objects and messages

[Francois-Rene Rideau]

>: Brian Rice

[about declarative programming]
Yes, we ultimately want some more declarative programming.
However, there are difficult problems with declarative programming:
modularity, consistent partial extraction/reification, etc.

[about syntax]
syntax matters in as much as we need it to communicate the semantics below.
textual syntax is sequential just because text is sequential. (btw, it looks
like some bottleneck forces individual humans to acquire data sequentially).
Being able to automatically juggle between multiple syntax has always been
a goal of Tunes. This juggling may break given sequencing, and introduce
arbitrary tree/graph manipulations.
It also looks quite natural to me that the preferred syntax for input
be not forcibly the preferred syntax for output.
For instance, I'd like free-form keyboard input with name completion
and nicknames, but structured output with full names and color.

> What are types?
Usually, they are some "abstract interpretation" of runtime values
(this is a well-defined term in academia).
(web search keywords: +Patrick +Cousot +abstract +interpretation).
They may also be considered as a lower approximation
to the full logical "type" of elements
(set of logical properties verified by the element).
In some typed formalisms with decidable ground type verification,
they can be rather seen as sorts of a many-sorted structure.

> How can we create 'intensional' systems of semantics
> where referral is never implicit?
I'm not sure I understand what "referral is never implicit" means exactly.
Intrinsically, we may only manipulate ground observation, i.e. syntax;
semantics we observe only indirectly as an epiphenomenon of this syntax.
The fact that syntax be always a substrate for "computable" manipulations,
and that in general semantics be not, proves that we can't equate them
(well, actually, intuitionnist logicians may disagree).
Also, simple paradoxes show that we always need some external referent;
a useful logic can't be fully self-contained.

> Is anyone here familiar with model theory?
I'm not fully ignorant of the subject.

> If so, how can we make it representation-independent?
At the meta-level, this is just quotienting of syntactic objects
up to some high-level notion of equivalence.
Multiple syntaxes or contexts correspond to as many modalities.

## Faré | VN: Уng-Vû Bân   | Join the TUNES project!  http://www.tunes.org/ ##
## FR: François-René Rideau |    TUNES is a Useful, Not Expedient System     ##
## Reflection&Cybernethics  | Project for a Free Reflective Computing System ##
NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Giuseppe?  Everything he
          says is wrong.
GIUSEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
          will be right.
                -- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"