User:Leucippus/Sandbox

Plan

1. First: Identify -- interesting and useful -- quotes from the source.
2. Then use the principle of charity to translate the quote into a clarificandum (viz. the thing that needs to be clarified).
3. Next: Clarify the clarificandum into a clarificatum: clarify both the artificial language, and the ordinary-language present in the scientific language you aim to clarify.
4. Now carry out the following modification of the clarificatum viz. its paraphrasis: paraphrase the clarificatum into idioms suitable for regimentation into predicate logic and class theory.
5. Now we move from SL into regimented language: translate the SL explicanda into predicate logic and Class theory.
6. Finally, explicate the explicandum as an explicatum using the resources of predicate Logic and class theory.

§1. Identification of interesting and useful quotes

Source: Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern (op. cit., hereafter)
“A SARS-CoV-2 VOC is a SARS-CoV-2 variant that meets the definition of a VOI (see above) and, through a comparative assessment, has been demonstrated to be associated with one or more of the following changes at a degree of global public health significance: • increase in transmissibility or detrimental change in COVID-19 epidemiology; OR • increase in virulence or change in clinical disease presentation; OR • decrease in effectiveness of public health and social measures or available diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics.” (op. cit., see bottom of the WHO article).

§2. Charitable translation into the clarificandum

Definition of a SARS-CoV-2 VOC: if an individual ‘A’ SARS-CoV-2 variant satisfies the definition of a VOI, and if scientists demonstrate by a comparative assessment A’s association with at least one of the following criteria: • A is associated with an increase in transmissibility or detrimental change in COVID-19 epidemiology; OR • A is associated with an increase in virulence or change in clinical disease presentation; OR • A is associated with a decrease in effectiveness of (public health and social measures) or (available diagnostics, or vaccines, or therapeutics), then A is a VOC.

§3. Clarification of the clarificandum into a clarificatum

The criteria are conditions. The two ifs are two further conditions. Thus there are actually five conditions, of which at least one must be satisfied. Furthermore, since our focus here is on asserting that SARS-CoV-2 is a VOC, we must show that it satisfies at least one of the five criteria. A Variant: is a subclass of a Virus that is genetically distinct (discernible: having certain attributes that distinguish it; or identifiable: belonging to a certain class) from a main strain but not sufficiently different to be classified as a distinct strain ---- a subclass of a main strain class, in short. N.b. ‘variant’ is interchangeable with both ‘strain’ and ‘lineage’ salva veritate, and 'SARS-CoV-2' is interchangeable with both '2019-nCoV' and 'HCoV-19' salva veritate. Since the word ‘Variant’ is used as a classifier, in a similar fashion to standard taxanomic ranks, we shall concatenate it to the right with ‘SARS-CoV-2’ to form a more exact denoting term. Since the word ‘associated’ is used in four of the five conditions to indicate some connection between an entity and changes in the cardinality of another entity, this connection is best exemplified using the scientific terms ‘correlation’ or ‘causation’ (though, of course, correlation alone does not imply causation). I have modified the occurrence of ‘effectiveness’ in the last condition, by adding the noun-determiner ‘the’; this is because it is clear that the author(s) op. cit. intended the word 'effectiveness' to stand for a single entity, however disparate, and not lots of different ‘effectivenesses’.

Thus we have (i):

SARS-CoV-2-Variant-Ο (viz. variant B.1.1.529) is a Variant of Concern (VOC, hereafter) because scientists have demonstrated by comparative assessment that SARS-CoV-2-Variant-Ο satisfies at least one of the five, following conditions: is a Variant of Interest is either correlated with an increase in transmissibility or detrimental change in COVID-19 epidemiology, or causes an increase in transmissibility or detrimental change in COVID-19 epidemiology ; OR is either correlated with an increase in virulence or change in clinical disease presentation, or causes an increase in virulence or change in clinical disease presentation; OR is correlated with a decrease in the effectiveness of (public health and social measures) or of (available diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics), or causes a decrease in the effectiveness of (public health and social measures) or of (available diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics). (i) shall serve as the clarificatum.

§4. Paraphrasis of (i)

‘SARS-CoV-2-Variant-Ο (viz. variant B.1.1.529) is a Variant of Concern (VOC, hereafter) because scientists have demonstrated by comparative assessment that SARS-CoV-2-Variant-Ο satisfies at least one of the five, following conditions.’ ‘SARS-CoV-2-Variant-Ο’ is the subject of the sentence and is a general term: it denotes each virus that instantiates SARS-CoV-2-Variant-Ο. In order for this term to denote, however, we need to reconstrue it thusly: There is something such that it is SARS-CoV-2-Variant-Ο. ‘is a Variant of Concern’ the copula ‘is’ predicates ‘Variant of concern’ to SARS-CoV-2-Variant-Ο. Moreover, ‘because’ functions as a means of indicating a conditional relationship between an antecedent and a consequent i.e. in our case, each of the five conditions, or any combinations of those five conditions, make up the antecedent; whereas ‘is a VOC’ makes up the consequent. Hence: ‘by comparative assessment’ since this sentence signifies a method of evaluating whether something is true, we may in-turn construe this sentence as a function ‘f’ that when fed a value that satisfies the predicates or properties involved the five conditions, outputs---‘is a variant of concern/true’. The process of determining whether it satisfies any of the conditions, will involve a mapping (under isomorphism) from statistical evidence ----that either provides some degree of confirmation or disconfirmation, or of a causal connection ----, to a collection of classes whose values include just those entities that satisfy the specified conditions.