Ontological Principles Research Articles

Semyon Frank: An Apotheosis of Democracy in the Name of Personal Service

This essay introduces Semyon Lyudvigovich Frank as a philosopher who deservedly may be called a revolutionary thinker: he introduced a remarkable social ontology that foregrounds service. His oeuvre presents service as the supreme principle of personal and hence social life. The singular personality is seen as being there to creatively serve itself: his view of man focuses on the human soul as being there to bring forth creative action—to serve those who will come after, the community, society, and the Christian Churches. Service, then, is the source for freedom as a derivative principle. Consequently, and in opposition to the fundamental idea of the “Charter of Human Rights,” freedom in Frank has no absolute value, but only a functional one. It is justified by the ontological principle of service. All governmental organization is, ideally, the organization of freedom, the planned, systematic formation of free, spontaneous cooperation. Spontaneous cooperation makes up part of his concept of sobornost’, the empirical substrate of social culture. Frank would have agreed with Karl Popper’s notion of the “open society,” yet he would have certainly added that accessibility and transparency, be they spiritual or social, emanate from the principle of the universality of service. The true ontological meaning and the true source of democracy is, in his eyes, not the rule of all, but the service of all.

Using a large-scale knowledge database on reactions and regulations to propose key upstream regulators of various sets of molecules participating in cell metabolism

BackgroundMost of the existing methods to analyze high-throughput data are based on gene ontology principles, providing information on the main functions and biological processes. However, these methods do not indicate the regulations behind the biological pathways. A critical point in this context is the extraction of information from many possible relationships between the regulated genes, and its combination with biochemical regulations. This study aimed at developing an automatic method to propose a reasonable number of upstream regulatory candidates from lists of various regulated molecules by confronting experimental data with encyclopedic information.ResultsA new formalism of regulated reactions combining biochemical transformations and regulatory effects was proposed to unify the different mechanisms contained in knowledge libraries. Based on a related causality graph, an algorithm was developed to propose a reasonable set of upstream regulators from lists of target molecules. Scores were added to candidates according to their ability to explain the greatest number of targets or only few specific ones. By testing 250 lists of target genes as inputs, each with a known solution, the success of the method to provide the expected transcription factor among 50 or 100 proposed regulatory candidates, was evaluated to 62.6% and 72.5% of the situations, respectively. An additional prioritization among candidates might be further realized by adding functional ontology information. The benefit of this strategy was proved by identifying PPAR isotypes and their partners as the upstream regulators of a list of experimentally-identified targets of PPARA, a pivotal transcriptional factor in lipid oxidation. The proposed candidates participated in various biological functions that further enriched the original information. The efficiency of the method in merging reactions and regulations was also illustrated by identifying gene candidates participating in glucose homeostasis from an input list of metabolites involved in cell glycolysis.ConclusionThis method proposes a reasonable number of regulatory candidates for lists of input molecules that may include transcripts of genes and metabolites. The proposed upstream regulators are the transcription factors themselves and protein complexes, so that a multi-level description of how cell metabolism is regulated is obtained.

ONTOLOGY ORIENTED CONCEPT BASED CLUSTERING

Worldwide health centre scientists, physicians and other patients are accessing, analyzing, integrating and storing massive amounts of digital medical data in different database. The potential for retrieval of information is vast and daunting. The objective of our approach is to differentiate relevant information from irrelevant through user friendly and efficient search algorithms. The traditional solution employs keyword based search without the semantic consideration. So the keyword retrieval may return inaccurate and incomplete results. In order to overcome the problem of information retrieval from this huge amount of database, there is a need for concept based clustering method in ontology. In the proposed method, WorldNet is integrated in order to match the synonyms for the identified keywords so as to obtain the accurate information and it presents the concept based clustering developed using k-means algorithm in accordance with the principles of ontology so that the importance of words of a cluster can be identified.

