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Something you can do with Terms

In this post, I try to show something you can do with Terms but (I think) not easily (idiomatically) with other logic systems. I know there is people in this forum that know a lot more about "other logic systems" than myself, and that with a cursory glance at what I propose would be able to judge whether what I propose is bullsht or is useful. So in all humility I would appreciate any judgement about it.

Thanks.

By Enrique Perez Arnaud at 2012-11-17 14:58 | LtU Forum | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 2300 reads

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Quotation of logical

Quotation of logical sentences is used in other logic systems, sometimes provided through reflection. (Those that come immediately to my mind immediately are Actor Script, Maude, and multi-level grammars.) But I grant that it's somewhat rare. Quotation can easily lead to contradictions, divergent computations, or awkward constructs that are difficult to reason about.

Consider your example construct:

(gets she, what (eats she, what this-banana))

Then you can do something like:

(gets she, what (Exists1)) -> (Exists1).

To obtain that:

(eats she, what this-banana).

Now, this seems to make sense in the given example. But it also means that `(gets she, what banana)` will imply the lone sentence `banana`

By dmbarbour at Sat, 2012-11-17 16:56 | login or register to post comments

banana is not of type exists

But `banana` is not of type `exists`, so it won't match `Exists1`. Also,

(gets she, what Word1) -> Word1.

Would be a syntax error (because of the lone `Word1`).

To get consecuences out of `(gets she, what banana)`, you would need a rule with a condition similar to `(gets she, what Fruit1)`

By Enrique Perez Arnaud at Sat, 2012-11-17 17:56 | login or register to post comments

It is not quotation

It is not quotation of logical sentences, mainly because facts in Terms are not logical sentences. In the underlaying logic, you would actually have a sentence similar to

(gets she, what banana) is a exists.

so `(gets she, what banana)` is really an operation, valued as a word.

By Enrique Perez Arnaud at Sat, 2012-11-17 20:30 | login or register to post comments