On Oct 22, 2014, at 8:19 PM, Paul Tyson <phtyson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: (01)
> Apologies for the previous empty reply...my mail agent got the better of
> me.
>
> On Wed, 2014-10-22 at 09:57 -0500, Pat Hayes wrote:
>
>> In some ways the digital/semantic technologies are making this worse.
>> Ontologies impose artificial identity conditions of their own, which
>> can clash both with other ontologies and with human intuitions. For
>> example, the widely popular provenance ontology
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-primer/ views every change as producing a
>> new entity, so changing a tire on a car gives you a new car. In
>> contrast, the BFO basic ontology (http://www.ifomis.org/bfo/), used in
>> hundreds of bioinformatics applications, enforces a sharp, rigid
>> distinction between continuants and occurrents (roughly, objects and
>> processes) with completely different identity conditions across time.
>> On the other hand, the 'oil and gas' (now generalized) ontology ISO
>> 15926, widely used in industry, treats everything as what BFO would
>> call an occcurrent. All of these are different and mutually
>> incompatible basic assumptions about identity, but likely would not
>> even be actively considered by human users (except some philosophers,
>> maybe.)
>
> Would not then prudence suggest we consider alternative approaches that
> might have a better chance of meeting human needs? (02)
I am not sure what you are suggesting. My point is that we already have
alternative approaches. That is the problem. (03)
> These and other apparently insuperable difficulties discussed in this
> forum all seem to arise from systems based on mathematical logic. Is it
> possible our faith in mathematical logic as an ultimate aid to human
> knowledge and reasoning is misplaced? (04)
The logic involved is really not particularly relevant. The same ontological
distinctions would arise whatever the formalism used to express them. Indeed,
much of the debates over these issues is conducted in natural language in the
philosophical literature. (05)
Pat (06)
>
> Regards,
> --Paul
>
>
>
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> (07)
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