On Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 08:23:08AM -0400, Kathryn Blackmond Laskey
wrote:
>>[CM] ... semantics is entirely distinct from epistemology. Indeed, by
>>my admittedly dim lights, epistemology -- the philosophical analysis
>>of knowledge -- is of at best marginal relevance to ontological
>>engineering.
>
> [KL] I couldn't disagree more. How do you know what you are calling
> knowledge really is knowledge? Have you thought about how the systems
> that make use of this so-called "knowledge" are going to behave when
> they encounter situations (as they most assuredly will) in which this
> "knowledge" turns out to be wrong in task-relevant ways? (01)
That is a completely different question. That is the question of
*vetting*, of ensuring that our ontologies accurately reflect their
domains in all "task-relevant" ways. That is a *methodological*
question and is of course critical to good practice in ontological
engineering. Granted, vetting has to do with justification, which falls
within the bounds of epistemology, but note that I was careful to
qualify "epistemology" as the philosophical *analysis* of knowledge, the
search for a *definition* of knowledge that avoids all possible
counterexamples. Can knowledge be defined as justitified true belief?
So-called Gettier problems show that that traditional analysis doesn't
work. Is it belief caused by a reliable mechansism? Something else?
Questions of that sort I believe are no more relevant to ontological
engineering than the question of whether or not a god exists or whether
or not we are really just brains in a vat with our neurons being
stimulated so as to create the appearance of an external world. That is
not to say these aren't philosophically *important* questions; I think
they are. But they have no bearing on the goals of ontological
engineering. My concern is only that interesting but purely
philosophical questions not come to dominate ontolog-forum. (02)
-chris (03)
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