> Dr Sowa,
>
> I have few comments..
>
>>For fish, living in water is an accidental property because
>>some fish can live out of water for a while. Way back when,
>>there were a few fish that crawled out of the water and became
>>amphibians.
>
> I would think, for fish, living in the water is "essential" property.
> Because amphibians are called amphibians like frog, crocodoil ...
> and for amphibians it is an 'accidental' property..
> but the naming convention is used to seperate them.. Fish's natural
>environement is
> water and an amphibian, it could be water and land..
>
> I agree with your philosophy of water, sounds like knowldege and have similar
>qualities
> ( the way some explain about "Dravida" .. druve+veda = druve =liguid or
>water and
> veda = knowledge ... may be it means knowledge with similar property as
>water..).. (01)
I would argue that "living in water" is not an "essential" property, otherwise
a fish
would cease to be a fish the moment you pulled it out of the water. Fresh fish
in a
market are still fish. (02)
And from an ontological perspective, things get very messy when using words
like "water",
since formally speaking, water is simply a substance (a single molecule of H2O
is water).
What we often mean by "in water" in the context of many sentences is some "body
of water"
(a point I think John was alluding to). SideComment: the fact that much of human
discourse occurs where the receiver understands what the sender actually meant,
even
when the expressions used don't technically express that meaning, is a serious
conumdrum
for trying to reduce natural language to formal logics. (note my mis-use of
"where"
above). (03)
Rob
*******
>
> I am one of those who studied Pascal, then Ada then C and C++ and other
>object oriented
> languages like Perl and Small talk in school.. ( in late 80's and early
>90/91 ..).. I
> remember writting 3000 lines of code in ada for Patient monitoring system as
>my school
> project.. and comming across many issues!
>
>
> About "Ada"... like any languages has the compiler, and processing aspect of
>it.. and
> then the USAGE aspect of it.. Ada supported semi object oriented concepts
>and not all
> of it...
>
> Some of us who studied Object Oriented methodologies at the same time, could
>not use the
> OO concepts well with Ada..!! And Small talk and Perl were not industrial
>strength ..
> Ada was considered industrial strenght, however only DOD supported it.. ( so
>one had
> to be american citizen to work on contracts that used Ada.. and not all the
>university
> students were american citizens at that time..).. People who were eligible
>to work on
> DoD either did not study or trained on OOAD concepts.. so the OO supported
>concepts did
> not get used well either..
>
> So many people were happy to use C until C++ came about and later Java came
>about...
> C++ got replaced by Java &J2EE and all the new web based languages ( ntier..)
> environemnt.. as the architecture concepts evalued to, client server, to
>three tier, n
> tier, to web enabled to web based .. now service oriented & web based..
>
> There are architecture, the design techniques and implimentation aspects
>needs to work
> well for usage along with technology platforms like operating systems,
>compilers and
> connectivity aspect..
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --- On Sun, 10/18/09, John F. Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> From: John F. Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology-based database integration
> To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Sunday, October 18, 2009, 12:53 PM
>
>
> Rick and Chris,
>
> I'll begin by saying that I agree with the points that Chris M. made
> about model theory, but I'd also like to make a few more points that
> are related to the broader issue of what aspects of "meaning" are
> missing in model-theoretic semantics. (I put the word 'meaning' in
> double quotes to indicate that I'm using it in the very informal
> sense of anything that anyone might consider relevant.)
>
> As an example, I'll take a short snippet from another thread in this
> forum. (My apologies for beating such a simple example to death.)
>
> MAH> Two classes: Water and Fish.
>> Restriction: Fish subclassOf livesIn some Water
>> Two instances: Goldfish type Fish, River some Water.
>
> To avoid distracting interpretations of the English words and all
> the machinery of OWL, I'll just use short abbreviations and treat
> the terms as though they were predicates in predicate calculus:
>
> Four monadic predicates: W, F, G, R.
>
> One dyadic predicate: LIW.
>
> Axioms:
>
> (For all x)(There exists a y) F(x) -> LIW(x,y).
>
> (For all x) G(x) -> F(x).
>
> (For all x) R(x) -> W(x).
>
> This specification gives us the signature (list of monadic and
> dyadic predicates) and some axioms for a little theory. That
> theory could be satisfied by infinitely many models. But the
> only thing that those models can tell us is that those axioms
> are consistent. That is certainly useful information, but it
> is only a small part of "meaning".
>
> Consistency is a *metalevel* term for talking about theories,
> but there are many other kinds of metalevel terms that are
> important for ontology. Aristotle, for example, would add
> a metalevel comment about accidental and essential properties.
>
> For fish, living in water is an accidental property because
> some fish can live out of water for a while. Way back when,
> there were a few fish that crawled out of the water and became
> amphibians. Aristotle would say that being an animal is a more
> fundamental or essential property than living in water. Since
> OWL permits multiple inheritance, we could add another axiom:
>
> (For all x) F(x) -> A(x).
>
> But we also have a problem about water. Unlike animals, which
> tend to occur in discrete lumps, water is continuous stuff,
> which can be subdivided very finely (as far as we can see).
> And we have a serious problem in applying quantifiers like
> "for all" and "there exists" to continuous stuff.
>
> Therefore, we have to talk about "chunks" or "pieces" that
> consist of water. But unlike solids, for which the term
> 'chunk of iron' is appropriate, water is a liquid that must
> have some kind of container to keep it from dissipating.
>
> That brings us to rivers, which consist of water, but they
> have an implicit container with boundaries called river banks.
