Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology vs OWL implementation

[Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx>]

At 9:45 PM +0200 5/1/08, Christopher Spottiswoode wrote:

> Pat, Bill,
>
> > At 2:41 PM -0400 5/1/08, Bill Andersen wrote:
> >>The only reason I can see for the use of the term
> "ontology" in this
> >>connection is to increase the chances of winning funding from
> people
> >>who still attach mystic significance to the term
> "ontology" that
> >>they would not to "logical theory"
> >
> > Quite. But isn't that the only reason for using the word
> "ontology"
> > under any circumstances?
>
> If only it were a laughing matter!  For there is another reason,
> I
> fear:  the long word with its metaphysical associations makes
> the
> notion more impressive, seemingly so in touch with some
> transcendent
> reality.

I wish people would get clear that there are TWO senses of the word 'ontology', with almost no useful or interesting relationship between them. One, the older sense, is philosophical, where it means something like 'concerned with reality' (as opposed to, for example, epistemics, which is concerned with beliefs, and phenomenology, which is concerned with impressions and experience). The other sense, much newer, is that in which an ontology (a phrase which is hardly meaningful using the earlier sense) is a formalized theory. All of this forum and all of these threads are concerned with ontologies in the second sense, which is NOT the first sense. Only ontologies in the second sense can be engineered.

It is a great pity that such a useful word got co-opted in this way, but these things happen. Its too late now to do anything about it.

>  That's very useful to dictators for
> browbeating the innocent
> into submitting to the apparent authority behind it.

Oh, bullshit. The only authority Im claiming, even implicitly, stems from years doing AI KR work, which has now gotten re-christened (and not by me).

Pat

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