John, (01)
You wrote: (02)
> Can you find any examples where what I said was wrong? A very precise and
> detailed specification is always for a specific project. When you design a
> bridge, that design holds for a single bridge for a single location. If you
>design
> a car, you can manufacture thousands of identical cars, but that design will
> not be true of any other model. (03)
And when someone designs a bridge or an automobile, he comfortably uses and
relies on Newtonian mechanics to predict its behaviors in many regards.
He emphatically does not say: (04)
> >> the laws of human science ... have a narrow range of definiteness and a
>large
> >> area of vagueness, uncertainty, and multiple exceptions. (05)
That was my concern. I said: (06)
> The reality is that for our application domains, the "narrow range of
>definiteness"
> covers most of the domain of interest, [and we have to engineer for known
> uncertainties]. The implication of that characterization
> is importantly different -- what we do can have practical value, as long as
>we can
> tell the difference. (07)
Do you disagree? (08)
The distinction between social contracts and scientific laws, which neither of
us mentioned, is that the purpose of most scientific "laws" is to predict the
behavior of individual phenomena (on some scale). Capturing the existing
"disposition" of individual things is the purpose. The nature of social
contracts is to regulate individual phenomena, not to predict it. Creating a
"disposition" in *most* individual members is the purpose. As a consequence,
social contracts are reliable predictors of aggregate social phenomena, but
unreliable predictors of individual social phenomena. It is true that in the
case of subatomic particles, science has a whole different category of
uncertainties that may be similar to those of social phenomena (I wouldn't
know). But for ontology development, there is a big difference in "vagueness,
uncertainty , and exceptions" between the scientific "laws" governing the
construction of a road and the social laws governing driving on the road. The
scientific laws predict the behavior of every such road, with known degrees of
uncertainty. The social laws do not accurately predict the behavior of every
driver with much less than 100% uncertainty. Your statement blurs this
important difference in scale. And that difference in scale is the difference
in practical value between stating the scientific law as an axiom and stating
the social law as an axiom. The required knowledge engineering technologies,
the nature of the ontologies, and the nature of the value in their predictions,
are significantly different. The philosophical comparison you make is at best
irrelevant, and effectively false, for most practical applications. (09)
You are rightfully respected in this community. Taken out of its philosophical
context, in comparing the laws of science with social laws, your statement
will mislead less-informed people. That is why I objected. (010)
"Never say anything in an email that you don't want to appear on the front page
of the New York Times." (011)
Best regards,
-Ed (012)
P.S. Advertisement of vested interest: The mission of NIST is to enable
industrial science and engineering to make accurate measurements of individual
physical phenomena and to understand the nature and magnitude of uncertainties.
Our job is to distinguish the definite from the uncertain. I believe that
that mission can be aided by developing FOL ontologies. John's statement
appears to deny that. (013)
--
Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Systems Integration Division, Engineering Laboratory
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8265 Work: +1 301-975-3528
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8265 Mobile: +1 240-672-5800 (014)
"The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." (015)
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