The Unity of Being and History as a Principle of Ontology, Gnoseology and Epistemology

The Unity of Being and History as a Principle of Ontology, Gnoseology and Epistemology

Personalist Bioethics: Foundations and Applications by Elio Sgreccia

BOOK REVIEWS 319 It is noteworthy in this regard that this book originated as a dissertation under the direction of Fr. Brian Daley, for whom Martens also edited a festschrift. The balance that Martens’s Origen proposes between scholarly expertise and spiritual exercise reminds one of Brian Daley. Similarly, Martens’s book is an exemplar of scholarly balance: he does not propose controversial theses but instead seeks carefully to integrate various aspects of Origen’s project into a coherent whole. The book itself is much like the Origen whom it recommends. This is high praise. The drawback perhaps is that the controversial aspects of Origen’s project come across a bit muted: for instance, his subordination of the Word to God the Father, his account of preexistent souls and of the pedagogical restoration of all souls, and so forth. Martens discusses these aspects of Origen’s thought, but he does not grapple with the problems that thereby arise for Origen’s theology of the apostolic rule of faith. Others, however, have taken on the task of situating Origen’s thought vis-à-vis the Church’s doctrine, and so Martens’s book serves us well by giving us Origen the scholar who, without compromising his scholarship, found in the very practice of Christian scholarship a path of configuration to Christ Jesus. MATTHEW LEVERING University of Saint Mary of the Lake Mundelein, Illinois Personalist Bioethics: Foundations and Applications. By ELIO SGRECCIA. Philadelphia: The National Catholic Bioethics Center, 2012. Pp. 838. $79.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-935372-63-2. The breadth and depth of research in Elio Sgreccia’s Personalistic Bioethics make this translation of his impressively multidisciplinary work a great contribution to bioethics in the English-speaking world. A synthesis of the history of medicine and science, and of philosophy and theology as they influenced the science of bioethics, this tome is primarily meant to be a critical analysis of false solutions to major ethical and scientific problems facing humanity today. The author proposes a Thomistic philosophy of nature and metaphysics as the foundation for an authentic bioethics. He observes that the moral problems flowing from a secular bioethics have been caused by the advancement of science coupled with the belief that practical solutions for bodily ailments are such high goods that they rise above any ethical norms. In other words, for adherents of a secular bioethics the frontiers of science would 320 BOOK REVIEWS be without ethical boundaries, thus permitting the destruction of embryos, or fetuses, or even the elderly in the name of progress. As Sgreccia brings out in the last chapter of the book, precisely because of the desire for progress in science, bioethics emerged in the twentieth century as an attempt to protect man’s fundamental desire for transcendence in accord with his nature. The culture war arises from the conflict between the quest for efficiency and quantitative analysis on the one hand, and a natural desire for meaning in the universe and true fulfillment of the human person on the other hand. One can understand this intellectual turmoil as a conflict between a philosophy of human value based upon man’s God-given nature versus a philosophy of dominating, controlling, and manufacturing human nature according to the adventures of limitless scientific discovery. Much of our moral cultural war arises from the fact that the scientific method has lost a sense of teleology and has led to a freedom of decision without ontological principles. This is autonomy without conscience and is based upon a philosophy of doing or having over being. Throughout his work Sgreccia constantly warns scientists and ethicists about these problems. He demonstrates how the laws of many countries have led to a false notion of “quality of life” and even a false idea of man’s being in “the image of God the creator.” Sgreccia asserts that without an ontology of man, science can recreate man in ways that have harmed and will continue to harm the human person. The first chapter deals with the beginnings of bioethics as an offshoot of moral philosophy and theology. Sgreccia reminds us that the term “bioethics” came from Van Rensselaer Porter of the United States in 1970...

