On Dec 19, 2012, at 5:28 PM, Chris Partridge wrote: (01)
> Hi John,
>
> That was not my initial reading of Pat's response, and after re-reading I
> still cannot not read it in this way.
>
> 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. ...
> they are not foundational in the sense that anything important rests upon
> them or depends on getting them right. They are, in fact, almost completely
> irrelevant to any matter of concern to practical ontology design, and can
> (and should) be ignored, unless one has far too much time to waste. It is
> not an architectural decision at all: more like a decision about what color
> smoke to blow up the chimney." (02)
I was intending to refer in particular to the individual/non-individual
distinction which has been the topic of this thread, but OK, I tend to be
dismissive of many high-level distinctions, so let us proceed on that basis.
(Of all of them, the abstract/physical is probably the most intuitively secure,
but even there one rapidly gets into difficulties in particular cases.) (03)
> And these comments apply equally to similar work, such as the work of
> Matthew on ISO 15926, Nicola and Chris on Ontoclean and Barry on BFO, which
> are also based on philosophical ideas.
>
> Maybe Pat can clarify whether I have misread this. (04)
Yes and no. I apparently misunderstood your use of "foundation" to mean
"foundational", as you correctly diagnosed (below) and I was reacting in part
to that claim (which apparently you did not intend...although from your
reaction here, maybe you did in fact intend? I am no longer sure... but
anyway...). I am of the view, which you know I have often expressed and which I
know I share with others including Doug Lenat and John Sowa (some of the time,
at any rate), the view that the very high levels of most ontologies make
distinctions which are not of any real importance to the lower levels, in the
exact sense that those lower levels could be re-written so as to conform to a
different set of high-level distinctions without materially affecting any
entailments they have about any matters of substance. Whether one chooses to
divide up the world initially into (say) individuals versus non-individuals, or
physical versus abstract, or occurrent versus continuant, and so on (and on and
on), is, contrary to what one would expect from the amount of attention such
decisions get, of really rather little importance. Whatever one decides, there
will be cases that do not fit comfortably into the taxonomy one has devized,
and cause difficulties which have quite recognizable symptoms, including:
essentially the same content having to be re-stated in two different ways;
various odd corner or exception cases being included in the class hierarchies;
entire sections of reality being described in ways that seem strange,
idiosyncratic or just plain wrong to users who have not been trained to think
in the framework provided. (In extreme cases, the only way to decide how to use
the ontology is to ask one of the inventors, who has a 'guru' status in the
community of users. Barry is the guru of BFO, for example, as can be seen from
reading the email logs, where he is frequently asked to rule on whether some
entity is a continuant or not, as nobody else seems able to decide.) (05)
Now, this may be the best we can do, in practical terms. And I concede the
argument that in order to make progress, one has to adopt *some* framework and
stick to it, so that interoperability can be achieved in a large, heterogenous
community of users. And maybe the emergence of 'go-to' guys to clear up
confusions and puzzles is inevitable and should be encouraged rather than
deplored or mocked. But let us not confuse this kind of managerial pragmatics
with philosophy, and believe that any of these basically arbitrary top-level
taxonomies is somehow *true* or is a genuine abstraction from *reality*. If you
have made individual/non-individual into a basic distinction, and want your
users to respect it, then fine. But I wouild ask for three things. (1)
recognize, and admit, that this distinction is local to your perspective and
not some kind of absolute, or justified by philosophical necessity, or given
from the ontological gods (such as Aristotle); (2) explain what you mean by it
as clearly and non-technically as possible, especially if it differs from what
others mean by this language (which it almost certainly will) and (3) explain,
or at least justify, WHY you are making this distinction, in ontological terms.
What difference does it make to classify something this way rather than that?
What follows, or is prevented from following, by such decisions? Why do you
feel a need to make this distinction at all? And so on. (06)
In a quieter moment I will concede that top-level distinctions may be of some
limited utility. But I certainly believe that they receive far more time and
attention than is justified by their importance. As soon as one gets into the
details of virtually any topic, these top-level distinctions fade into
insignificance compared to other matters which need attention, at best, and
they often actively impede progress, at worst, because apparently clear
decisions about the nature of things often become far less certain and far less
clear when one is in the thickets of the details. Is a time-interval abstract
or concrete? (What about a physical unit or a measuring scale?) Is a work of
literature a continuant or an occurrent? Not only are such questions hard to
answer, they are also not very interesting or important. They are questions
about the classification system itself, not about the things being classified.
