Timeline for Term of art for ontological evasion
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
19 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 19 at 6:21 | comment | added | Rushi | Also note that abstraction and reduction are complementary directions (see note at end of my q to bumble). So if one is misspplied so is the other. | |
| May 19 at 6:17 | comment | added | Rushi | I guess what I would accept is not an expansion of this answer but a contraction of your blog post. Maybe another answer..?? (Sorry, the "expand" above has the wrong subject) | |
| May 19 at 5:35 | comment | added | David Gudeman | @Rushi, what do you want me to expand? | |
| May 18 at 5:09 | comment | added | Rushi | Your blog post above is the closest I see so far to the answer I am looking for. Expand it and I'll accept. Of course that will disagree with this answer 😃 Problem is not about abstractions — right or wrong — but about something more 'prior'. What Ive called, for want of knowing anything better, a broken ontology | |
| May 9 at 7:27 | comment | added | Julio Di Egidio | @DavidGudeman I have not said "references" anywhere! Anyway, for the chronicle, I'd complain about conflating pointers with references not any less than I'd complain about conflating "pointers" with "data". Though, of course, the former mistake is not as dramatic as the latter. -- I am really not interested in the details of that discussion, the discipline is missing! And I am talking about an entire industry. E.g. "by my book", reference is slightly above pointer in terms of levels of abstraction, still very concrete: and that's all there is to it, at least as far as what is what. (EOD.) | |
| May 8 at 22:22 | comment | added | David Gudeman | @JulioDiEgidio, in defense of those who use "pointer" and "reference" interchangeably, it's the sort of thing that happens in language all the time. Pointers and references do have a lot in common, and if you are focusing on what they have in common, it is easy to miss the differences. | |
| May 7 at 19:53 | comment | added | Julio Di Egidio | The only difference there is between those who know what there is to know, the technical meaning of those terms to begin with, and those who just don't and can't even tell that they don't: and, in that, it is a perfect example, of the "misery of an entire industry". That said, you had presented the question as not political, but the more you expand on it, the less I can even guess what you are after. | |
| May 7 at 17:49 | comment | added | Rushi | Seems worth a study — tnx | |
| May 7 at 17:41 | comment | added | David Gudeman | @Rushi, as to the ontology of computer languages, you might find this interesting: unobtainabol.com/2014/09/… | |
| May 7 at 16:22 | comment | added | Rushi | Yeah ok but here its more of a halloween party where no one knows who's who behind the mask. Alternate example | |
| May 7 at 16:16 | comment | added | David Gudeman | If John Smith shows up, that satisfies the requirement. However, John Smith is mutated by having an accident that put him in the hospital, so he can't show up. The minor's father was injured and this made it impossible for his lawyer to make it to the hearing as well as his father. Python works just the same. | |
| May 7 at 16:13 | comment | added | David Gudeman | @Rushi, Regardless of terminology, people are talking past each other. There is no need to understand pointers --meaning references as first-class objects-- in order to understand Python. Yes, you do need to understand references to understand Python just like you need them to understand normal language and for the same reason. The example you linked to is nothing mysterious; it just shows how when you change an object you change the object for all references to it. A minor is in court. His lawyer is his father, John Smith. His lawyer and one parent are supposed to show up at the court hearing | |
| May 7 at 9:43 | comment | added | Rushi | No trick here Respectfully, I disagree.See for why one cannot understand Python without understanding memory refs. Now you can choose to call reified refs as pointers and unrefied as just refs. But that just amounts to using C++ as a metalanguage to describe. Nothing wrong with that (in a CS context). But in a philosophy context reference is the more reified term. The "trick" is the language spec not bringing in an ontology necessary to understand key features of the language | |
| May 7 at 9:30 | comment | added | David Gudeman | @Rushi, I've added an addendum. Also see my previous comment where I forgot to tag you. | |
| May 7 at 8:45 | comment | added | David Gudeman | I've added an addendum. As to the philosophical issue, there is none. No one is using a trick here; people are just talking past each other. | |
| May 7 at 8:44 | history | edited | David Gudeman | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
answer question from comments
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| May 7 at 8:01 | comment | added | Rushi | Since you use the term abstraction in the CS sense, my response would be Spolsky's law : The abstraction leaks. You will see (if you go through the long thread I referenced) that disputants there are saying exactly what you are: A: The pointer in the underlying implementation is not relevant to the abstraction. B: You cannot talk of the language without it. So it very much is. I'm hoping a philosopher can give me a fallacy of logic/trick of rhetoric etc that describes the argument | |
| May 7 at 7:53 | comment | added | Rushi | You are giving a CS-ist's answer, Tnx for that — but I want a philosopher's answer. 😀 You can check that I have an expanded version of your penultimate paragraph here a second answer is also relevant. My (CSist) point is that you cant say pointers are non-fundamental and yet say memory is. [V hlls like Haskell actually succeed in throwing out both]. I want this "sleight-of-hand" described in general/generic philosophical terms | |
| May 7 at 7:33 | history | answered | David Gudeman | CC BY-SA 4.0 |