ІНФОРМАТИЗАЦІЯ ОХОРОНИ ЗДОРОВ’Я. ОСОБЛИВОСТІ АНАЛІЗУ ІНФОРМАЦІЇ В РЕАБІЛІТАЦІЙНОМУ ПРОЦЕСІ

<p class="41" align="center">Innovative processes in modem society, of course, touched and medicine. Caused by their structural and organizational changes in health care require a rethinking of many postulates, increased reserves, and most importantly - bringing the most advanced technology.</p><p class="41">Particular attention is drawn to the area such as Rehabilitology and its practical implementation - Rehabilitation of patients. The success of the solutions of problems of rehabilitation is defined as the presence of the appropriate material and technical base and a sufficient level of training of medical personnel and methodological level of medicine in general. Therefore, a permanent modification of scientific and practical problems of rehabilitation under the influence of processes occurring in health care is inevitable.</p><p class="41">Purpose - conceptual generalization prospects of Rehabilitation in modern medicine on the basis of extensive use of information technology. The goal of rehabilitation should be not only to restore health, but also in restoring the dignity of man, his social and social independence. Such judgments are more and more in the latest definitions of the concept of rehabilitation.</p><p class="41">Information technology - this is the provision that allows you to raise the level of rehabilitation care through the introduction of new organizational methods, new ways and means of rehabilitation. Knowledge of current trends of information Rehabilitation, of course, is a basis for determining further ways to improve the industry. Conventionally, there are three main areas of information technology in Rehabilitation: the automation of diagnostic and therapeutic techniques of medical information to support decision-making, telerehabilitation.</p><p class="41">The authors propose a new concept of rehabilitation. Its main differences are the three concepts: the rehabilitation program should be considered, ranging from inpatient treatment period, patient risk monitoring of the pathological process is the link that unites medical monitoring strategy and the impact on the patient, the need for analysis and standardization of variants of the rehabilitation period on the basis of principles of medical ontology. In the new coordinate system created becomes relevant issue is not the etiology and pathogenesis of the disease, and the mechanisms of the transition state of the body from illness to health.</p><p class="41" align="center">The paper also proposed the original division of the rehabilitation period, into 4 stages: clinical, sanatorium, residual, adaptation.</p><p class="41">Given that rehabilitation programs are individually designed for each patient, taking into account the general condition, the characteristics of the disease, the initial level of physical condition, the patient’s personality, age, gender, occupation, etc., they can be viewed as a project or pre-plan the system of measures.</p>

Persecution as Experience and Knowledge: The Ontological Dynamics of Asylum Interviews

This paper adopts an ontological perspective toward asylum interviews. The suggested take refers to the incompatibility of different knowledge systems and experienced worlds between asylum seekers and asylum officers. With such a focus, we sketch the parallel functioning of knowledge-claims anchored in two radically different ontological principles. Our analysis starts with the body as a site and source of knowledge through which we critically examine the limits of knowledge sought after in asylum politics. The ontological gap reflects the divide between meaning and significance, self and other, which this paper seeks to mediate through feminist methodologies and ethnographic insight. We suggest that asylum seekers do fill the ontological gap, but not in ways anticipated by governmental practices; their bodies and stories adopt alternative ways of identification and taking action. Thus, the gap is an opening for conceiving different knowledges and knowledge practices within asylum politics and international relations.

El argumento de continuidad ontológica en De Veritate de Tomás de Aquino / The Ontological Continuity Argument in De Veritate of Thomas Aquinas

There is a metaphysical affinity among beings that can be called ontological principle of continuity. According to this principle, the lowest level of being has its origin in the attenuation of higher grade, and the reality is understood as an analogy hierarchical of beings, which are arranged in cascades descending to the last degree. In this paper consign the most important passages related to De Veritate in which this argument is present.

A relação entre o corpo e a alma do ser humano na teologia cristã: uma aproximação histórica e contemporânea. (The relation between body and soul of human being in Christian Theology: A historical and contemporary approach)

A relacao entre o corpo e a alma do ser humano na teologia crista: uma aproximacao historica e contemporânea. (The relation between body and soul of human being in Christian Theology: A historical and contemporary approach) - DOI: 10.5752/P.2175-5841.2013v11n31p1081O objetivo deste artigo e apresentar como se deu, no plano historico, e se da, atualmente, na contemporaneidade, as relacoes entre o corpo e a alma, no âmbito da antropologia crista. Historicamente, primeiro se constatou a existencia do corpo e da alma para depois se ocupar do tipo de relacao que ha entre ambos os principios. Do ponto de vista historico, houve um primado e uma supremacia da alma sobre o corpo. Entre ambos os principios metafisicos, ora vigorava uma unidade acidental (provisoria e dualista), ora uma unidade substancial (permanente e reciproca). Atualmente, a reflexao teologica defende uma unidade mutua e reciproca entre o corpo e a alma, de modo que cada principio esta ordenado para o outro. O ser humano e uma unitotalidade psicofisica e animico-corporea. Atualmente, ha autores filosofos (X. Zubiri, M. Bunge) e teologos (J. Moltmann, Flick-Alszechy), que defendem como alternativa ao hilemorfismo aristotelico-tomista, novas formas de compreender a relacao entre o corpo/materia e alma/espirito. Tambem, nos dias de hoje, a relacao corpo-alma esta presente nas novas antropologias, mas com um novo verniz: a relacao mente-cerebro.Palavras-chave: Antropologia. Corpo. Alma. Mente. Cerebro. AbstractThe scope of this paper is to present how occurred in historical level, and occurs in the contemporary world, the relation between body and soul in the context of Christian anthropology. Historically, in a first moment, it was identified the existence of the body and the soul, and afterwards, the type of relation between these two ontological principles. From a historical point of view, there was a primacy and supremacy of the soul over the body. Between these principles, sometimes prevailed an accidental unity (provisional and dualistic), sometimes a substantial unity (permanent and reciprocal). Nowadays, the theological reflection defends a mutual and reciprocal unity between body and soul, so that each principle is ordained one to the other. Human being is a psychophysical “unit-totality” constituted of body and soul. Currently, there are philosophers (X. Zubiri, M. Bunge) and theologians (J. Moltmann, Flick-Alszeghy), who defend, as alternative to the Aristotelian-Thomistic hylemorphism, new forms of understanding the relation between body/matter and soul/spirit. Also, nowadays, the relation body-soul is present in new anthropologies, but with a new varnish through relation between mind-brain. Key-words: Anthropology. Body. Soul. Mind. Brain.

