Effective Logical Formalism

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ELF.  Discussion Note 1

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Gary, Jack, John, Murray, et al.

By way of getting better mileage down the yellow-brick road to SUO City
out of this discussion, and since we haven't really been talking about
RDF or Topic Maps for quite a while now, let's put away our 6-packs
and our 2-4's and focus a little bit more on the properties of the
good enough logical framework that we might hope to see someday.
If the "Streamlined Common Logic" (SCL) shapes up to that, fine.
So I will bracket my anxieties for the time being and keep my
eyes on the prize.  From the sorts of things that I've seen
in the past, though, I know that there's a natural human
tendency to pump up a very big, very beautiful balloon
of elegant expansiveness and potential expressiveness,
all in principle, that just never quite gets down to,
indeed, displays a natural abhorrence of brass tacks.

I will refer to the ideal candidate system
as the "effective logical formalism" (ELF).
There are probably many that would qualify,
but I'll discuss the ELF in singular terms.

For my part, as far as its logical character goes, I demand very little
of the ELF, and I expect the ELF to demand very little of me in its turn.
That is, I would not want to be obliged to go along with any assumptions
that are not logically necessary, or more contingently, that are not the
logical consequences of assumptions that I explictly choose for the sake
of describing an object reality.  The ELF cannot help us to examine our
logical options fairly if its calling into action prescribes one choice
and even precludes critical reflection on the larger array of choices.

Now, I am not so naive as to think that we are likely to find any kinds
of "ontologically neutral languages" out there, or becoming available to
us anytime soon, not in any absolute sense of the words, but I do hold out
the more differential hope that we can become aware of isolated assumptions
about actual or possible existence that we had been taking for granted all
along, quite unawares and hidden from our reflective critique, since this
is a sort of development that has occurred often enough in the history
of ideas.  So it is a minimal task that the ELF should help with that.

More Later,

Jon Awbrey

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