Re: [ontolog-forum] Computer science ontology vs. philosophical ontology

[William Frank <williamf.frank@xxxxxxxxx>]

John,  To me your examples are very interesting,

to me, they are indicative of the conundrums that arise when one

considers common English syntactic structures, as the basis for a semantics,, rather than more fundamental, language independent logical categories.

For example, if we

take prepositions, like 'in' to be meaningful in themselves, when they are notoriously context dependent

we get something, we just CAN"T create a meaningful ontology around.   Even in closely related languages like German, the in cognate occupies an overlapping space, not the same space, and has lots of uses: Is
this sentence is in English' anything like the meeting is in the room? 

OTOH,

inroom,

has a fairly clear meaning but is a highly specific, not easy to generalize relation, and does not distinquish between the sense in which a chair is in a room and a meeting is in the room and an area of contiguous space is in the room.  

if, instead, we drop prepositions altogether, and treat them as a sign that there is probably a relationship in which one of the roles is the relationship is indicated by the particular preposition, such as 'in', we get something which I find more fundamental

'takes place'

is a relation which has three roles

the thing taking place, 
which must be an event

the place in which the thing takes place
which must be a location

the time period during which the taking place is true, indicated by the preposition between ... and //// 

In English, the place is indicated by the preposition 'in', the thing taking place has no preposition.

So, the meeting is in room 336

becomes

there is a taking place relation

in which

the meeting is the thing taking place

and

room 336 is the location where the taking place happens

On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 3:42 PM, John McClure <jmcclure@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Not sure perhaps slightly off-topic. Trying to understand your description of 'class nominalism'.

I am creating an ontology for statements like:
   Y:X is:a Type:Y
versus
   Y:X rdf:type Type:Y

Heres another example:
  Conference:X is:in Room:Y
versus
  Conference:X inRoom Room:Y.

Are these representative examples of the distinctions you're making? Certainly both the domain and range of an "is:in" property would be nonspecific, while "inRoom" would have as a specific range all objects -of-type Room. IOW, it's difficult to identify axioms applicable to an "is:in" property (as Pat Hayes challenges me to develop!) in contrast to the (simplistic) range-axiom applicable to an "inRoom" property.
Thanks/jmc

On 10/24/2013 7:02 AM, Avril Styrman wrote:

Dear all,

I was wondering whether the members of this forum have got any benefit  
from linguistic philosophy in automated natural language processing,  
and how? As many of you know, analytical philosophy has concentrated  
largely on the structure of language since the early 20th century. A  
clarifying dichotomy can be made into: (a) elements that are  
necessarily present in the investigation of the concrete nature  
(physics, biology, chemistry, etc.); (b) elements that are present in  
the investigation of language, but not in type (a) investigation,  
i.e., merely linguistic elements. While the identification of type (a)  
elements may help the natural scientists, they don’t get a lot out of  
type (b) elements. This drove me to ask: who in fact gets benefit from  
the investigation of type (b) elements? Examples of type (b) elements  
follow, with explanations of why they are insufficient in type (a)  
investigation.

(1) Class nominalism: the meaning of property P is that a particular  
that has property P belongs to class P. That a red particular belongs  
to class red really does not help the natural scientist in  
understanding what redness means. However, the appeal of class  
nominalism becomes less mysterious when it is understood that it is a  
linguistics-driven theory. For instance, suppose that the following  
algorithm is applied to all phrases in a book: place all words x in  
phrases of the form “x is red” into class red. When we order the  
computer to list all red objects, the computer lists all members of  
the class red. This is useful in the linguistic sense, but  
over-propagating the class approach is not practical, as Putnam  
testifies: “Let us, then, keep our properties, while not in any way  
despising the useful work performed for us by our classes!”

(2) Ontology of properties that aims to get by with simple properties  
that have no parts. That the property methane is simple, really does  
not help the natural scientist in understanding what methane means:  
all natural scientists accept that methane has proper parts. However,  
when we ask the computer “Is there methane in the swamp?” answering  
“yes” based on an automated internet query does not require any appeal  
to the structure of methane molecules.

And so forth. Philosophical papers don’t usually explicitly state that  
they are involved with only linguistic philosophy. But understanding  
whether the paper is about (a) or (b) clarifies things a lot. Then  
again, type (b) investigation naturally should benefit someone, and it  
should be possible to also explain how does it in fact contribute to  
some science, directly or indirectly. If it contributes to automated  
natural language processing, then maybe linguistic philosophy should  
be moved into the department of general linguistics, where it competes  
with the correct competitors.


Any comments? Does anyone know how the contemporary linguistic  
philosophy contributes to automated natural language understanding?

Avril
Ystävällisin terveisin,

Avril Styrman
avril.styrman@xxxxxxxxxxx
puh. +358 40 7000 589

 
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