The contestedrewe: sacred sites, misunderstandings, and ontological pluralism inMapuche land negotiations

Sacred sites lie at the core of indigenous peoples' land claims and negotiations with the state. These sites are often subject to accusations of inauthenticity by state actors, which potentially lead to the delegitimization of claims over ancestral land. This article argues that misunderstandings inMapuche land negotiations inChile do not originate as strategic refusals to understand, but rather in a form of understanding which aims to make radical differences commensurable within the logics of statecraft and national society. In the process of cultural translation, the ontological principles that make certain places sacred in theMapuche lived world are not recognized, resulting in the transformation of these sites into symbols of identity strategically employed for political ends.

The Stage-Beyond-the-Intellect as a Method of Research in al-Ghazali’s Theory

This article deals with the stage-beyond-the-intellect as an epistemological research method and how to arrive at it, and it analyzes the role of this stage in realizing the reality of things as they are in the sensible world and the world of the [divine] kingdom, or as al-Ghazali calls them: ‘alam al-mulk wa shahadah and ‘alam al-malakut. Al-Ghazali searches for the ontological principle and the epistemological ideal that constitute the real cause of the existence of things, and for the epistemological source that supplies real knowledge for the human being.

Unhu/Ubuntu and Education for Reconciliation in Zimbabwe

The paper examines the concept, strengths and shortcomings, role and implementation of the reconciliation policy as Zimbabwe emerged from periods of conflict crisis soon after independence in the 1980s, and the current crisis in the 2000s and how the policy can be introduced in schools through ‘education for reconciliation’. The authors argue that education can be used to cultivate reconciliation and national healing in the evidently ‘wounded’ people of Zimbabwe who bear scars of colonial times and war, and the post-independence conflicts. Reconciliation through education for “diversity” and tolerance makes a compelling argument in so far as we understand how education shapes culture and cultivates values among a people. Education for reconciliation is perceived as a philosophy that promotes respect for human life and human dignity. The paper concludes that education is an instrument for the inculcation and promotion of the epistemic and ontological principles enshrined in the African philosophy of Ubuntu/unhu.

Effects of Guideline-Based Training on the Quality of Formal Ontologies: A Randomized Controlled Trial

BackgroundThe importance of ontologies in the biomedical domain is generally recognized. However, their quality is often too poor for large-scale use in critical applications, at least partially due to insufficient training of ontology developers.ObjectiveTo show the efficacy of guideline-based ontology development training on the performance of ontology developers. The hypothesis was that students who received training on top-level ontologies and design patterns perform better than those who only received training in the basic principles of formal ontology engineering.MethodsA curriculum was implemented based on a guideline for ontology design. A randomized controlled trial on the efficacy of this curriculum was performed with 24 students from bioinformatics and related fields. After joint training on the fundamentals of ontology development the students were randomly allocated to two groups. During the intervention, each group received training on different topics in ontology development. In the assessment phase, all students were asked to solve modeling problems on topics taught differentially in the intervention phase. Primary outcome was the similarity of the students’ ontology artefacts compared with gold standard ontologies developed by the authors before the experiment; secondary outcome was the intra-group similarity of group members’ ontologies.ResultsThe experiment showed no significant effect of the guideline-based training on the performance of ontology developers (a) the ontologies developed after specific training were only slightly but not significantly closer to the gold standard ontologies than the ontologies developed without prior specific training; (b) although significant differences for certain ontologies were detected, the intra-group similarity was not consistently influenced in one direction by the differential training.ConclusionMethodologically limited, this study cannot be interpreted as a general failure of a guideline-based approach to ontology development. Further research is needed to increase insight into whether specific development guidelines and practices in ontology design are effective.

