On Sat, February 16, 2013 09:37, Matthew West wrote:
> doug foxvog wrote:
>> On Wed, February 13, 2013 05:35, Matthew West wrote:
>> > ...
>> > Chris Partridge made a plea for an architectural approach to
>> > developing a top ontology, considering the ontological commitments.
>> > There were two slides in particular that struck me.
>> > The first listed typical ontological choices that a top ontology needs
>> > to make, (01)
>> I would challenge the statement that a top ontology would have to make
>> these kinds of philosophical commitments. I think that John Sowa also
>> challenged this, but i'd like to explain in more depth. (02)
>> In most instances, the same (non-philosophical) conclusions can be
>> made no matter which metaphysical commitment is made.
>> Sometimes things need to be worded differently
>> depending upon the metaphysics/philosophy chosen, but that
>> seems like an NL issue to me. If one is generating or interpreting NL,
>> one could use different modules for different philosophies. (03)
> MW: But that is not the purpose of an integrating ontology. (04)
I'm glad you agree with me. (05)
> The purpose of an integrating ontology
> is to bring the ground facts into a single view of
> the world so that they can be analysed together. (06)
I beg to differ. The purpose of an integrating ontology is to
enable communication among various contexts so that combinations
of contexts can be analyzed together. As such, such an ontology should
avoid commitments that would be inconsistent with more specific contexts. (07)
The amount of analysis that can be performed should rely upon the scope
of the rules and other statements in the narrower context. (08)
If commitment a philosophical issue is not necessary for some
class of reasoning, that is a good reason to not make the commitment
at that stage. (09)
What applications really depend upon whether time is quantized at
10^-44 seconds and distance is quantized at 10^-35 m or whether
they are both continuous? Upper ontologies for what fields of study
depend upon the model of uncertainty (branching time, etc.) chosen? (010)
What contexts require that the upper ontologies which they import
limit themselves to 4D or 3D+1 models? (011)
It seems to me that *applications* may chose various of these
philosophical dimensions if it assists analysis -- or it assists in
the design of an NL system for communicating with users --
but i don't see any need for forcing such decisions at an upper or
middle ontology level. I understand that such concepts need to be
near the top of ontological hierarchies. However, unless a pure tree
structure is forced, any connection between non-philosophical concepts
and the philosophical ones can be made in application contexts. (012)
I would be happy to entertain a discussion of the merits of having such
decisions made at an upper ontology level. If you think that this would
be useful, please explain how you feel it would be useful to make such
a commitment at the upper ontology level. (013)
Regards,
doug foxvog (014)
> Regards
>
> Matthew West
> Information Junction
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