Len, sorry not to have followed up earlier. (01)
On 18 Feb you had written (now at
http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2008-02/msg00267.html,
in the thread "Re: [ontolog-forum] What words mean -- What this
thread means" though I have opened a new thread here): (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)
(So I hope you will not regret that final attempt, despite the
demagoguery it leads to here too!) (04)
> "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. (05)
Though it may not always seem so from my scribblings, your quest
for a "more solid common ground" is very much what I target with
"The Mainstream" as I have gradually been broaching that
stupendously pretentious notion in my various posts to this forum
during the past few months. Sure, the many angles I have been
taking may look like random waffling, but there is some method in
the madness of taking chance prompts from the forum. There is
surely no nice neat logical sequence to any new paradigm. (06)
As would-be common ground The Mainstream as depicted is
clearly a process, not a foundation or a final construction. But
Kuhn's paradigm shifts are merely the more spectacular
manifestations of "evolution as a series of mini-revolutions".
(Who can tell us who said that first?) (07)
That latter view well represents the effect of the "Koestler
creativity" I have just introduced in my "3rd instalment" (see its
item 7), in recognition of Arthur Koestler's wide-ranging analysis
yet pointed conclusion in his 1964 book, The Act of Creation. (08)
I am busy building up the picture of the entire operation of
Information Systems as a continuously creative process, though one
which people - ordinary users - will be able to help adapt towards
better meeting people's needs. (09)
> 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. (010)
Yes, fortunately you do. John Sowa too tends to claim that
engineer's ground, on this and the SUO forum. Indeed, the more of
us the better! (011)
And my answer to your question is precisely MACK, The Mainstream
Architecture for Common Knowledge, with its notion of the
conceptual Form, implemented by a MACK-compliant AOS or
Application Operating System for helping people create,
manipulate, fine-tune and extend CK or Common Knowledge into the
many provisionally appropriate niches for it at every level of
abstraction or refinement. (012)
There is as yet no such implemented AOS, but with my present
series of posts to this forum I am trying to awake interest and
set up collaboration towards refining and launching a Boot AOS so
that the open market can bootstrap itself into full exploitation
of the evident yet hitherto-hidden potential of The Mainstream and
its already-ubiquitous processes. (013)
I believe such a launch, with a little help of the right kinds,
building on what is already coded and running, could take place
within one year of a team's getting to work on it. (014)
Christopher (015)
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