Re: [ontolog-forum] Adverbs (was Anthropology of Colour)

[Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx>]

At 11:48 AM -0400 3/18/08, Michael Gruninger wrote:

> Hello Pat,
>
> Pat Hayes wrote:
>
> >It is gratifying to see that something as elementary as buttering
> a
> >piece of toast can be 'ontologized' in so few ways. By my count
> we
> >have only five so far. No doubt proponents of a single
> >all-encompassing representationalist strategy will find comfort
> in
> >this thread.
> >
> >Pat
> > 
> >
> There seems to be a difference between an ontology and a
> "representational
> strategy".
> The former is a fixed set of axioms in
> some language together with a fixed
> nonlogical lexicon.
> The latter seems to be a metatheoretical constraint (e.g. all
> relations
> should have a
> temporal argument, events are specified by ternary relations) which
> is
> not axiomatized.
>
> The difference is that a theorem prover can determine which sentences
> are
> consistent with the axioms of an ontology, but it can't determine
> conformance with
> the metatheoretic
> constraint.

But software can be written which can. And indeed, if you write enough axioms to specify the constraints themselves, maybe a theorem-prover could (though I wouldnt try that in practice in the current state of the art.)

> Shouldn't we be striving to write axioms??
> What constitutes a "representational
> strategy" in your view?

What you have called a metatheoretical constraint, above, more or less. All the actual axioms on this thread were intended to be illustrative of a certain style or method of writing axioms to capture the meanings of English simple declarative sentences, right? I used 'strategy' to refer to these styles or methods.

Pat

-- 

---------------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC               (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973   home
40 South Alcaniz St.       (850)202 4416   office
Pensacola                 (850)202 4440   fax
FL 32502                     (850)291 0667    cell
http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes      phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us
http://www.flickr.com/pathayes/collections

_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/  
Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/  
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/ 
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    (01)