ABSTRACT
A number of years ago, I was having a discussion with the philosopher and logician Wilfried Sieg. During our conversation, I was describing some research I was doing at the time, to which he was dutifully and patiently listening. After awhile Wilfried stopped me, and asked, regarding a central notion I was using, "Why do you call it logical form?" Although I of course gave his question something of an answer at the time, it was clear that he was not satisfied, and this lack of satisfaction got me to thinking about just why he was asking that question. In my ponderings , the first thought that came to mind was that we were perhaps talking about different things. For the linguist, the term Logical Form is a proper name. Thus, when we write it we capitalize it, and take it to name some definite, theoretical object. For the philosopher, on the other hand, this term is a common noun, not capitalized, picking out some property of formal systems. Thus, my initial conclusion was that Wilfried had every right to look at me quizzically during our discussion, since he perhaps thought, and perhaps rightly, that I was making a category mistake.
