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Opaque Context
An opaque context or referentially opaque context is a linguistic context in which it is not always possible to substitute "co-referential" expressions (expressions referring to the same object) without altering the truth of sentences. The expressions involved are usually grammatically singular terms. So, substitution of co-referential expressions into an opaque context does not always preserve truth. For example, "Lois believes x is a hero" is an opaque context because "Lois believes Superman is a hero" is true while "Lois believes Clark Kent is a hero" is false, even though 'Superman' and 'Clark Kent' are co-referential expressions. Usage The term is used in philosophical theories of reference, and is to be contrasted with referentially transparent context. In rough outline: *Opacity: "Mary believes that Cicero is a great orator" gives rise to an opaque context; although Cicero was also called 'Tully',Tully is anglicised historic name from Tullius, sourceKate Kearns: Semant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Context (language Use)
In semiotics, linguistics, sociology and anthropology, context refers to those objects or entities which surround a ''focal event'', in these disciplines typically a communicative event, of some kind. Context is "a frame that surrounds the event and provides resources for its appropriate interpretation". It is thus a relative concept, only definable with respect to some focal event within a frame, not independently of that frame. In linguistics In the 19th century, it was debated whether the most fundamental principle in language was contextuality or compositionality, and compositionality was usually preferred.Janssen, T. M. (2012) Compositionality: Its historic context', in M. Werning, W. Hinzen, & E. Machery (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of compositionality', pp. 19-46, Oxford University Press. Verbal context refers to the text or speech surrounding an expression (word, sentence, or speech act). Verbal context influences the way an expression is understood; hence the norm of no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Box
In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a system which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics), without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is "opaque" (black). The term can be used to refer to many inner workings, such as those of a transistor, an engine, an algorithm, the human brain, or an institution or government. To analyse an open system with a typical "black box approach", only the behavior of the stimulus/response will be accounted for, to infer the (unknown) ''box''. The usual representation of this ''black box system'' is a data flow diagram centered in the box. The opposite of a black box is a system where the inner components or logic are available for inspection, which is most commonly referred to as a white box (sometimes also known as a "clear box" or a "glass box"). History The modern meaning of the term "black box" seems to have entered the English language around 1945. In electr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy Of Language
In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, the constitution of sentences, concepts, learning, and thought. Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell were pivotal figures in analytic philosophy's "linguistic turn". These writers were followed by Ludwig Wittgenstein ('' Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus''), the Vienna Circle, logical positivists, and Willard Van Orman Quine. In continental philosophy, language is not studied as a separate discipline. Rather, it is an inextricable part of many other areas of thought, such as phenomenology, structural semiotics, language of mathematics, hermeneutics, existentialism, deconstruction and critical theory. History Ancient philosophy In the West, inquiry into language stretches back to the 5th century BC with Socrates, Plato, Aristotl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transitivity Of Identity
In philosophy, identity (from , "sameness") is the relation each thing bears only to itself. The notion of identity gives rise to many philosophical problems, including the identity of indiscernibles (if ''x'' and ''y'' share all their properties, are they one and the same thing?), and questions about change and personal identity over time (what has to be the case for a person ''x'' at one time and a person ''y'' at a later time to be one and the same person?). It is important to distinguish between ''qualitative identity'' and ''numerical identity''. For example, consider two children with identical bicycles engaged in a race while their mother is watching. The two children have the ''same'' bicycle in one sense (''qualitative identity'') and the ''same'' mother in another sense (''numerical identity''). This article is mainly concerned with ''numerical identity'', which is the stricter notion. The philosophical concept of identity is distinct from the better-known notion of ide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Referential Transparency
In computer science, referential transparency and referential opacity are properties of parts of computer programs. An expression is called ''referentially transparent'' if it can be replaced with its corresponding value (and vice-versa) without changing the program's behavior. This requires that the expression be pure – its value must be the same for the same inputs and its evaluation must have no side effects. An expression that is not referentially transparent is called referentially opaque. In mathematics, all function applications are referentially transparent, by the definition of what constitutes a mathematical function. However, this is not always the case in programming, where the terms ''procedure'' and ''method'' are used to avoid misleading connotations. A defining characteristic of functional programming is that it only allows referentially transparent functions. Other programming languages may provide means to selectively guarantee referential transparency. Som ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pure Function
In computer programming, a pure function is a function that has the following properties: # the function return values are identical for identical arguments (no variation with local static variables, non-local variables, mutable reference arguments or input streams), and # the function has no side effects (no mutation of local static variables, non-local variables, mutable reference arguments or input/output streams). Thus a pure function is a computational analogue of a mathematical function. Some authors, particularly from the imperative language community, use the term "pure" for all functions that just have the above property 2 (discussed below). Examples Pure functions The following examples of C++ functions are pure: Impure functions The following C++ functions are impure as they lack the above property 1: The following C++ functions are impure as they lack the above property 2: The following C++ functions are impure as they lack both the above properties 1 and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Masked-man Fallacy
