Re: Metaphysical assumptions

["Arthur W. Protin Jr." (GC-ACCURATE) <cbmvax!uunet!PICA.ARMY.MIL!protin>]

John,
    Perhaps the term "metaphysical assumption" is a misnomer.  And from
your explaination of what you use it for it should be at least hyphenated
if not completely compounded.  Without arguing about whether the concept
is meta-physical or meta-linguistic, it seems strange that the assumption
is not on the part of the speaker or listener but on the language designer.
If the tense or observational status is not made explicit by the speaker
then the listener will have to make assumptions about it, but our
language "minizes metaphysical assumptions" by maximally allowing
the speaker to require assumptions on the part of the listener.
This is again beginning to sound like the very convolved garbage 
I found in the Metaphysics journals, with sufficiently contorted
representations it becomes easier to slip invalidating operations
past the gullible reader.  At least you are not redefining ordinary
words to have extremely specialized meanings, another mechanism by
which they "prove" absurd arguments (use the word that they gave a
specialized meaning in middle of the proof in violation of its specialized
meaning but in accordance with its common meaning).

    I don't mean to suggest that you or any one else in our project has
been mental deformed by involvement with the study of Metaphysics.
I just enjoy a vision of a language uncorrupted by their influence,
where so many of their arguments will sound as absurd to everyone
as they do to me.  Imagine a "runner" that doesn't every run and the
problems they will have trying to explain what makes he/she/it a "runner".

    Thank you for the reassuring explanation, and for indulging my
outbursts.


Arthur Protin <protin@pica.army.mil>
These are my personal views and do not reflect those of my boss
or this installation.