On Mar 6, 2009, at 3:00 PM, Richard H. McCullough wrote:
> John Sowa and Pat Hayes and others
> have asked me to define what I mean by space and time.
>
> It's all about epistemology.
> With some purpose in mind, I create propositions about the real world.
>
> The myKnowledgeRepresentation language and myKnowledgeExplorer
> program are all about myPropositions that I create. Of course, mKR
> and mKE can deal with yourPropositions also. And the closer the
> match between myKnowledge and yourKnowledge, the better.
>
> myProposition has the basic form
>
> at mySpace,myTime,myView { mySentence; };
>
> The theory of mySpace and myTime is extremely simple. (01)
And, therefore, of no value whatever to anyone working in formal or
computational ontology. All you've got are strings of symbols to
which are attached, at best, some inaccessible ideas in your head.
You have neither axioms to constraint their meaning nor any semantics
in which you could provide formal models. (02)
Again, if you want to see what serious work on time, in particular,
looks like, consult Pat Hayes' Catalog of Temporal Theories. See also
the OWL Time ontology by Jerry Hobbs and Feng Pan
(http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-owl-time-20060927
). The latter document consists of definitions and axioms in the OWL
language that can be used, right now, by OWL reasoners. The semantics
of the OWL language itself can be found -- no surprise -- in the OWL
Semantics document (http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-semantics). (03)
> mySpace and myTime are quantized.
>
> The quantum units are chosen by me, according to my purpose
> for creating and using myPropositions. mySpace can be measured
> in nanometers or light-years. myTime can be measured in
> nanoseconds or centuries. One useful set of myTime units is
>
> past, present, future
>
> It is important to note that I can change mySpace,myTime,myView
> to suit myPurpose. (04)
And that's basically theProblem. One of the major points of ontology
building is to *fix* meaning; your approach, as far as I can see,
simply lets it float free; terms can mean whatever you want them to
mean. But terms lacking axioms expressed in languages lacking any
rigorous semantics have, essentially, no meaning whatever and hence no
meaning that can be shared on open networks and reasoned upon by human
or computer agents. (05)
Chris Menzel (06)
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