In the ontology (metaphysical flavour) we have adopted – a
version of actualism – everything has an actual concrete, physical existence in
the present. Things commonly
regarded as abstractions exist as social norms shared by the members of a
community. Signs employed in
speech acts play a central role in creating abstractions and also in providing
our knowledge of everything not in the here-and-now.
This form of actualism leads to the powerful concept of
ontological dependency, which leads in turn to ontological dependency schemas
that have an empirically based canonical Semantic Normal Form. This SNF, when used as the basis for a
computer system to support the activities of the community governed by the
relevant social norms, ensures a remarkably high degree of stability, which
hugely reduces the costs of systems maintenance and support and increases the
reusability of IS designs.
My grotty and neglected little website (www.rstamper.co.uk)
still contains only two papers but they should be enough to give you the basic
ideas.
If anyone is interested enough to challenge me with a case
study, I’ll happily use it to elaborate my explanation.
The SNF permits the building of ontologies (semantic web
flavour) by a process of gradual accretion of the independent contributions from
a large community of systems builders.
The canonical property ensures that the fragments will fit together
provided that they actually deal with the same or sufficiently related,
underlying problem domains.
My experience of this work convinces me that any semantic
web flavoured ontology should stand on the foundations of an explicitly stated metaphysically
flavoured ontology.
Ronald Stamper
On 25 Sep 2010, at 17:50, Rich Cooper wrote:
Ferenc,
I am trying to show an example of a nonphysical object (ownership of a car, and records of that ownership in a database) in relationships with a physical one. If I can figure out how you and Doug view the situation in its component parts, I will have a better idea of your semantics re physical and mental objects. That is the only point I wanted to make with this example,
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
Rich: What about situations that comprise both physical and nonphysical objects,
such as the filled-out title of my car?
Rich, (resubmitted)
As I said before "everything is subject to chunking"
I am not sure what a title of a your car is, but I assume it is a document certifying that you are the owner of a particular car. Whether it is empty or filled-out would not reclassify the physical document as a physical and non-physical one, nor does it matter that it refers to a "real car"
As a document it is an object and it has properties that you can list. Do you want me to continue?
If you refer to ownership (title) as non physical, yet represented by the document, it is not a problem. Neither is colour "physical", only red, blue and green are.....
In my interpretation the filled-out title of your car is just an object, not a situation. It is another issue that it has been changed and you see the result of that change in an object. But you canot grasp the filling out of the title as far as I can see, neither as an object, nor as a situation.
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