Hans, (01)
The recent notes by Chris Menzel and me addressed just one very
important point: Every ontology that is going to be used with any
computational system of any kind must be represented in logic or
be stated with enough precision that it can be translated to logic. (02)
> As Rich noted, there is a blind spot here regarding other disciplines
> and perspectives that drive semantics and ontologies... (03)
Chris and I are acutely aware of those other issues, disciplines,
and perspectives. But as you note, there is an immense amount of
informal discussion and publication. (04)
> 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... (05)
Yes. But without a goal of mapping that mass of stuff to logic, there
will be no detectable progress toward any useful ontology. (06)
> 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? (07)
There won't be any formal study until somebody actually does the work.
Accumulating a long thread of informal notes will just add another
informal heap to an already huge informal mountain. (08)
> I'd certainly welcome any effort to improve/extend
> it and turn it into a formal ontology(ies). (09)
Good. A recognition of need is a start. (010)
I would like to cite two philosophers who have made an attempt to
formalize those issues: John Searle and Barry Smith. Following is
a debate between them: (011)
http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/searle.PDF
The Construction of Social Reality: An Exchange (012)
Another philosopher who mapped some related issues to logic is
Charles Sanders Peirce. In my analysis of the debate between
Searle and Smith (copy below), I applied Peirce's categories of
Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness: (013)
1. Firstness is an aspect of something x that can be represented
by a monadic relation or predicate P(x). The definition of
P can be stated in terms of P itself without any reference
to or consideration of anything outside of P. Anything that
is called a *natural kind* such as a dog or a dandelion can be
described by a monadic predicate P(x) that states the conditions
for identifying x as a dog, dandelion, or other natural kind. (014)
2. Secondness is an aspect of something x in relation to something
else y, which is independent of x. It can be specified by a
dyadic relation R(x,y). An example is somebody considered as
a mother, daughter, sister, employee, employer, driver, pilot,
banker, skier, swimmer, patient, doctor, nurse... (015)
3. Thirdness is a triadic mediating relation that brings two or
more other entities into some dyadic relation. For example,
marriage (Thirdness) brings two human beings (described by
Firsness) into a relationship in which one plays the role
of husband (an aspect of Secondness) and the other plays
the role of wife (another aspect of Secondness). (016)
Thirdness is involved in all those examples that have been discussed
in this thread with the terms 'conceptual' or 'social'. Among them
are all the issues concerning contracts of any kind, whether stated
in writing, concluded with a handshake, or established by a longstanding
habit or pattern of behavior. (017)
For example, dogs and cats (animals described by Firstness) don't
normally sign a contract (Thirdness) to become a pet (Secondness).
But they become pets when somebody adopts or tames them. Those
verbs 'adopt' and 'tame' involve Thirdness that is as binding
(morally, if not legally) as a formal contract. Note what
Saint-Exupéry said in _The Little Prince_: (018)
"You become responsible forever for what you have tamed." (019)
Responsibility, by the way, is another aspect of Thirdness, which
involves a triadic relation of somebody x with respect to something y
for some purpose z. In general, every instance of Thirdness involves
some agent x (human, animal, or perhaps robot) who has established
a relationship to some y for some reason z. (020)
To get back to Searle and Smith, I'm sure that both of them have
heard of Peirce, but neither of them used Peirce's framework for
their analysis. However, Searle had independently rediscovered
the need for triadic relations, which he used in the analyses
stated in his book: (021)
Searle, John R. (1995), The Construction of Social Reality,
Free Press, New York. (022)
My criticism of Barry Smith's analysis is that he tried to use only
dyadic relations. In their debate, I believe that Searle had a
more cogent analysis, primarily because he used a more appropriate
choice of ontological primitives. Searle's triadic relations are
a special case of Peirce's Thirdness, and I believe he could have
strengthened his case with an application of Peirce's categories. (023)
For more citations of Barry Smith's writings on this topic, see (024)
http://ontology.buffalo.edu/socob.htm (025)
I used Google to search for summaries of Searle's book, but all I
could find is vague mush that doesn't come to grips with the logic.
One of the mushiest is the following review: (026)
From http://www.dooy.salford.ac.uk/ext/john.searle.html
> Searle tries to show not only that there is more than can be explained
> fully by physics and chemistry, but the diversity of what there is.
