User:Bruceschuman

Bruce Schuman is a ColdFusion/SQL Server database programmer and network activist living in Santa Barbara California.

He is interested in the fundamentals of language and meaning, and ways semantic and conceptual structures can be represented dimensionally.

He believes that the fundamental epistemic divide, tending to splinter the human community (e.g., "the divide between science and religion"), is the divide between quantitative and qualitative thinking.

Can abstractions ordinarily thought of as qualitative -- and hence "beyond" dimensional description -- be fully and accurately described through dimensional models?

Bruce suggests that the answer is yes -- if we understand the process of definition as essentially stipulative and ad hoc/intentional/heuristic.

As Humpty Dumpty suggests in Lewis Carrol's Through the Looking Glass, words and abstractions "mean what we want them to mean".

"The question is -- which is to be master, that's all!"

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' " "But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty

To explore, start with the Wikipedia "definition of definition". That's a start on through the looking glass right there...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition