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> The first turtle is the human
> who is the ultimate semantic processor
Wait, there's a first turtle? I thought the stack was turtles all the way
down to a person. Does it matter if the first turtle is a person? Aren't
all the turtles people who can choose turtle-hood???
I don't want to turn this into an "angels on the head of a pin" argument
(or maybe I do). But it could be argued that there's never any such thing
as a shared language. There are just languages that are shared enough for
certain purposes. Although we hone the degree to which our shared
vocabularies allow us to communicate about the real world and our ideas,
there's never a "buck stops here" moment where rules become reality and
the description of the thing can truly replace the thing itself...
We can have a limited degree of absolute authority when we are alone. All
of us are authorities on our own private languages. It's the principle of
"king of all we survey". And as long as we don't involve anyone else, we
can maintain absolute authority over the correct interpretation of our own
thoughts (just don't mind reality). Once we involve someone else the
rules change and we're back to turtles all the way down.
I'm probably mangling your metaphor, and I've almost certainly "lost it in
the philosophy of meaningfulness".
People invent vocabulary every time they try to communicate. It's what
communication IS. The fact that XML is a tool for representing
vocabularies binds it to some crazily human ambiguity.
What does "DRM" stand for? What does "WML" stand for?
---->Nathan
On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 06:57:36 -0700, Bullard, Claude L (Len)
<len.bullard@intergraph.com> wrote:
> Which means as the stack gets taller, the top turtle
> is break dancing to stay on top.
>
> This is fun. Can anyone here describe the hypothetical
> most stable turtle stack keeping in mind that losing it in the
> philosophy of meaningfulness is not being a clean
> clear thinking turtle? The first turtle is the human
> who is the ultimate semantic processor - the authority -
> so it means what you say it means and if you can't
> communicate your meaning, you are a fuzzy turtle.
>
> What is the ideal XML application language architecture?
> Is there such a thing? Are we stuck in a world where
> all we can rely on is the syntax (the Perry Position)?
> Can one layer in the semantics cleanly and clearly
> in such a fashion that the techniques are sharable
> and the semantics are fully learnable or discoverable
> with emphasis on "learnable" because discovery
> infers one is uncertain whereas learning means one is
> just scheduled?
>
> len
>
>
> From: Rick Jelliffe [mailto:rjelliffe@allette.com.au]
>
>
> Bullard, Claude L (Len) said:
>> So the bottom turtle is strictly syntax. XML
>> has no application semantics. This we know.
>
> My point is that the second turtle is missing!
> This is creating difficulties for the others.
>
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--
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Nathan Young
A: ncy1717
E: natyoung@cisco.com
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