Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language

On Tuesday, September 21, 2004, at 09:32 , Philippe Caquant wrote:

> --- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
[snip]
>> So a male elephant partakes in the Archetypes of
>> Maleness & Elephanthood
>> (among other things).
>
> Ah, but that's quite interesting, since I had the same
> idea ! (only I didn't know it was an archetype).
As I've said, it depends how one defines "archetype". I was talking in
Platonic terms. Certainly to Plato, Maleness & Elephanthood are 'Forms'
that have greater reality than any individual elephant that shares in
these archetypal Forms.

[snip]
>>>> - there is a difference between "the set of all
>> men"
>>>> and "the characteristics common to all men".
>>
>> In modern programming terms, the first is the set of
>> all instances or
>> _objects_; the second is presumasbly the _class_
>> definition.
>
> Yes, looks like that; yet I was very pleased to
> discover that in JavaScript, the properties of an
> object belonging to a class can be in contradiction
> with the general class properties (the prototype ones,
> if I got it right). As I understood it, if you refer
> to an object's property, Javascript will first look
> for an explicit property at the very object level; if
> it doesn't find it there, it will look for it at the
> prototype level;
Yes, yes - and classes may be sub-classes of others.

JavaScript has merely taken these ideas over from Java & they've been
around in object-oriented programming (OOP) for a few decades.

But do understand that my analogy to OOP was not intended to relate to the
Platonic ideas. I was using a different analogy to show that there are
different ways of looking at these things. Taking different points of view
can of course be confusing but it can also stimulate further thought.

The only similarity between Plato's ideas & that of OOP is that just as we
can have hierarchies of classes so it is clear that there was a hierarchy
of Forms/Archetypes. But there important differences.

In OOP the class definition is an _abstract_ definition, this applies both
to superclasses and subclasses. Objects are the actual instantiations of
such classes. In Plato's thinking the Forms are not abstract; they not
only have a transcendent existence, they are more real than anything we
see in the physical material world.

Also an important difference IMO is that Plato's Forms are static, but OOP
classes not only have static attributes but also have _methods_, i.e. are
dynamic. This is important difference between old-fashioned 'records' and
the newer 'objects'. It is also, i think, an important difference between
OOP classes & Platonic Forms.

>  In the
>> Platonic sense, nothing _belongs_ to an Archetype.
>> The things of this
>> world (which to Plato were less than real - shadows
>> of shadows)
>> 'participate' in or share in an Archetype and,
>> indeed, will share in more
>> than one Archetype.
>
> So they inherit properties from different archetypes ?
Yes, but do not think Plato would see it that way at all. Objects inherit
methods & attributes of the class of which they are instantiations. But
humans, elephants, tables, computers, trees, etc., etc. are not for Plato
instantiations. But. i admit, it is not entirely clear how he saw
_metekein_ working.


>  The set of
>> Americans that walked
>> on the moon has two members only.
>
> I'm afraid there are some more. Actually, they went
> back to Moon after Apollo 11. They probably had
> forgotten something there.
Unless, like my grandmother - dead for many a year now -you believe no
Americans ever went near the moon and the whole thin was acted out in some
TV studio or film set   ;)

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
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"They are evidently confusing science with technology."
UMBERTO ECO				September, 2004

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