Re: [ontolog-forum] A minor point I noticed

[Ronald Stamper <stamper.measur@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ali,  Thank you for noticing the missing message.

I thought this had been sent:

From: Ronald Stamper <stamper.measur@xxxxxxxxx>

Date: 12 February 2013 15:51:28 GMT

To: doug@xxxxxxxxxx, "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] The innocents on death row would hate this

 You are absolutely right, Doug, if you build your analysis on an objectivist ontology (metaphysical position).

For the engineering of information systems, I prefer a form of actualism, which recognizes as existing only those things that a responsible agent perceives. An individual human agent can perceive very little compared with the scope of reality that we take for granted. For that broad knowledge of what exists we depend on individual members of society sharing their experiences. Knowledge of things beyond the direct experience of individuals depends upon their having signs (including memories) to stand for them.  Hence, from this ontological perspective, past things exist only as we choose to record or remember them: we construct and can reconstruct the past.

Do you know of any facts about the past (Barry Gibbs was not a suspect in October 1986. etc.) that arrive in a database with the assistance of no human agent we would hold responsible to some extent for making, recording, communicating such observations and, indeed, accepting the reports as true? 

Working on a problem in the natural sciences, I would hate to clutter it with irrelevant details about the individuals who have made the observations, formulated the hypotheses, etc.  But as an engineer of an information system (not simply a computer system), those details are central to my problem.

Ronald

On 11 Feb 2013, at 19:58, Ali SH wrote:

Hi Ronald,

Didn't you send this five days ago? And didn't Doug Foxvog respond with the following:

http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2013-02/msg00061.html

Did you intend to add something else? I'd be curious to hear your response to Doug's note as well.

Best,

Ali

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 2:18 PM, Ronald Stamper <stamper.measur@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thank you someone for the pointer to Datomics where I found this:  “Datomic info model: a set of facts … things that have happened  . . .  while the past may be forgotten, it is immutable.”

Not so.  Along with directives, assertions etc, we also have, among our speech acts, palinodes to annul or retract propositions used to understand the world we share.  The trodden foot may be expunged effectively from memory by a sincere apology; a court of appeal may quash a conviction etc. In the social world we continually make mistakes and not infrequently act on them irreversibly.  We must take care not to base our information systems, most of which have social implications, on idealised physical theories. 

 

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