Re: [ontolog-forum] Universal Basic Semantic Structures

[William Frank <williamf.frank@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 10:29 AM, John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In physics, everything is continuous.   Some gradients are sharper
than others, but nothing in nature has a clearly defined or definable
0-thickness boundary.

Indeed, and as in John;s examples, every boundary we define in a continuum, and every discontituity we choose to notice, is a human abstraction, just at different levels, with different communities controlling the definitions.
 
To take the example of which people were speaking, " a river", a river cannot be measured, without a defintion of what constitutes the river, and of rivers in general.  Why does it stop at some confluence of streams or a spring?   Because we say so.      The view of what the Nile river is changes more slowly that the view of what part of the river the upper nile authoritiy is concenred with.  And, the latter depends on decisions of politicians, the former on decisions of geographers (who are sometimes surely influenced by politics!).

On the other hand, there is surely nothing amiss about somebody constructing a set of definitions of categories of being, in which "rivers" fall into a physical category, and school districts do not.  In fact, this distinction is pretty natural to accept, and pretty easy to understand intuitively, if  not so easy to define very precisely.   Working on the definition, in order to explicate the way modern civilizations characterizes this, seems useful to me.    Only, I am also troubled when people who have developed an ontology then say "this is the way things *really are*, instead of "this is a structure I believe we will find useful".

And of course, what an instrument measures is similarly an abstraction, only a yet lower level one, not available to most ducks I know.
 

Just consider the human body. The boundary changes every time somebody
gets a hair cut, clips fingernails, takes a bath, puts on make-up,
removes contact lenses, or sheds a few skin cells.  For legal purposes,
even clothing is considered within the body's boundary.

If you admit clothing, you have to ask about the difference between
a wallet in somebody's pocket vs. a purse carried outside the boundary
of the clothing.  What about a necklace that might be partly under
the clothing and partly outside?   What about a backpack?  If you admit
a backpack, what about a suitcase that somebody is carrying.  If you
admit that, what about a cane? Crutches?  A walker?  A wheelchair?
A seeing-eye dog?

The fundamental principle is that there is a reason for every
distinction.  Those reasons are fundamental to ontology.  Mereology
is useful.  But the hope that it might provide "objective" criteria
for ontology is a fantasy -- an extremely *misleading* fantasy.

John


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-- 
William Frank

413/376-8167


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