Re: [ontolog-forum] Semantics of Natural Languages

["Rich Cooper" <rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear John, Pat, Richard, David, Doug and Azamat,

My comments are below,

-Rich

Sincerely,

Rich Cooper

EnglishLogicKernel.com

Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com

9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2

JS:>

On 9/4/2011 11:57 PM, Pat Hayes wrote:

> I would add that reading 'the selfish gene' leads one to the idea > that it is the genome that has the 'urge' to reproduce, rather > than the individual. On this view, it might be more accurate to > say that our DNA has self-interest, and we are simply the means > it uses to achieve its goals.

I agree with you.

RC:> Me too.  The fact of evolving species as encoded in DNA is what I think Richard was alluding to, but in the form of regulatory arrangements and knowledge gleaned from applying them. 

However, I think Richard's model, while more appealing in actualizing some ontology of self interest, is more difficult to implement as stored knowledge, having though about it for a while.  The reason is that the DNA in each individual is most likely unique, even in identical twins.  Only clones have MOSTLY the same DNA.  But even asexual reproduction results in changes propagated to descendents, just more slowly.  But the organization's stored knowledge is more centralized, not distributed in slightly divergent copies as DNA is. 

Perhaps a method for each individual in said organization to store the knowledge in a personal repository would be equivalent to the combination of phylogenic and ontogenic knowledge as represented in DNA.  But how would that stored knowledge, even if practiced by the individuals, make a difference in the organizational functioning? 

I still have to conclude that groups are mythical, and that any individual proclaiming to represent a group is therefore less likely to be believed or considered the resident expert for the regulatory body. 

One analog in the biological world is the ant nest.  The queen is the repository of stored knowledge, created by her own biological eggs, which are not identical, as fertilized by a small group of male drones, which are also not identical.  All worker ants produced from the queen's eggs are often considered identical, but I don't think that is actually true due to the processes of meiosis which creates egg and sperm.  The best that can be said of the worker ants is that they are all sisters, and some have specializations due to the way in which they are individually produced - i.e. ontogenesis. 

As I said to Rich, the most anyone can get out of an ontology is a derivative of what you put in:  the implications of the definitions and general axioms.

The ontology might give you something more if you combine it with other data from testing and observations.  But that is factual data, not just definitions.

Agreed.  But an ontology without validating data is pretty much a myth agreed to by the story tellers.  I think that validating data is an essential part of the practical application of ontologies.  As I showed in my patent, one can use a data based collection of realistic facts to determine which theoretical (ontological) constraints are justified by observations, whereas an ontology by itself can't do that.  It can only sit by and define.  The combination of ontology and factual corroboration, as I showed in the specialized discovery process for corpus analysis, is a much more useful way to apply knowledge. 

But as I also said to Rich, all the observations indicate that Herbert Hoover's approach was a total failure, and the methods by Roosevelt and Truman led to the unprecedented level of prosperity from the late 1940s through the 1960s.  I don't think that is what he was hoping for.

John

Clearly we disagree on this; that shows that there is subjectivity in the observation process, and therefore there are differences in the theorizing, classifying and observing processes that are subjective in nature.  There isn't just one true ontology, as I described long ago when we were discussing system constructions.  I held that every person involved in the development of a system has her own ontology in mind, and acts on it in her own discovery process.  It is the negotiation of those various viewpoints that takes the lion's share of system development efforts, not the actual coding, testing, or other activities historically attributed to such process estimates prior to Randy Jensen's analysis and publication of the SEER documents. 

Jensen showed that the development time is a function of the number of people, even when the system size and complexity is held constant.  At least, that is my subjective interpretation of his work, which I think explains it better than anything else I have heard. 

HTH,

-Rich

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