To me, this is why one should ingest philosophical/formal ontology
analysis, but focus on applying that to theories coming out of science.
And theories that preponderantly at this time are not science-based,
i.e., commonsensical or naive theories about subject areas which cannot
reasonably or can only incompletely be addressed by science. (01)
And then building real engineering ontologies based on those, knowing
that they are incomplete and will be superseded as we learn more.
Hence, logical non- or incipient scientific theories which use the
methods of science and formal ontology/semantics as much as possible. (02)
These represent our best knowledge at any given time, and thus our best
semantic models for use by software. (03)
Now, there're many other issues: epistemological/evidential issues, the
use of probabilities, formal pragmatic issues of intent/usage, etc. But
to me, these cannot reasonably be addressed until one lays down a
truth-functional and real-world-referential firmament. (04)
Thanks,
Leo (05)
_____________________________________________
Dr. Leo Obrst The MITRE Corporation, Information Semantics
lobrst@xxxxxxxxx Information Discovery & Understanding, Command and
Control Center
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-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Pat Hayes
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2007 2:21 PM
To: Avril Styrman
Cc: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] electric sheep (07)
>John,
>
>> But a perfect philosophical ontology is even harder to find
>> than a perfect physical theory, since it would include
>> physics as a special case.
>>
>> > We can very well reach a perfect philosophical ontology...
>>
>> Not in this century.
>
>This is of course a hard question. One might argue that people
>in year n+500 will always be great leaps ahead of the people
>in year n, and that people in year n will always be on a lower
>level of development than people in year n+500. But this would
>mean that people will always be underdeveloped compared to the
>people of the future. And this also feels very intuitive, at
>least when it comes to engineering, social systems, etc. But,
>I want to believe that there is a possibility to develop a
>perfect philosophical ontology, even in this century, that will
>remain unchanged thru the centuries. (08)
What basis do you have for this hope? All the evidence seems to me to
suggest that philosophy almost never comes to firm final conclusions.
Philosphers are still debating issues raised by Heraclites over two
millennia ago. (09)
>The connection with physics
>and philosophy is also very hard. What we can do, is to reach
>perfection in that part of ontology which is independent of
>physics. Well, if there even is any.
>
>The axiomatic method has not been so much applied in ontology. (010)
You must mean ontology in the philosophical sense. But surely even
this is false, eg consider the work of Peter Simons and Johan van
Bentham (011)
>It has been more like taking one dicipline or one dichotomy at
>a time (such as idealism-realism or realism-nominalism) and
>doing vast investigations on that. By taking many diciplines
>as axioms, we can compare their combinations, and see which
>combinations are consistent, and which are overlapping and in
>what way. (012)
This is exactly what authors like the above do. (013)
>This is of course easy to say, but I consider this
>more moderate than taking just some one stand, and holding on
>to it no matter what the cost. (014)
I agree. My modest contribution tried to do this for the notion of
'context': (015)
http://www.ihmc.us:16080/users/phayes/context/ContextMereology.html (016)
Pat
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