Michael, (01)
You are not alone! And thank you for putting it so politely. I only have one
world for it - http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/demagogi (02)
To be constructive I did try to provoke a substantiative discussion in my post
shortly after this thread spawned from the original "Axiomatic Ontology". Let
me try again (last time I promiss): (03)
"It appears to me that this discussion started from the need to have a common
ground that is more solid than one afforded by established processes. It is
clear from everything said so far that there is no way to establish a universal
ground, even when all efforts are made to remove ambiguities, such as the case
with mathematics. Perhaps it is what Pifagor (or was it someone else?) meant
when he said something like "... give me a ground and I will overturn the
World". SO what we should be looking for is at best a temporary grounding of
our ideas and efforts. This is what Kuhn's paradigm is all about.
So the question should be (correct me if I am wrong): what are the mechanisms
available to us for better grounding. Now I really sound like an engineer.
I this was a question discussed here all along, then I appollogize for stating
the obvious. (04)
Clearly - ontology and language are parts of any such mechanism, and the logic
must make it parts fit and do the work, which in my mind is to server some
purpose. Was it Wittgenstein who said that language is the use? I found this
book about Wittgenstein with the name pointing in the same direction
"Language and Information: ?Back to the Rough Ground!"
http://www.springerlink.com/content/tfc9cblgnlwndygl/ (05)
If anyone has ideas about how to make the "ground" more solid I will be very
interested to hear it. (06)
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Michael F Uschold [mailto:uschold@xxxxxxxxx]
>Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2008 07:45 PM
>To: '[ontolog-forum]'
>Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] What words mean -- What this thread means
>
>ALL:
>
>Pat Hayes said:
>
>..., I ... cannot help wondering: ... did you actually intend to*
>say*something? If so, what?
>
>The subject of this thread: "What words mean" suggested a thread of great
>interest to me. However, the meaning of "What words mean" must be quite
>different for some of you, than I -- for I have seen little of interest or
>value in this thread.
>
>If this thread was successful at shedding light on something, what would
>that something be, and who would benefit and how?
>
>Perhaps someone could summarize the main points [of value] so far to put
>this on track. If that summary has zero or fewer characters, perhaps the
>thread could stop and we could move on to things of value.
>
>Thanks
>Michael
>
>
>On Feb 17, 2008 2:16 PM, Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> At 7:44 PM +0200 2/17/08, Christopher Spottiswoode wrote:
>>
>> Paola,
>>
>>
>>
>> Yes, you are 100% right: I* am* courting trouble with many such choices
>> of words.
>>
>>
>>
>> Such is the cost of using existing words to communicate with. But gradual
>> shifts in the meanings of words, even "linguistical stereotypes" as you
>> allude to, are the stuff of verbal and technical creativity and any
>> resulting innovation.
>>
>>
>>
>> So I have proceeded as if my proposed usages, in due course adjusted
>> by people such as you on fora such as this, will eventually catch on. I am
>> expecting, for example (to speculate as to the kind of red-flag-words you
>> might have had in mind), that the rest of the world will help the
>> "Democratic Web" survive its partisan meanings in the USA, that the
>> facilitated infrastructures foreseen will help all of us preclude any
>> "tyranny of the majority" and will also thereby in due course render "The
>> Mainstream" as co-opted in my story "as inclusive as the presently excluded
>> may wish" (to quote myself from long ago).
>>
>>
>>
>> Such confidence, more than somewhat apparently-premature though it may be,
>> is based verifiably on the continuity of my software-architectural picture
>> since I first published on it on the Web in 1996 (and since long before
>> that, of course), and on the definite convergence with that picture by more
>> recent architectural trends (okay, as I selectively focus on them...). The
>> end will justify the means, while even the provocation might possibly have
>> more than countervailing benefits.
>>
>>
>>
>> More crucially (if I may risk so loaded a word), there* is* nonetheless a
>> more commonly-acceptable - or at least less widely-provocative - formulation
>> of the greater social end, only it doesn't mean all that much to most
>> people. That single goal is "*to help people simplify complexity together
>> *." The rather inaccessible abstraction of that epistemological
>> phraseology (Would you go along with that characterization?) helps explain
>> why I am choosing to relaunch my story to an ontologist community. You will
>> see how the fictional "top-down construction" I present in the first post of
>> my planned series explicitly posits that as its goal. (The construction is
>> fictional inasmuch as such representations are always* ex post facto*, as
>> you know.)
>>
>>
>>
>> You raise the matter of ethics. A wider justification later of the
>> epistemological goal will attempt to show how it is in fact "a single goal
>> in broad and enriching support of every self-aware value-system" (as I put
>> it elsewhere, in a piece which was well received by a significant readership
>> I shalln't namedrop here).
>>
>>
>>
>> And (to pop less far up the philosophical stack) if application
>> interoperation and human collaboration - already explicitly the
>> motivation of my own involvement with ontologies - are to become more
>> universal, I believe addressing some such epistemological or ontological
>> goal should help.
>>
>>
>>
>> Certainly, however, I do believe most unwaveringly that wider
>> philosophical perspectives, even where they cross the line into political
>> matters, can help in usefully orienting and stabilizing our ontological
>> endeavours. You shall be the judge in my case.
>>
>>
>>
>> So, many thanks, Paola, for the response! It is efforts such as yours
>> which explain why this planned launch is intended as interactive rather than
>> one-way as on most web pages.
>>
>>
>>
>> Meanwhile, I expect I would be able to give you an exhausting if not
>> exhaustive justification as to why any one of your mooted 'politically
>> incorrect statement parser and modifier' outputs would not be suitable here,
>> all things taken into account. So be warned against any such challenges too
>> lightly laid! :-)
>>
>>
>>
>> If I may echo myself from my initial mooting of this series (now at
>> http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2008-01/msg00453.html), "such
>> discussion will profit enormously from, and should therefore await, the
>> detail I am suggesting I follow up with."
>>
>>
>>
>> Nonetheless, I do look forward genuinely to any correcting suggestions
>> from anyone on an ontology mailinglist. So please keep them coming.
>>
>>
>> I realize that the above was not addressed to me, but I nevertheless
>> cannot help wondering: Christopher, did you actually intend to*
>say*something? If so, what?
>>
>> Pat Hayes
>>
>> --
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 home
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>>
>>
>>
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> (07)
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