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Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontologies as social mediators(was:Ontologydevelopme

To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "FERENC KOVACS" <f.kovacs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 4 Dec 2009 19:18:38 -0000
Message-id: <CC9DAF3575AB452690BF5B23CA55CE0F@Swindon>
Chris and all
My appologies for any insults caused.
In response to my unfrtunate and insufficinet wording below:    (01)

"But of course no one has a problem with THAT obvious point, Bill.  But note 
that you need a clear a notion of identity even to express it: Two physical 
tokens of the SAME type might have DIFFERENT meanings.  What I find 
exquisitely frustrating is for Ferenc to take this perfectly innocuous 
observation and make grand and sweeping dismissals of logic: "the basic laws 
of logic, i. e. the law of identity, etc. are not endorsed by reason."  That 
is simply abject nonsense that, when trumpeted in a public forum, deserves 
to loudly and openly labeled and dismissed as such to prevent it from 
replicating.  There are enough challenges to reason these days from the 
political and religious extremists that are flooding the airways and the 
internet, not to "post-modernist" extremists within academia, without giving 
them fodder from an allegedly scientific community."    (02)

All I am trying to suggest that in the recognition of the law of identity 
emotion, will and reason equally take part - to simplify the formula. If 
reason is equal to knowing the world as per modern science, such as Physics, 
then you will also agree that time and space as the cornerstone concepts of 
our perception and Reason is defined by Physicist in a strange way, they 
would tell you that ultimately, at the lowest level of the spacetime 
continuum you have no idea of what left and right is, and you cannot be an 
observer and the observed at the same time with matching results.Besides, 
they have the definition of time as this: the thing we measure by the hands 
of a clock. Or perhaps you can give a better defintion?
I feel that the focus in logic is narrow, and not logic is to be blamed, but 
human perception. We cannot have two objects (in different depths) in focus 
in space at a time, which fact makes us represent everything in 2D in a 
single plane with a lot of consequences that we do not take into account, 
including those on the identity of objects.
ferenc    (03)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Christopher Menzel" <cmenzel@xxxxxxxx>
To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, December 04, 2009 6:45 PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontologies as social 
mediators(was:Ontologydevelopment method)    (04)


> On Dec 3, 2009, at 10:50 AM, Burkett, William [USA] wrote:
>> Chris -- see [wcb] below.
>>
>>> Burkett, William [USA] wrote:
>>>> I guess I live in Ferenc's world, Chris.  Setting aside some sentence 
>>>> construction problems, I understand what he's saying and agree with 
>>>> it - and I don't understand your perspective that his assertions are 
>>>> false/meaningless.
>>
>>> Hey, I said my lights are dim. But I'd certainly be impressed if you 
>>> could convincingly render the first statement in the following paragraph 
>>> in a way that makes it true (and recall that this came in the context of 
>>> an expression of doubt about the logical validity of the principles of 
>>> identity -- so a translation that takes "identical" to mean something 
>>> other than identity doesn't count):
>>
>>>> A proposal in a natural language may not be identical withn itself.
>>>> E.g.  No one likes to be contradicted =/ No one likes to be
>>>> contradicted Or: Everyone loves finding another one in contradiction
>>>> with him/herself Subject to the emphasis you may vary when reading
>>>> it out, you will have diferent meanings exposed.  Or in simple
>>>> English: I want to pay you for your contribution.
>>
>> [wcb] The explanation of my interpretation may not be convincing, but I 
>> simply took it to mean that two statements that have identical 
>> physical/lexical forms (to use Ferenc's linguist term) may not have 
>> identical meaning - which, of course, is conflate identities of two 
>> different things.
>
> But of course no one has a problem with THAT obvious point, Bill.  But 
> note that you need a clear a notion of identity even to express it: Two 
> physical tokens of the SAME type might have DIFFERENT meanings.  What I 
> find exquisitely frustrating is for Ferenc to take this perfectly 
> innocuous observation and make grand and sweeping dismissals of logic: 
> "the basic laws of logic, i. e. the law of identity, etc. are not endorsed 
> by reason."  That is simply abject nonsense that, when trumpeted in a 
> public forum, deserves to loudly and openly labeled and dismissed as such 
> to prevent it from replicating.  There are enough challenges to reason 
> these days from the political and religious extremists that are flooding 
> the airways and the internet, not to "post-modernist" extremists within 
> academia, without giving them fodder from an allegedly scientific 
> community.
>
>>> And I'd be happy simply with a *coherent* rendering of the sentences 
>>> after the first. I just don't understand what's going on there at all. 
>>> My *hunch* is that he is trying to illustrate that written English is 
>>> ambiguous (which, of course, we already knew full well) and that this 
>>> somehow throws the concept of identity into doubt. I think that is a 
>>> very confused idea. But maybe that's not what he has in mind; all I can 
>>> do is guess. Is it just me?
>>
>> [wcb] Not sure -- now I'm getting confused, too.
>>
>>>> Ferenc's statement that he's a linguist is important to understanding 
>>>> his (and my) perspective.  I think linguistics has a LOT more to 
>>>> contribute to the field of ontology development than logic does.
>>
>>> Well, of course, that depends on what aspect of ontology development you 
>>> are talking about but if you have in mind the creation of ontologies 
>>> from documents and domain experts (as opposed to the development of 
>>> reasoning and integration mechanisms) I'd probably agree. But obviously 
>>> both linguistics and logic are central to the overall vision of 
>>> ontological engineering.
>>
>> [wcb] You're right in making this distinction - I agree with you here for 
>> the most part.  Logic is essential to the reasoning/integration 
>> mechanisms.  However, don't forget that there's another facet of this: 
>> the human individuals /creating/ the mechanisms still use (and can only 
>> use because that's all that's available to them) their native linguistic 
>> facilities to interpret the ontology as documented or explained.  This is 
>> a critical facet that, IMO, is /always/ overlooked.  (My response to Ed 
>> is in this same vein.)
>
> We seem to be in general agreement.
>
> -chris
>
>
>
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