As Rich noted, there is a blind spot here regarding other disciplines and
perspectives that drive semantics and ontologies. In my experience with many
real world systems, most of which are very specific (and unfortunately,
implicitly so) to certain institutional contexts, the issue of awareness of
those contexts (or lack thereof) and the differences between and among them
are the key interoperability barriers. In addition to formal institutional
contexts and scope, there are informal institutions and social contexts
(e.g., this forum is an example of a middle ground - there is some formality
of getting added to the forum mailing list, but minimal operating rules and
a modest amount of social pressure and sanction), which often create their
own semantics, somewhat to the consternation of "outsiders" who have
difficulty communicating with that group (can you speak "texting" or
tweet?). So where is the formal study of the ecosystem of organizations and
groups, how they form and interact, and how they establish contexts,
perspectives on those contexts, and associated frames of reference? Yes, we
get some of this in social psychology and organizational theory, some in
political science, and a bit in business school, but not as a comprehensive
field of study. Yet where do the most of the world's problems come from?
It's from behaviors in group contexts and as self-identified members of said
groups and institutions (tribes?), not as isolated individuals (we generally
have adequate, if not perfect, institutions for dealing with individual
behaviors, at least in my opinion). (01)
As Rich pointed out, the previous discussion was trying to highlight the
issue of context for the applicability of an ontology and relating
ontologies to each other. We certainly could use an ontology (ies?) for
describing context and the scope of a context, including modalities and
reality types that the context might include. That certainly would provide a
more formal basis for determining whether an appropriate ontology is being
used in a given context, and what its limitations might be (danger - there
be dragons here :-) ). The SCOPE model is an initial attempt to identify a
set of context dimensions and associated scope values for characterizing the
differences in scope and perspective among systems and institutions (or
individuals, if need be). I'd certainly welcome any effort to improve/extend
it and turn it into a formal ontology(ies). (02)
Hans (03)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2012 5:37 PM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] metaphysis, semantics and the research program
of ontologies (04)
Rich, Mike, Chris, (05)
RC
> Limiting ourselves to just logic is a poor strategy, IMHO. (06)
Peirce followed the tradition of the Seven Liberal Arts in dividing
semiotics in three parts: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Those are the
three language arts. The four mathematical arts are arithmetic, geometry,
music, and astronomy. (07)
With a bit of updating of the subject matter, we need all of them. (08)
MB
> Ontology notations allow one to make a meaningful model of some domain.
> How you apply those (i.e. whether the meaningful concepts you define
> relate to some set of real things or not) is a separate matter.
>
> So the considerations of what kind of world you are modeling, and what
> you choose to model it with, are two separate matters. (09)
I agree. But all our communications among people and computers are based on
signs. Mathematics has come a long way since medieval days, and we can
apply math to semiotics. That is a task that Peirce began over a century
ago. Modern computers are one result, and they can help. (010)
CM
> Ontology engineering is about the representation of information. But
> there is no limitation on the type of information - it can be anything
> from payrolls to art to ethics. And, obviously, extra-logical methods
> and tools will be involved in the analysis and collection of that
> information. But the medium of representation in ontology engineering
> is formal logic and constructing ontologies in formal logic is the
> name of the game. It makes about as much sense to talk about "limiting"
> ontologists to "just logic" as it does to talk about "limiting" a
> conductor to "just an orchestra"... (011)
I agree. (012)
Just a bit of emphasis: logic is the language of digital computers.
Every machine instruction and every combination of machine instructions can
be defined in logic and be translated to logic. If we are going to design
anything that can be programmed on a computer, logic is the only game in
town. (013)
But even within those limitations, there is a huge amount that can be done
to make our systems more user friendly. For my summary of what can be done,
see the following article and slides (there is some overlap between them,
but not much): (014)
http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/futures.pdf
Future directions in semantic systems (015)
http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/goal.pdf
The goal of language understanding (016)
RC
> I am discussing ontology development from the point of view of various
> users, not only from the point of view of professors or logicians. (017)
Absolutely!!! Every version of logic is based on the way people talk and
have talked for many millennia before Aristotle. See the following
article: (018)
http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/rolelog.pdf
The role of logic and ontology in language (019)
For recommendations about how to implement these ideas in computer systems
that don't require anything beyond a high-school education for people to use
logic effectively, see futures.pdf and goal.pdf. (020)
RC
> If ontology can't point to meaningful objects and relationships, then
> it is about nothing. (021)
Exactly! Peirce made the observation that every proposition in logic must
have at least one indexical to relate its terms to something in the domain
of application. More specifically, each variable in any logical statement
must be associated with a pointer that designates something in the real
world. (022)
RC
> It seems to me that the number of possible categories is virtually
limitless. (023)
I agree. (024)
John (025)
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