Todays sneak-peak at dilettantism in the philosophy of language, logic, and formal semantics. Brought to you by YC!
Would you say this if this were a blog post about someone's first steps in discovering Haskell?
Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is
41–50 of 62 posts
Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is
#42Heidegger.
Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is
#43It’s interesting to think how fundamentally impossible it is to parse a sentence without a background corpus of knowledge about the world: > I dropped the hammer on the table and it smashed > I dropped the vase on the table and it smashed Exact same grammatical structure but if you switch the noun the way you parse the sentence changes. This is why machine learning with huge datasets wins in NLP, translation etc.
And I wonder how you parse, let's say, "I dropped the pencil on the table and it smashed."
You reject it as semantically implausible.
Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I wonder how you parse, let's say, "I dropped the pencil on the table and it smashed."
You reject it as semantically implausible.
Not necessarily, in this case I didn't reject the phrase "I dropped the pencil on the table and it smashed." as semantically implausible because of its context (it was used close to similar-looking phrases). Of course that it doesn't inform us anything about any "pencil" nor "table", but it does inform us about the limits (or non-limits) of AI.
Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is
#45Forgive the dumb question but what is False about ‘∀x eggplant(x) ⇒ fruit(x)’
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Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is
#46One of the most influential philosophical concepts for me from the last decade was from this very blog called “Nebulosity”. It just speaks to the nature of reality that is misinterpreted with overlays of meaning. - ‘Nebulosity’ refers to the insubstantial, amorphous, non-separable, transient, ambiguous nature of meaningness. From a distance, clouds can look solid; close-up they are mere fog, which can even be so thin…
This is just the problem of the many. Not sure where the blog author is getting "nebulosity" from.
Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is
#47It’s interesting to think how fundamentally impossible it is to parse a sentence without a background corpus of knowledge about the world: > I dropped the hammer on the table and it smashed > I dropped the vase on the table and it smashed Exact same grammatical structure but if you switch the noun the way you parse the sentence changes. This is why machine learning with huge datasets wins in NLP, translation etc.
Also, the basis of a lot of humor is when the opposite of what you expect is what is intended.
Samuel Delany thought this was part of science fiction too [0]:
> There's often a literal side to SF language. There are many strings of words that can appear both in an SF text and in an ordinary text of naturalistic fiction. But when they appear in a naturalistic text we interpret them one way, and when they appear in an SF text we interpret them another. Let me illustrate this by some examples I've used many times before. The phrase "her world exploded" in a naturalistic text will be a metaphor for a female character's emotional state; but in an SF text, if you had the same words— "her world exploded"—you'd have to maintain the possibility that they meant: a planet belonging to a woman blew up. Similarly the phrase, "he turned on his left side." In a naturalistic text, it would most probably refer to a man's insomniac tossings. But in an SF text the phrase might easily mean a male reached down and flipped the switch activating his sinestral flank. Or even that he attacked his left side. Often what happens with specifically S F language is that the most literal meaning is valorized.
[0] https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/delany52interview.htm
Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
>but because the world is ambiguous and language reflects that. This doesn't seem like a very satisfying explanation. Take one particular example of a structurally ambiguous sentence of English: "The company couldn't make the car fast enough". The two meanings are completely distinct (speed of production vs. speed of the car). There's no fuzziness about this distinction out there in the world. The speed at which a ca…
That is an interesting example because it looks like semantic ambiguity rather than syntactic ambiguity. But actually it is about structure as you commented -- something like this: [S [DP [D The [N company]]] [VP [AuxP [Aux couldn't] [V make]] [DP [D the] [NP [N car] [AdjP [Adv fast] [A enough]]]] vs [S [DP [D The [N company]]] [V' [VP [AuxP [Aux couldn't] [V make]] [DP [D the] [N car]]] [AdjP [Adv fast] [A enough]]]…
>in particular, I recommend reading up about anaphora resolution[0] and garden path sentence repair[1],
I have a PhD in syntax and am more familiar with the literature on anaphora resolution than I ever wanted to be, but thanks for the recommendation :)
Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is
#49It’s interesting to think how fundamentally impossible it is to parse a sentence without a background corpus of knowledge about the world: > I dropped the hammer on the table and it smashed > I dropped the vase on the table and it smashed Exact same grammatical structure but if you switch the noun the way you parse the sentence changes. This is why machine learning with huge datasets wins in NLP, translation etc.
And I wonder how you parse, let's say, "I dropped the pencil on the table and it smashed."
My first intuition is that ‘it’ refers to an unmentioned object, one so fragile that it can be smashed by a falling pencil. Some kind of toothpick architectural model maybe?
Re: Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is
#50One of the most influential philosophical concepts for me from the last decade was from this very blog called “Nebulosity”. It just speaks to the nature of reality that is misinterpreted with overlays of meaning. - ‘Nebulosity’ refers to the insubstantial, amorphous, non-separable, transient, ambiguous nature of meaningness. From a distance, clouds can look solid; close-up they are mere fog, which can even be so thin…
This is just the problem of the many. Not sure where the blog author is getting "nebulosity" from.
Unintentionally rediscovering ancient philosophical problems is a favorite pastime of bloggers.