We all have intuitions about time-intervals and literary works which are robust
enough to be axiomatized and utilized without ever asking these classification
questions, and which do not provide answers to them. But in frameworks (like
OBO) which *require* one to make such categorizations in order to even begin
(since one is obliged to use different formal techniques in each case), these
questions pose constant problems, problems which are completely artificial. (07)
To return to "individual". If this is taken to mean "not having instances" (or
maybe, "of a kind that inherently does not have instances", to rule out the
empty set) then my problem with it is that the actual logic of CL makes
*everything* into a non-individual, because CL allows any name to be used in a
relation or predicate position. And IMO this is the right way to approach this
issue: it is not an ontological matter at all, but a *logical* matter. The
actual language of logic is based upon the idea of a predication by one name of
a sequence of other names: an atomic sentence. So to claim that there is a
basic distinction between the predicators and the predicatees is to say that
the relation and (ahem) 'individual' names should be segregated in one's logic.
But there are important, down-to-earth reasons for using an unsegregated
logical language, reasons that far transcend any philosophical scruples about
the nature of non-individual-hood. Basically, one gets the expressive
advantages of a higher-order language within a purely first-order logic. Such a
gain is not to be lightly dismissed (for example, it means that one can replace
all the OBO duplication of axioms for the occurrent and continuant cases by a
single scheme which covers both cases, making that distinction logically
vacuous); but more fundamentally, the possiblity of using an unsegregated
first-order language seems to render this whole discussion moot: for what is
the point of deciding on a classification which is rendered vacuous *as a
matter of logical necessity* when one uses a modern logical notation? Aren't
there more important things to worry about? Why not just say, you can think of
anything as an individual (when you wish to make assertions about it) and also
as a predicate or relation (when you wish to use it make assertions about other
things), and this choice of of no ontological importance whatsoever. Because if
you write your axioms in CLIF, it isn't. (08)
Pat (09)
>
> BTW I have no objection to someone taking this position, it makes sense to
> explore different options. But given the substantial contributions made (by
> you and others) it seems to me that one should make a rational rather than
> tabloid argument for it.
>
> 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."
> I assume he was suggesting that the philosophical terms in, for example,
> your top ontology would fail this test. Presumably, if they did not then
> they would pass the Hayes test.
>
> None of my comments were to do with words. I certainly agree that there are
> problems with the senses of words used in this community (as I hope I made
> clear in my responses), but I am not offering a solution; I suspect there is
> not an easy one.
>
> Also, I hope I do not need to make clear that I admire a lot of Pat's work -
> not only have I said that to him personally a number of times, but it should
> be clear from previous email exchanges. That I assume is taken for granted.
>
> And just to clarify Pat's response was nothing to do with my original point:
> Matthew had described a series of choices and I said relative to this
> description: "If you have made these two choices then a mental shorthand for
> the distinction might be that it rests upon a concrete-abstract distinction
> - but (architecturally) this is a much weaker and murkier distinction to
> base things on, so not such a solid foundation." I was using 'foundation'
> here in the sense of one choice underpinning another - not implying that any
> choice was foundational.
> Pat chose to change the topic to whether the choices Matthew was describing
> were 'foundational'.
>
> Regards,
> Chris
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
>> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F Sowa
>> Sent: 19 December 2012 18:23
>> To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Fwd: Ontologies and individuals
>>
>> On 12/19/2012 3:56 AM, Chris Partridge wrote:
>>> I know you [Pat] have an irrational aversion to these topics.
>>
>> That remark is uncalled for. Pat has a very strong understanding of the
> issues
>> and requirements for a good design. But he has even less patience than I
> have
>> for endless quibbling over words.
>>
>>> My and, I'm guessing, Matthew's experience is that these kinds of
>>> structures are a useful practical device when dealing with large
> systems.
>>
>> Structure is *extremely* important. Pat and I were not complaining about
> any
>> proposed structures. We were complaining about endless debates about
>> common English words that are overloaded with confusing and conflicting
>> definitions.
>>
>> My solution is simple: whenever a word creates more confusion than
>> enlightenment, delete it. If you can't state a precise definition in
> terms of the
>> logic used to specify the ontology, then the word is too vague and
> misleading
>> for ontology design and documentation.
>>
>>> If you [Pat] are suggesting that the terms we are using "cannot be
>>> described or named" maybe you should re-read the literature.
>>
>> Pat not only knows the literature, he has been making important
> contributions
>> to it for over 40 years. The fact that this thread has been going around
> in
>> circles for dozens of notes without reaching a precise definition of the
> word
>> 'individual' implies that the word is more confusing than informative.
>>
>> Simple solution: If knowledgeable people in the field cannot agree on a
>> definition for a word, then don't use it.
>>
>> By the way, I learned that lesson many years ago in a project at IBM. We
> had
>> endless arguments about the word 'name'.
>> Our solution was to forbid any use of that word.
>>
>> When we got rid of the word, we quickly discovered that we all had nearly
>> identical intuitions about the *structure* of the architecture. The only
>> arguments were about one confusing word.
>>
>> John
>>
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