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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Syntax and semantics
 Eric: I hope, upon reading your post, that we are in agreement . . . the context of saying "not" by saying, as it were, anything is a shared meaning which is always presupposed in communication. Cf. Heidigger's "befindlichkeit" -- throwness -- we find ourselves always already in the world in a state of being pre-supposed _by_ the meaning-world in which we come to articulate ourselves. It was Husserl before him, with phenomenology, that built the conceptual groundwork of inseparability between syntax and semantics (among, of course, other things) . . . followed therefrom by G. Van Der Leeuw (no there was _not_ a methodological lapse since Plato . . .). To digress . . . "Not" is, thus the most subtle of concepts and, in isolation, most syntactically evocative of meaning (Nagarjuna's Madhyamika "the middle way" gave rise to the philosophical potency of the Buddhism we all most commonly recognize, Mahayana, by recognizing the potency of meaning--semantics--inherent in the syntax of opposition . . . from Sanskrit "medha" -- "sea" that which comprises, and intersects, both/all, the suffix ika is lit. "most": madhyamika: that which is the most middle/most both). Yipes, this is thoroughly abstract . . . but left at only "not" or "not not-ted" is, --if I read you right-- autistic in the sense I think you mean. My whole gist in these posts is to call attention to what is being said/assumend with semantics qua semantics . . . that syntax is somehow separable therefrom (more rightly, vice versa). Both "semantics" and "syntax" live more happily as siblings to the parent node "meaning," than juxtaposed, as some have implied . . . pun intended . . . in separate conceptual namespaces. I hesitate at this hour to try and come back to . . where was it? . . .we started. As I've tried to say in all these posts, if "semantics" and "syntax" are to be deployed with rhetorical weight, we are getting at a similar subtlety of 2 years ago with links (are they content or behavior?): the artificial/assumed distinction between the two does not afford a clear enough distinction upon which to ground the revision, or proposed revision, of a spec or programming procedure in the digital world wherein such gray areas and hazy distinctions can only ultimately devolve into late-night abstraction. jr =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-= John Robert Gardner, Ph.D. XML Engineer Emory University ------------------------------------------------------------ http://vedavid.org/diss/ "If there is something you're thinking of doing, or wish you could do, begin it. In boldness there is mystery and power . . . . " -Goethe *************************************************************************** This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ *************************************************************************** 
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