> Furthermore, they are continuously flowing so that the water
> at one point is constantly being replaced by other water that
> comes from upstream. Therefore, saying "All rivers are water"
> (as the above theory implies) would lead to false conclusions
> or inconsistencies if that theory were combined with another
> theory that more correctly said "All rivers contain water
> that is flowing."
>
> The moral of this story is that even a tiny little theory can
> very quickly delve into the depths of all the problems that
> a large upper ontology is intended to cover. But even if we
> picked one (such as Cyc, SUMO, DOLCE, BFO, etc.), there would
> still be many more questions that are fundamental to "meaning":
>
> - What is the purpose of this theory?
>
> - Why have you chosen to define those particular terms?
>
> - What is your application?
>
> - Are those definitions and whatever other axioms you take
> from some upper ontology consistent with the implicit
> assumptions built into your intended application?
>
> - What problems in those applications will your ontology solve?
>
> - What new problems might it create?
>
> All this and many more issues that go far beyond model-theoretic
> semantics are involved in the informal notion of "meaning".
>
> RM> I think model theoretic semantics (MTS) should become more
>> than good old fashioned model theory. I use this term as it
>> has been used by Harold Simmons here ...
>>
>> http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~hsimmons/BOOKS/ModelTheory.pdf
>
> That book is a good 180-page summary of the topics that are
> covered in a typical course on model theory. But note that
> not a single one of the questions I discussed above are even
> mentioned, much less answered by anything in that book.
>
> I agree that much more is needed, but I don't believe that it
> belongs in a course on MTS. A course on ontology might be a
> better home, but most such courses have now degenerated into
> OWL-hacking (which generates examples such as the one above).
>
> RM> If the patterns or idioms from applied semantics do exist can a theory
>> of meaning be established based on them? Where in this case meaning is
>> both denotation and interpretation, whether intended or unintended.
>
> I wouldn't derive a theory of meaning from the applications,
> but I would certainly want anybody who derives a theory from
> more general considerations to test it on as many applications
> as possible before presenting it as a standard for the world.
>
> RM>>> ... and complex enough signatures to include
>>>> symbols that are interpretants, signs and objects.
>
> CM>> You lost me.
>
> RM> Here's a diagram with labeled nodes and edges.
>>
>> http://www.rickmurphy.org/images/interpretant-triangle.png
>
> That is an example based on Peirce's semiotics, which I strongly
> recommend. But CSP wrote many volumes of published and unpublished
> manuscripts, in which he covered an enormous range of topics.
> I would not recommend any single excerpt from Peirce's writings
> or anybody else's (including my own) as a universal foundation.
>
> In the 1990s, the standards bodies were talking about "proactive"
> standards instead of giving their blessing to already accepted
> de facto standards. The W3C took that advice and ran with it.
> Two bright guys, R. V. Guha and Tim Bray, sat down and came up
> with a first-pass cut at a simple knowledge representation, which
> they called RDF. Now, even Tim Bray admits that it was a mistake.
> But it's a world-wide "standard" that cannot be changed.
>
> As another example of the opposite approach, remember the design
> competition that led to Ada in the early 1980s. The DoD sponsored
> the competition for a new programming language, and they did almost
> everything right in specifying requirements and sponsoring several
> levels of tightening specifications (Strawman, Woodman, Tinman,
> and Ironman).
>
> The winner of that competition (later named Ada) was not bad, but
> it suffered from a tragic flaw. And like the ancient tragedies,
> the flaw resulted from the hero's hubris -- in this case, from
> a committee of very good experts who considered themselves
> omniscient. They declared that the complete Ada definition
> was a sacred tablet whose commandments must be obeyed in
> their entirety. They prohibited heretics who ignored any
> of the commandments from adopting the sacred name.
>
> Since Ada had been strongly influenced by Pascal, everybody who
> had a Pascal implementation immediately modified their software
> to add as much of Ada as could be quickly built on top of the same
> foundation. That subset, which should have been called Ada 1.0,
> included all of Pascal plus some widely implemented and tested
> features that were very useful. Borland and many other vendors
> implemented that subset in six weeks and demonstrated it on the
> platform that was rapidly becoming a de facto standard: IBM PC.
>
> Unfortunately, DOS did not support multitasking, and full Ada
> contained an untested, untried multitasking model that could
> not run on DOS and was widely criticized as its weakest feature.
> If the DoD committee had approved the obvious subset, Ada 1.0
> would instantly have replaced Pascal as the standard for the
> IBM PC and hence all future system software.
>
> Instead, DoD refused to allow subsets, and the world got stuck
> with C -- a language that violated every requirement specified
> for Ada. C had and still has many flaws that were corrected
> in the Ada 1.0 subset, which was small enough that it could be
> compiled with the same efficiency as C. Furthermore, the Ada 1.0
> foundation was clean enough that it could have been generalized
> to a much better object-oriented language than C++.
>
> The moral of this longer story is that the Ada approach was too hot,
> and the W3C approach was too cold. For the Goldilocks solution, I
> would recommend a design competition, such as Ada, guidance by a
> committee, such as DoD or the W3C, and a more democratic way of
> voting than any committee can support: let the users decide.
>
> My recommendation is for a design competition similar to the
> one that led to Ada. Let the committee evaluate the proposals
> and implementations and make its recommendations. But instead
> of blessing a single winner, the committee could award prizes
> to the ones they liked best. However, *all* the submissions
> would be made publicly available, vendors would have the rights
> (copyright and patent free) to pick and choose any of the
> submissions or any combination of them, and everyone could
> choose any implementation they preferred to use.
>
> This competition could have multiple stages, as Ada had.
> But users and vendors could participate in every stage in
> any way they chose. And the committee could use feedback
> from all the users, implementers, and vendors before
> making any final determination of an official standard.
>
> John
>
>
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