O conceito funcional de pessoa na bioética secular

Defende-se que, nos dilemas bioéticos, o fundamental é decidido no âmbito ontológico. É fundamental responder a interrogações sistemáticas tais como: o que é uma pessoa? Quem é pessoa? A estas questões correspondem respostas de duas tendências opostas: uma tendência reducionista, no contexto de uma bioética secular, devedora do primado da ação, que argumenta em favor de uma separabilidade entre pessoa, ser humano e vida humana; e outra tendência, no contexto de uma bioética metafísica, que sustenta uma intrínseca identidade entre pessoa, ser humano e vida humana. A primeira faz o ser da pessoa coincidir com o exercício de uma determinada capacidade, uma função não é uma hipostatização abstrata, mas é inseparável do sujeito ontológico que é a sua condição de possibilidade. A segunda remete ao substancialismo e ao hilemorfismo como explicações do ser humano real, permitindo justificar a presença no homem de um princípio específico ontológico de unificação das propriedades e de permanência das funções e dos atos, presente, independentemente, da sua manifestação exterior atual, e reconhecer o estatuto atual da pessoa no ser humano, inclusive, em condições de potencialidade ou de privação.

Rousseau and the Reserve of Nature: A Rejoinder to Derrida

This article re-examines Derrida's presentation of Rousseau's philosophy of nature and culture in De la grammatologie to interrogate that work's conclusions about the inescapability of the logic of the supplement . Drawing on a close reading of the first book of Emile , it argues that Rousseau's ontological commitments neither originate from nor entail a metaphysics of pure presence. The challenge to Derrida derives from the category of habit understood as an ontological principle that structures the conceptualization of nature in Emile . Rousseau's formulation of nature as a reserve , a theory of innateness as sleeping potentiality, indicates not a 'presence' but a store of potencies bearing an indeterminate ontology. As well as a capacity and an agency, nature is also a state of being. Habit, meanwhile, reveals the two senses of nature — as teleology and being — and mediates between them. Nature, for its part, arises as the outcome, as well as the origin and determination, of habit. This signifies that nature and culture are not the terms of a dichotomy but arise simultaneously when habit draws from nature's reserve. The article concludes that Derrida simplifies and exploits Rousseau by reading him through the distorting lens of Levi-Strauss's structuralist anthropology.

The Logic of Nature

The Logic of Nature

Downward Causation: Polanyi and Prigogine

Downward Causation: Polanyi and Prigogine

Ontology for vector surveillance and management.

Ontologies, which are made up by standardized and defined controlled vocabulary terms and their interrelationships, are comprehensive and readily searchable repositories for knowledge in a given domain. The Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry was initiated in 2001 with the aims of becoming an "umbrella" for life-science ontologies and promoting the use of ontology development best practices. A software application (OBO-Edit; *.obo file format) was developed to facilitate ontology development and editing. The OBO Foundry now comprises over 100 ontologies and candidate ontologies, including the NCBI organismal classification ontology (NCBITaxon), the Mosquito Insecticide Resistance Ontology (MIRO), the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO), the IDOMAL malaria ontology, and ontologies for mosquito gross anatomy and tick gross anatomy. We previously developed a disease data management system for dengue and malaria control programs, which incorporated a set of information trees built upon ontological principles, including a "term tree" to promote the use of standardized terms. In the course of doing so, we realized that there were substantial gaps in existing ontologies with regards to concepts, processes, and, especially, physical entities (e.g., vector species, pathogen species, and vector surveillance and management equipment) in the domain of surveillance and management of vectors and vector-borne pathogens. We therefore produced an ontology for vector surveillance and management, focusing on arthropod vectors and vector-borne pathogens with relevance to humans or domestic animals, and with special emphasis on content to support operational activities through inclusion in databases, data management systems, or decision support systems. The Vector Surveillance and Management Ontology (VSMO) includes >2,200 unique terms, of which the vast majority (>80%) were newly generated during the development of this ontology. One core feature of the VSMO is the linkage, through the has vector relation, of arthropod species to the pathogenic microorganisms for which they serve as biological vectors. We also recognized and addressed a potential roadblock for use of the VSMO by the vector-borne disease community: the difficulty in extracting information from OBO-Edit ontology files (*.obo files) and exporting the information to other file formats. A novel ontology explorer tool was developed to facilitate extraction and export of information from the VSMO*.obo file into lists of terms and their associated unique IDs in *.txt or *.csv file formats. These lists can then be imported into a database or data management system for use as select lists with predefined terms. This is an important step to ensure that the knowledge contained in our ontology can be put into practical use.

