[Om3] Being pragmatic about the semantics of, eg, variables and functions

[Professor James Davenport]

On Wed, March 25, 2009 7:55 pm, c.a.rowley at open.ac.uk wrote:
> The moral being that I find it very difficult to set up a specification
> for P-->S that insists on:
If we could set up ANY specification it wouldn't be the problem we have.
>   being anything beyond a trivial syntax for any P that a small group of
>   us decide we do NOT understand;
>
>   does profound and meaningful (but complex and both context and
>   MML2-dependent) transformations to everything in the set {this usage was
>   understood (in complete detail) by the wise seers of MML2} :-) ??
>
> I agree that we have to provide some such transformation!  But the notion
> of 'getting it right' becomes more elusive with every new example I see.
And this is why I worry about trying to make too much of pragamtic convert
to strict at this stage.
> It is much too much like trying to 'align' natural language with a formal
> grammar (actually, that is precisely what it is, if you push 'natural'
> only a little).
I don't see any push (but then I wouldn't).


James Davenport
Visiting Full Professor, University of Waterloo
Otherwise:
Hebron & Medlock Professor of Information Technology and
Chairman, Powerful Computing WP, University of Bath
OpenMath Content Dictionary Editor and Programme Chair, OpenMath 2009
IMU Committee on Electronic Information and Communication