> Those who understand Dooyeweerd's aspects can immediately see that each
> of Searle's features is linked to specific Dooyeweerdian aspects:
>
> 'restaurant': social and biotic
> 'waiter': juridical, ethical and social
> 'sentence of French': lingual
> 'money': economic
> 'chair' and 'table': social
> "the waiter did not actually own the beer he gave me": juridical
> "but he is employed by the restaurant": economic
> ".. which owned it": juridical (027)
Dooyeweerd claimed that none of those aspects can be defined in terms
of the others. That is probably true, but they can all be defined in
terms of Peirce's Thirdness. (028)
In the following excerpt, I map some of Searle's representations
to triadic relations. Similar kinds of mappings could be done
for Dooywerd's aspects. (029)
John
_______________________________________________________________________ (030)
Source: http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/worlds.pdf (031)
3. Semiotic Foundations (032)
Tarski semantics for first-order logic depends on a dyadic
correspondence between some pattern of symbols stated in a formal
language and some pattern of objects and relations that exist in a
model. Such correspondences can answer several important kinds of
questions about an object, an event, or a situation: What is it? What
are its properties? What is it made of? And how is it related to other
things? (033)
But there's one kind of question that no amount of observation can
answer with certainty: those that begin with the word 'why'. For modal
logic, no observations can explain why some pattern in the world might
be necessary, possible, or impossible. For the behavior of humans and
other animals, no observation can explain why they happen to perform one
action rather than another. A thoughtful observer might be able to guess
the reasons for their actions based on an analogy with his or her own
experience, but the intentions themselves are not directly observable.
Since humans can talk, the best way to determine their intentions is not
to observe and classify worlds or situations, but just to ask them. But
to take that option is an admission that Carnap's attempt to reduce
mental phenomena to observable data about behavior has failed. (034)
Among the philosophers who believe that Carnap's approach was a dead
end, Searle (1983) claimed that the semantics of natural language, at
least for language about anything dealing with intentionality, depends
critically on the nature of the mind: (035)
The capacity of speech acts to represent objects and states of
affairs in the world is an extension of the more biologically
fundamental capacities of the mind (or brain) to relate the organism
to the world by way of such mental states as belief and desire, and
especially through action and perception. Since speech acts are a
type of human action, and since the capacity of speech to represent
objects and states of affairs is part of a more general capacity of
the mind to relate the organism to the world, any complete account
of speech and language requires an account of how the mind/brain
relates the organism to reality. (p. vii) (036)
In the concluding chapter, Searle claimed "there really are such things
as intrinsic mental phenomena which cannot be reduced to something else
or be eliminated by some kind of re-definition. There really are pains,
tickles, and itches, beliefs, fears, hopes, desires, perceptual
experiences, experiences of acting, thoughts, feelings, and all the
rest" (p. 262). In the middle of the book, Searle formalized some of the
discussion in formulas of the following kind, where p represents a
proposition that describes some action or state (p. 32): (037)
Sorry(p) → Bel(p) & Des(~p). (038)
This formula says that if some person x is sorry for the state of
affairs described by p, then x believes p and x desires that p not be
true. Since Searle claimed that mental attitudes such as sorrow, belief,
and desire actually exist, each of his monadic predicates could be
expanded to a triadic relation named Experience, which explicitly
relates the agent to the attitude and the proposition: (039)
Sorry(p) → (∃x:Person)(∃y:Sorrow)Experience(x,y,p). (040)
Bel(p) → (∃x:Person)(∃y:Belief)Experience(x,y,p). (041)
Des(p) → (∃x:Person)(∃y:Desire)Experience(x,y,p). (042)
The first formula says that the predicate Sorry about p implies the
existence of a person x and an instance of sorrow y, which x experiences
about p. Similarly, the second and third formulas relate the predicates
Bel and Des to instances of belief and desire, which x experiences about
p. In a later book, Searle (1995) was more explicit in using triadic
relations to describe social relations. All his triads had the form (043)
X counts as Y in context C. (044)
Searle's implicit or explicit triads for describing intentions are
incompatible with Smith's attempt to avoid any commitment to mental
phenomena. In a public debate (Smith & Searle 2001), Smith tried to
interpret Searle's constructions in terms of his own ontology, which
does not admit the existence of intentions. Searle replied (045)
I think in the end he makes many useful points, but I also believe
that he misunderstands me in certain very profound ways. I believe
his misunderstandings derive from the fact that he approaches this
topic with a set of concerns that are fundamentally different from
mine, and in consequence, he tends to take my views as attempts to
answer his questions rather than attempts to answer my questions. (046)
Searle recognized that relations that refer to intentions have greater
power and flexibility than Smith's partOf relation. Smith criticized
that flexibility as too loose and imprecise and noted that a context
itself is a social object that requires some independent definition.
Both authors made valid points: Searle's book demonstrates the
fundamental role of intentions in creating and sustaining social
relationships, but Smith's criticism shows the need for clear
distinctions and greater precision. (047)
Philosophers since Aristotle have recognized the sign relation as
triadic. The Scholastic logicians used the Latin terms signum for the
sign, significatio for its significance or sense, and suppositio for the
object it refers to. (048)
Saussure (1916) is a notable exception, who proposed a dyadic signifier
to signified relation, which corresponds to the signum-significatio side
of the meaning triangle, but omits Tarski's signum-suppositio or
sign-object side. The dyadic versions by Saussure and Tarski have
complementary weaknesses: Tarski had a clear criterion for truth, but
no recognition of intention. Saussure's failure to recognize the object
led theorists such as Derrida to endless levels of interpretation with
no criteria for convergence. (049)
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