Dear Baruch, I am nothing but clumsy about such analytics, but let me try to understand 'distinction' and 'analogue'. I would say that category might help in being the metalanguage for logic that needs to build upon types. Is natural language logical? Many might say yes, and also saying natural language is even more so, but also logical. Is natural language typed? I would say not at all, and I would even say anti-typed, because natural language really needs to allow extreme overlapping of types. This to me makes natural language alogical, or at least a-mathematical_logical. What makes Boston (as a city) Boston in Boston is populous? And what do we mean by populous? And what is is in Boston is populous? Can you see the missing character above? It's obviously the carriage return, which helps to avoid parenthesis. If we write all that on one line, it becomes the following: What makes Boston (as a city) Boston in Boston is populous? And what do we mean by populous? And what is is in Boston is populous? I might try to use characters like ' " _ | around words in that one line thing, but the more I use them, the more I have to explain them. Peano said something like "we usually put characters one by one side by side" about mathematical expressions, and Church distinguished between formal and informal symbols, but we haven't really been able to deal with these constraints properly within mathematics, I would say. That two-dimensional thing about Boston somehow avoids using extra characters. Logically, is Boston and expression or just the name for an expression? Boston could be a variable or a variable name. Then you can substitute expressions as required. On the other hand, is Boston a statement or the name for a statement? In that case substitutions can not be applied similarly. If we say Boston is populous, Boston appears more like an expression. There are semantic values than can be attached to Boston. But if we say Who wants to go to Boston, we might assume Boston is described by a set of statements which we use in argumentation. So there you may have one use-mention distinction, namely, that use is closer to expressions and substitutions, and in category we say it's closer to being modelled by monads. Kleisli categories for monads are closer to syntax and substitutions, whereas Eilenberg-Moore cagegories to monads are closer to meaning and semantics. Statements representing mentioning, however, lend themselves to be constructed by functors, not necessarily extendable to monads. This is an important distinction in logic, not well understood, in particular in first-order logic. A bit far fetched it is, but I could say use use is monadic and mention is simply functorial. However, my fellow category theoreticians might see all these category and philosophy remarks as crap. They probably are, but I feel there is also a distinction between categorically philosophical and philosophically categorical, so it's crap on both of these. To me this dimensionality feeling above shows something similar that happens in category theory about composition of natural transformations. There is the ordinary composition, and there is the so called star-composition. The Interchange Law for these compositions can be written on one line, but is better understand when visualized in two dimensions. Indeed, we sometimes call these compositions vertical and horizontal, and refer to Godement's Cinq r??gles de calcul fonctoriel in 1958 and Ehresmann's work related to star compositions in 1960. Note in the two-dimensionality above how lines are adjacent and that adjacency makes sense, and also how each line makes sense in itself. So you can read and verify going right and down basically in any order, so that by the time you come to last question mark, your understanding of the whole is not dependent on he order by which your eyes scan through that verse. Take Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage". We wouldn't like to see that on one line. Indeed, Shakespeare seems to use more than just linebreaks. "At first, the infant," is something like that. It is also interesting to see how he moves from age to age, mostly using "then", sometimes at the end of the line, sometimes at the beginning, but going into the sixth age he uses "shifts", before going into the societally very expensive "last scene of all". Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. What is second childishness? What is mere oblivion? I guess it's not important because it might just be everything, something very hard to model in logic and mathematics, and a nuisance in category theory as well, I can assure you. Important is that it is, isn't it? By the way, to me its fascinating to see how forearm fractures start to increase after the fifth stage, and the number of hip fractures is larger than the number of forearm fractures after the shift to the sans everything age. You wouldn't believe it but national falls prevention activity in Sweden builds largely upon this age transition modelling by Shakespeare. This to me is one of the strongest proofs that category theory can be applied in health care. All the best, Patrik On 2017-09-03 22:19, Baruch Garcia wrote:
Hello,
I was wondering if someone of the categories list could answer this question:
In Godel's/Tarski's theorem and the Halting problem, the use-mention distinction (e.g. Boston is populous, but "Boston" is disyllabic) is essential. Is there an analog to the use-mention distinction in category theory or is the use-mention distinction just its own principle independent of category theory?
Any suggestion, insight, clarification would be appreciated.
Many Thanks! Baruch
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