ИМЯ И ЧИСЛО В РУССКОЙ И В КИТАЙСКОЙ МЫСЛИТЕЛЬНЫХ ТРАДИЦИЯХ

Ontological status of name and number in Russian and Chinese philosophy – is the subject of the article. Russian onomatology and Chinese school of ming jia are compared. According to onomatology of Paul Florensky, name and number – are two different ontological principle of being-organization. The number is the source of an external and objective being of things. The name is the source of inner and personal being. The number is the source of time and space. The name is the core of personality and the source of spontaneity and duty. Florensky offers concept of the initial name as archetype of any name. Florensky so offers concept the Chreia as energy axis of the name-organism. In philosophy of Mines-Jia the word «min» (name) is combined with the word «Khao» (title). In Chinese-Tibetan group of languages the name is implied not to knowledge or memory, but to the sage’s ability to express thoughts of the sky. Losev complements the ideas of Florensky, mentioned above. The name is the limit of self-disclosure of things. Losev also creates an original philosophy of number. The number is an apriory form of the semantic meaning. Chinese Numerology adds to the school of ming jia. The «Book of changes» - the I Ching – combines in itself the mystery of name and the mystery of number in the tradition of Tao.

Indefinite Extensibility in Natural Language

ABSTRACTThe Monist's call for papers for this issue ended: If formalism is true, then it must be possible in principle to mechanize meaning in a conscious thinking and language-using machine; if intentionalism is true, no such project is intelligible. We use the Grelling-Nelson paradox to show that natural language is indefinitely extensible, which has two important consequences: it cannot be formalized and model theoretic semantics, standard for formal languages, is not suitable for it. We also point out that object-object mapping theories of semantics, the usual account for the possibility of nonintentional semantics, do not seem able to account for the indefinitely extensible productivity of natural language.1. IntroductionThere exist at least three published papers (Cook 2007, 2009; Schlenker 2010) arguing that natural language is indefinitely extensible in some sense. More concretely, all three papers start from the Liar paradox and by means of Strengthened and Strengthened Strengthened Liars construct a hierarchy of truth values with as many of them as there are ordinal numbers. Both authors renounce the principle of Bivalence in order to solve the Liar and its revenge forms.Bivalence is, however, a fundamental law of classical logic with a considerable intuitive appeal; it is the logical counterpart of the ontological principle that any well-defined situation either obtains or does not obtain. As we see it, trading such a fundamental principle for a solution of the Liar is no bargain. The price could be too high for many people. So, we offer a path to the indefinite extensibility of natural language that is compatible with all principles commonly held as laws of logic. Instead of the Liar, we will use the Grelling-Nelson paradox.We will first address the issue of formalizability, just to show that natural language is not formalizable. Then we will interpret the result in terms of indefinite extensibility as defined below.2. VaguenessSome readers may contemplate natural language as trivially nonformalizable because of its inherent vagueness. We do not wish to go into the discussion whether vagueness can be formalized or not. We just wish to show mat, leaving vagueness aside, natural language turns out to be nonformalizable on quite another account, namely, indefinite extensibility.So we ask the reader to assume that we are dealing with a definite segment of English - which we will call ?-English - so that all metalinguistic predicates here used are definite, and the corresponding sets, when they exist, are ordinary, nonfuzzy sets. The reader may well not believe such a crisp core of English to exist, but this should not prevent him from following us: we only purport to show that on the assumption that ?English exists we can all the same prove that it cannot be formalized; this will reveal at least that vagueness is not the unique feature of natural language that makes it incapable of being formalized.3. Natural Language Cannot Be FormalizedIn order to prove the proposition in the title we first introduce some definitions.An interpreted language L is a set of ordered pairs , where a signifier is a syntactic object and a signified is the meaning or semantic value of the signifier (the terms are borrowed from Saussure [ 1 972]). For present purposes, we need not commit ourselves to any particular theory of meaning. It is clear that natural language is intrinsically interpreted.It seems reasonable to require for L to be formalizable that there be an effective procedure enumerating all of L's signifiers and assigning them the corresponding signified, which amounts to the requirement that L be recursively enumerable. So we say that an interpreted language L can be formalized if and only if there is an algorithm ALG that enumerates L.We will establish the following proposition: there is no ALG providing a formalization of the predicates of ? …