GB: Belief in the reality of "species" as a general form is a type of
Platonic idealism, but in practice its use in theory seems to be just a
nominalist use. (01)
IJ: The individual plants or animals of a biological species are not
*members* but *parts* of their species. (02)
True reality is in kinds, natural kinds and species, not in individual
events but their change kinds. Animality and humanity and rationality are
always with us, individual substances, marked by contingency and
temporality, but aimed at forming timeless global techno-organic-political
kinds, as the future Internet of things and human beings. (03)
Without the kinds it is not possible to have scientific knowledge. Platonic
realism, when Ideas and Forms supposed to exist in their own way, sounds
archaic today as much as the opposite mindset that universality is a
property of words (general names) alone, forming their meaning. (04)
Science opens new forms and levels of existence, individual, specific and
generic, interrelated with each other by the whole-part relationships (by
upward and backward causation). (05)
The realization of ontological entities as the "concrete universal" is the
singular mark and tendency of emerging meta-sciences and meta-technologies. (06)
Try and see a principal distinction of Class (determined by single
property), Kind (by set of properties), and Natural Kind (by set of lawfully
related properties). A natural kind is the set of all things sharing a basic
law, while a natural species, a particular law. The reality of natural laws
implies the existence of natural kinds, and vice versa. (07)
Organic evolution, from speciation of species to macroevolution of new
classes and kinds, falls under Ontological Evolution (OntoGenesis), the
evolutionary development of ontological kinds of all types and sorts:
physical kinds, chemical kinds, biological kinds, mental kinds, social
kinds, and technological kinds, like the real semantic web. (08)
Azamat Abdoullaev (09)
http://allworldportal.com (to be launched) (010)
http://standardontology.org (011)
----- Original Message ----- (012)
From: "Gary Berg-Cross" <gary.berg-cross@xxxxxxxx> (013)
To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> (014)
Cc: <semantic-web@xxxxxx> (015)
Sent: Friday, September 04, 2009 5:12 PM (016)
Subject: RE: [ontolog-forum] Event Ontology (017)
>Some of them even claimed that all the laws of physics are merely verbal
>(or mathematical)
>summaries of observations. (018)
We may think that science uses a form of nominalism as we formulate theories
whose simplifications name concepts used in the theory that may be useful
for the theory, but not reflect the deep reality. An oft cited one is the
use of species in Biology. Ernst Mayr argued against a simple "typological
thinking," found in biology (even evolutionary biology). Belief in the
reality of "species" as a general form is a type of Platonic idealism, but
in practice its use in theory seems to be just a nominalist use. (019)
Gary Berg-Cross,Ph.D.
gbergcross@xxxxxxxxx
http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?GaryBergCross
SOCoP Executive Secretary
Knowledge Strategies
Semantic Technology
Potomac, MD
240-426-0770
________________________________________
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
[sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, September 04, 2009 9:22 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Cc: semantic-web@xxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Event Ontology (020)
Azamat, (021)
That is an extreme version of nominalism: (022)
> "events are primarily linguistic or cognitive in nature.
> That is, the world does not really contain events. Rather, events
> are the way by which agents classify certain useful and relevant
> patterns of change."
> http://motools.sourceforge.net/event/event.html
> I read many event ontologies, but this one is the most idiosyncratic,
> softly speaking. (023)
Unfortunately, that point of view was fairly widespread among
20th century analytic philosophers. Some of them even claimed
that all the laws of physics are merely verbal (or mathematical)
summaries of observations. (024)
That view is true of some so-called laws, such as Bode's law,
which states a simple numerical formula for the distance of the
planets from the sun. Most physicists, however, are realists
with regard to the laws of physics: they believe that there is
something real underlying the laws that have been tested and
verified under many kinds of conditions by large numbers of
experimenters. (025)
The option of treating events as real and allowing quantified
variables to range over events is usually called 'event semantics'
and attributed to Donald Davidson. However, Peirce insisted that
it was appropriate to quantify over events long before Davidson,
and Whitehead made events the central focus of his ontology. (026)
Furthermore, Davidson had taken Whitehead's course when he
was an undergraduate at Harvard. He was so enthusiastic about
Whitehead's approach that he decided to study for a PhD in
philosophy at Harvard. (027)
Unfortunately, Davidson was suckered into a "bait and switch"
deal because Whitehead retired, and Davidson was stuck with
Quine as his thesis advisor. Quine was a nominalist who had
no sympathy with Whitehead's philosophy, so Davidson couldn't
write his dissertation on event semantics under Quine. (028)
But Davidson did return to event semantics after he got tenure
and didn't have to "suffer the slings and arrows" of the
nominalists. But it would be more appropriate to call event
semantics the Plato-Aristotle-Peirce-Whitehead-Davidson theory. (029)
And by the way, you could also add the logician Alonzo Church
to the anti-Quine, anti-nominalist group. Church presented the
following paper at Harvard, especially because he knew it would
annoy Quine: (030)
http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/church.htm (031)
Following is the title and opening paragraph of that paper. (032)
John
_________________________________________________________________ (033)
The ontological status of women and abstract entities (034)
By Alonzo Church (035)
Goodman says somewhere that he finds abstract entities difficult to
understand. And from a psychological viewpoint it is certainly his
dislike and distrust of abstract entities which leads him to propose an
ontology from which they are omitted. Now a misogynist is a man who
finds women difficult to understand, and who in fact considers them
objectionable incongruities in an otherwise matter-of-fact and
hard-headed world. Suppose then that in analogy with nominalism the
misogynist is led by his dislike and distrust of women to omit them from
his ontology. Women are not real, he tells himself, and derives great
comfort from the thought -- there are no such things. This doctrine let
us call ontological misogyny... (036)
Source: http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/church.htm (037)
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