enclosed... Isn't this in use in contemporary learning
environments...?
The problem I see is that common maths claims an exception in claiming
that, in it's domain, namings are no more than noise -- possible
motivated by an extreme rejection of anything between «strictly formally
determined» and «noise». This standpoint again does not realize the
developments in foundations of mathematics of at least the century ago
-- put roughly, this comes close to Hilbert's programme...
To my mind, any of the breakthroughs of the last decades -- like
incompleteness, strange attractors, algorithmic information theory,
CCCs, and not the least computing science itself with metaprogramming,
soft computing, its linear types/modes and monads (!) -- have to do with
constructs which emancipate such claims of ex ante predetermination.
Isn't category theory pretty much a part of all this?
What's the logic in
doggedness being a term of praise but bitchiness of opprobrium?
Sexism...??
We can hope for mathematical terms to be used consistently,
but asking for them to be transparent is probably too much to
hope for. (We can and should use intention-revealing names
in a program, but doing it across the totality of all programs
is something never achieved and probably never achievable.)
We have jokers: Evolutionary media, like markdown or even stylesheet may
allow us to switch and translate in a moment, and many more useful
gimmicks... Online collaboration platforms...
And we can stay pragmatical: If we can reach a (broad, to my
estimate...) public, which originally would have to say «the book has
really left me dumbfounded» (so the originator of this thread) and offer
them an entertaining intuitive way -- why not even in a
self-configurable way? -- category theory could be introduced to
contemporary culture.
Personally, I can't accept statements like (in another posting) «You
need a lot of training in abstraction to learn very abstract concepts.
Joe Sixpack's common sense isn't prepared for that.»
Instead, I think that there is good evidence to believe that there are
lots of isomorphisms to be found between every day's life and
terminology and concepts category theory -- *not* to be confused with
its *applications to maths*...
And, to close in your figurative style:
Which woman gets hurt by a change of clothes?
Cheers,
Nick
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