in reply to Re: Examine what is said, not who speaks." -- from BrowserUK's sig
in thread Examine what is said, not who speaks." -- from BrowserUK's sig

I'm going to disagree with none of the above is true. In fact, (at least) one of your sentences is true.

context always plays a part

I remember a number of college late-night discussions on the usefulness of "If-Then" statements. Determining the validity of such statements is easy. However, determining the truth of such statements is a trickier proposition (pun intended). The context was what assigned truth or falsehood to a given statement.

Because of that, we started to look at (but never actually did anything with) the idea that statements weren't the appropriate atomic unit of truth. Instead, maybe the atomic unit of truth is the thought, possibly broken out over many statements.

Meaning is created by the reader, and not the text.

This statement is not only true, but is (mostly) unrelated to the idea of truth or falsehood. Meaning is the concept(s) that is transmitted through the communication of the text. Meaning is the only thing that can be true or false, not a text itself. Look for the idea being represented, not the symbol which represents.

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We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.

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