| | proposition | Propositions are Abstract entities that express a complete thought or a set of such thoughts. As an example, the formula '(instance Yojo Cat)' expresses the Proposition that the entity named Yojo is an element of the Class of Cats. Note that propositions are not restricted to the content expressed by individual sentences of a Language. They may encompass the content expressed by theories, books, and even whole libraries. It is important to distinguish Propositions from the ContentBearingObjects that express them. A Proposition is a piece of information, e.g. that the cat is on the mat, but a ContentBearingObject is an Object that represents this information. A Proposition is an abstraction that may have multiple representations: strings, sounds, icons, etc. For example, the Proposition that the cat is on the mat is represented here as a string of graphical characters displayed on a monitor and/or printed on paper, but it can be represented by a sequence of sounds or by some non-latin alphabet or by some cryptographic form. |