In philosophical logic, the masked-man fallacy (also known as the intensional fallacy or epistemic fallacy) is committed when one makes an illicit use of Leibniz's law in an argument. Leibniz's law states that if A and B are the same object, then A and B are indiscernible (that is, they have all the same properties). By modus tollens, this means that if one object has a certain property, while another object does not have the same property, the two objects cannot be identical. The fallacy is "epistemic" because it posits an immediate identity between a subject's knowledge of an object with the object itself, failing to recognize that Leibniz's Law is not capable of accounting for intensional contexts. Examples The name of the fallacy comes from the example: * ''Premise 1'': I know who Claus is. * ''Premise 2'': I do not know who the masked man is. * ''Conclusion'': Therefore, Claus is not the masked man. The premises may be true and the conclusion false if Claus is the masked m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inscrutability Of Reference
The inscrutability or indeterminacy of reference (also referential inscrutability) is a thesis by 20th century analytic philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine in his book ''Word and Object''. The main claim of this theory is that any given sentence can be changed into a variety of other sentences where the parts of the sentence will change in what they reference, but they will nonetheless maintain the meaning of the sentence as a whole. The referential relation is inscrutable, because it is subject to the background language and ontological commitments of the speaker. Overview Along with the holophrastic indeterminacy, the inscrutability of reference is the second kind of indeterminacy that makes up Quine's thesis about the indeterminacy of (radical) translation. While the inscrutability of reference concerns itself with single words, Quine does not want it to be used for propositions, as he attacks those in another way. He challenges the translation or referential scrutability of w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fuzzy Concept
A fuzzy concept is a kind of concept of which the boundaries of application can vary considerably according to context or conditions, instead of being fixed once and for all. This means the concept is vague in some way, lacking a fixed, precise meaning, without however being unclear or meaningless altogether. It has a definite meaning, which can be made more precise only through further elaboration and specification - including a closer definition of the context in which the concept is used. The study of the characteristics of fuzzy concepts and fuzzy language is called ''fuzzy semantics''. The inverse of a "fuzzy concept" is a "crisp concept" (i.e. a precise concept). A fuzzy concept is understood by scientists as a concept which is "to an extent applicable" in a situation. That means the concept has ''gradations'' of significance or ''unsharp'' (variable) boundaries of application. A fuzzy statement is a statement which is true "to some extent", and that extent can often be repres ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aberrant Decoding
Aberrant decoding or aberrant reading is a concept used in fields such as communication and media studies, semiotics, and journalism about how messages can be interpreted differently from what was intended by their sender. The concept was proposed by Umberto Eco in an article published first in 1965 in Italian and in 1972 in English. Concept Every communication act requires that the messages must be encoded into a set of signs by the sender. These signs must then be transmitted and decoded by the receiver to understand the contained messages. The code system must be shared by both the sender and the receiver in order for the communication to succeed. For example, thoughts must be encoded into words, transmitted through air, and then be decoded back to thoughts. Often the sender has a certain meaning to convey with his message, hoping the receiver will interpret it correctly. This right interpretation can be called the ''preferred decoding'' or ''preferred reading''. When the in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Singular Term
A singular term is a paradigmatic referring device in a language. Singular terms are of philosophical importance for philosophers of language, because they ''refer'' to things in the world, and the ability of words to refer calls for scrutiny. Overview Singular terms are defined as expressions that purport to denote or designate particular individual people, places, or other objects. They contrast with ''general terms'' (such as "car" or "chair") which can apply to more than one thing. There are various kinds of singular terms: proper names (e.g. "Matthew"), definite descriptions (e.g. "the second fisherman in the boat"), singular personal pronouns (e.g. "she"), demonstrative pronouns (e.g. "this"), etc. Historically, various definitions for "singular term" have been offered: # A term that tells us which individual is being talked about. (John Stuart Mill, Arthur Prior, P. F. Strawson) # A term that is grammatically singular, i.e. a proper name (''proprium nomen''), a demonstrati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operator (programming)
In computer programming, operators are constructs defined within programming languages which behave generally like functions, but which differ syntactically or semantically. Common simple examples include arithmetic (e.g. addition with ), comparison (e.g. "greater than" with >), and logical operations (e.g. AND, also written && in some languages). More involved examples include assignment (usually = or :=), field access in a record or object (usually .), and the scope resolution operator (often :: or .). Languages usually define a set of built-in operators, and in some cases allow users to add new meanings to existing operators or even define completely new operators. Syntax Syntactically operators usually contrast to functions. In most languages, functions may be seen as a special form of prefix operator with fixed precedence level and associativity, often with compulsory parentheses e.g. Func(a) (or (Func a) in Lisp). Most languages support programmer-defined ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
