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Re: [ontolog-forum] Fwd: Ontologies and individuals

To: "'[ontolog-forum] '" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2012 22:46:21 -0500
Message-id: <50D28A0D.9000305@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Chris,    (01)

Pat is never shy about expressing his own opinions, so I'll let him
speak for himself.  But I'd like to comment on the "foundations".    (02)

CP
> As I understand it, Pat was saying that the philosophical terms, such as the
> ones in your foundation (see http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/toplevel.htm -
> note the use of the terms 'abstract' and 'physical'), are:
> "indeed obscure, hard to decide, and rest upon very fragile intuitions..."    (03)

Pat was criticizing "terms".  Most of my criticisms in this thread were
about people putting too much emphasis on particular words without
defining them by clear distinctions based on the logic.    (04)

Please note the 51-page article "Philosophical Problems from the
Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence," written by John McCarthy
and Pat Hayes in 1969:    (05)

    http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/mcchay69.pdf    (06)

See Section 2.1, "Why Artificial Intelligence Needs Philosophy".    (07)

CP
> As I understand it, Pat was proposing the following as an alternative
> to the kinds of top ontology foundations referred to above.
> "Here is one way to decide the matter: anything that can be described or
> referred to is, ipso facto, an individual. And of things that cannot be
> described or named, we must be silent."    (08)

I interpreted Pat's statement as emphasizing a very clear distinction
for defining the term 'individual'.  In my notes in this thread, I
agreed with Pat that the word 'individual' was used so loosely by
so many people that the distinctions were lost or blurred.    (09)

CP
> I certainly agree that there are problems with the senses of words
> used in this community ...    (010)

Question:  When you're talking about individuals,    (011)

  1. Are you using the word 'individual' as a technical term that is
     defined by some particular ontology?    (012)

  2. Or are you using it as a metalevel term for talking about and
     comparing ontologies?    (013)

If you mean (1), then every ontology will have a very precise
definition of 'individual', but it is likely to conflict with
the definitions used in other ontologies.    (014)

But if you mean (2), then it is difficult or impossible to get agreement 
because different people will have different ontologies
in mind.    (015)

That is why I keep saying that the metalevel terminology used to
compare and contrast different ontologies should be limited to
the syntactic features of the logic.  If you want to compare two
different ontologies, you must use terms that are independent of
either one.    (016)

John    (017)

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