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Re: [ontolog-forum] electric sheep

To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 03 Sep 2007 13:07:29 -0400
Message-id: <20070903130729.0vf2hjp10xg0c8w0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sean & All:    (01)

You may recall back in mid-July a few threads in which I proposed  
discussion of an OWL ontology based on "A New List Of Categories."    (02)

http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2007-07/msg00030.html    (03)

This work-in-progress specifies some of the topics below such as  
mediate and immediate conceptions, being and substance as well as the  
manifold, sensuous impressions and universal conceptions.    (04)

You're free to use the work I've done and I'd appreciate your  
comments. You can find the ontology here:    (05)

http://www.rickmurphy.org/categories.owl    (06)

and the manuscript is available here:    (07)

http://www.peirce.org/writings/p32.html    (08)

so you can validate the OWL representation agains the original.    (09)

Rick    (010)

Quoting "Barker, Sean (UK)" <Sean.Barker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:    (011)

>
> Apologies, reading up over the weekend, I find I do mean semantics more
> than pragmatics when I say the meaning of a term (the concept that the
> term presents) is founded on behaviour. If one says,
>
>       X is a conceptualisation of Y
>
> I think I should be able to ask, "what is Y". It cannot be another
> conceptualisation (unless I am building hierarchies of concepts). It
> must be based on something that is not a conceptualization. I cannot
> believe it is purely sense-experience, which I merely need to attach the
> right conceptual labels to (as per St Augustine), because the things we
> talk about are not the raw phenomena of sense experience, but the things
> which are important to us as humans though our systems of behaviour.
>
> In this context
>       X is a conceptualization of (behavioural system) Y
> is equivalent to
>       Y is the behavioural system conceptualised by X.
>
> The reason for talking about "the meaning of a term is founded on
> behaviour" is because behaviour is observable and objectively
> verifiable, whereas I cannot look inside your head to check on what your
> concepts look like. This is the point I am making with the "three green
> apples" example - with or without robots.
>
> The consequences of this are that I can objectively determine the truth
> of the claim "Dinner is on the table" without claiming that the terms
> "dinner" and "table" are other than concepts which used within a
> particular linguistic community.
>
> For example, we could objectively agree the truth of each of "dinner is
> on the table", "dinner is on the bench" and "dinner is on the bus
> shelter", however, the difference between a bench, a table and a bus
> shelter is not one of form (four legs and a flat top) but one of human
> anatomy and its consequent behaviour - I sit on a bench, eat from a
> table and stand under a bus shelter.
>
> If I was discussing this with a talking lion, the first problem I would
> expect is that lions do not have terms for "table" or "dinner", although
> I might get as far as agreeing that "the food is on the platform" (as
> long as its not nut roast).
>
> In engineering terms, this is equivalent to saying that if we are to
> build a common enterprise, we must do due diligence to ensure what we
> are talking about the same thing. This is not simply a matter of
> checking we have the same labels for the same concepts, but actually
> check that we have the same systematisation of the conceptual landscape.
>
> The reasons for insisting on this are various, and I will just note two.
> Firstly, I have come across projects that have run through a year of
> argument before the partners discovered that they were using the same
> terms to mean quite different things. Secondly, I have read at least one
> academic paper which has proposed automatic ontology matching on the
> basis of matching terms and attributes - that is it assumes that match
> the presentation of concepts is equivalent to matching concepts
> (heuristic yes, mechanical procedure no).
>
> I suspect part of this discussion arises from the way that humans
> naturally talk in terms of concepts, but are unaware of the process by
> which we recognise that something is an instance of a concept. I was
> taught Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" as a set of
> therapies against the notion that the concepts we use are "natural" (in
> the sense of being unmediated by culture), although I took me another
> three years to reach the duck-rabbit moment when this approach made
> sense.
>
> Do androids dream of electric sheep? I think this is a problem for
> another forum.
>
> Sean Barker
> Bristol, UK
>
> This mail is publicly posted to a distribution list as part of a process
> of public discussion, any automatically generated statements to the
> contrary non-withstanding. It is the opinion of the author, and does not
> represent an official company view.
>
>
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>    (012)



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