| To: | "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> |
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| From: | William Frank <williamf.frank@xxxxxxxxx> |
| Date: | Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:36:59 -0400 |
| Message-id: | <CALuUwtB5GyU7oN_UX9g1BqQ3AET4xFxTCC3Lm3q2wufP2vUqDA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> |
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'To me, the problem is in this supposed "dichotomy". Implicit in saying: "The ontology is build upon universals in reality rather than concepts" I think that this is ***not*** a dichotomy. I think that every perspective on reality is structured according to human concepts, But that the reality is ***still there***, and is what it is, not something we just "make up". Or that cultures "just make up." (If that were true,then there would be no reason to prefer insulin to incantations for curing diabetes. We could solve the world healthcare crisis over night.) Only, we can't observe it without putting our own mark on it. How much and what kiind of a mark, is what varies. Just as in the "nature versus nurture" non- "arguments". I think that this what of the theoretical linguists cited in the paper are saying (Lakoff, Jackendoff). I think that this is what physicists understand very well. For example, the paper cited says: "Is ontology about the 'real world' (as seen, say by a physicist), or rather, should it take cognition into account" There's that "rather" again. Whoa!!! who has a more complex, human-created ontology than physicists??? The Ether?? Wait a minute. (well that's ok because it was 'wrong'?) What about Dark Matter???? Strings??????? Force, mass, and distance were plenty bad enough. Their ontology provide the explanatory framework for what they more directly observe (but even those are intemediated by instruments whose measurements depend on theories). But, of course, every time there is a new theory, that explains things better, and is simpler, most physicists believe that the ontology on which this new theory is based is closer to what is 'really real.' Yet, they know they will never be done, and can always be proved wrong even in their most basic assumptions. I believe that this has been well demonstrated to be **very subtle* in the last century, and we should be building on that knowledge. Not some simple either -or at all. That cultures as a whole strive to explain more than they can, sometimes woefully inadequately. But international scientific culture has learned to be increasingly modest about what it claims to "know", and to increasingly understand the importance of the role of the observer in the equation, from Heisenberg's Uncertainly principle and Godel's incompleteness proofs to the kinds of demonstration that Rich was sending around. Yet, this does not mean that reality is *just* whatever you say it is. You can't see *anything* without your conceptual glasses on, but you couldn't see anything, either, unless there was something to look at. If we have a robot that can see obstacles, it needs to have a theory that organizes its visual field into "things". Are the things 'really there', or are they a construct of the robot's processing? This is the kind of question that I think has been shown to be without much meaning, or at least without much use asking. So, given this, from a practical point of view, I agree completely with what Mathew West says below. Which we emphasize will depend on our interests, just as environmental medicine will look at nurture while genetics is looking at nature. Personally, I think ontologies need to be reconciled with viewpoints, but believing in viewpoints as I do, I can also well imagine that there could be a use for a more "realist" kind of ontology. But, to argue about this, that is, insist on which perspective on how we organize or perceptions as manifestations of things in themselves is 'right' -- that the conceptual frameworks are themselves really out there or are created by people's minds, seems no more necessary than I can see it to be useful. Finally, I think that this is what Kant said in the Critique of Pure Reason, and that just about everybody who has spent much mind space since has agreed,at least outside of philosophy of mathematics. I that we don't need to rehash metaphysics without the benefit of the world's greatest geniuses, who we can have in the room with us. http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/kant/section1.html I think that as temperamentally and in detail at odds as they were, both Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein are both Kantians. So, I wholehearted support "research" into how to put Computer Science ontology work onto a firmer foundation, but I think that the research would take the form of learning more of what has already been done, and applying it to computer science and engineering. Wm On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 5:07 PM, Matthew West <dr.matthew.west@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
-- William Frank 413/376-8167 _________________________________________________________________ Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/ Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/ Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/ Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/ To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J (01) |
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