This continues to be an intriguing conversation -- and I find myself
laughing, looking at the very excellent pdf at
http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/soup_llr.pdf (01)
I grew up on this vision, and burned so much of this thinking into my soul.
Thank you for teaching me so much. (02)
But I came into this learning experience with a top-down perspective and the
language of dimensionality. And my revelation was stipulation -- and not
bottom-up empiricism. (03)
So, this thing about "what is a chair" -- "one of the most common words in
the English language" (04)
(laugh) (05)
I don't need no freaking fuzzy logic to stipulate the boundary values that
create the abstract object "chair" -- as opposed to that other object
"not-chair" -- (06)
Just go boom. Cut it like a diamond. Announce to the world what you mean,
and if they ask, you further stipulate. 100% absolutely context-specific. (07)
This ain't fuzzy. It goes straight down the cascade to n decimal places in
some unit of measurement and all it takes is motivation. Why do you need
that level of accuracy? (08)
I know -- this the Holy War of The Scruffies and The Neats. (09)
Really, the whole thing is just bottom-up versus top down. (010)
So, today -- the Scruffies rule the world because the "Top" -- that curious
beyond-words object at the indefinable ultimate level in the taxonomy --
just has not yet proven cooperative in our efforts to neatly encapsulate it
in a box. (011)
But the world is crunching this problem every day. Complexity is just Too
Complex. There is a massive hunger in the world for holistic integration.
The forces of globalization are driving the transformation of language and
conceptual form. (012)
All these undue violations of Occam -- all these weird little
complexly-named sub-spaces squirming around inside one another. At large
scale, where the world has to learn to collaborate with itself across
boundaries, it's grossly inefficient -- maybe even deadly. The lightning of
the revolution is coming.... (013)
:) (014)
So, of course, in the meantime -- heuristics rule the day. After all, we
got to pay the mortgage. Isn't that the proof of correctness the world
respects? (015)
Well, yes -- until we have to work together to fix global warming.... (016)
Or maybe fix national health care... (017)
And then -- watch the sparks of incommensurate dimensionality flying in
every direction... (018)
* (019)
Thanks for all of this. Best respects to all, with appreciation -- (020)
Bruce Schuman
NETWORK NATION: http://networknation.net
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/infinitehoop
(805) 966-9515, PO Box 23346, Santa Barbara CA USA 93121 (021)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F Sowa
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2015 9:54 AM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] master data vs. ontologies (022)
Tom and David, (023)
TJ
> And I don't want to use "knowledge base" in that "union" sense of the
> term if there is already a well-established accepted use which differs
> from that.
>
> Perhaps John can enlighten us. (024)
Thanks for your trust in my opinion on this point. (025)
But I agree with Wittgenstein about the open-ended variety of language games
that can be played with any vocabulary
-- even in fields as seemingly precise as mathematics and computer science. (026)
For examples, look at the slides about knowledge soup (which is my term for
the human "knowledge base"):
http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/soup_llr.pdf (027)
Slides 3 and 4 show the wide range of uses for the word 'chair'.
That's one of the most common words in English. (028)
But look at slide 3 for 'number', which is the most fundamental word in
mathematics. That slide adds the following observations: (029)
> Concepts in science and mathematics grow and change.
>
> Consider the evolution in the basic terms of physics during the past
> century: mass, energy, force, momentum, space, time, gravity, light,
> heat.
>
> Engineers often use different definitions of those terms for different
> components of the same system. (030)
Slides 8 and 9 generalize those observations and apply them to other areas,
including computer science. Slide 18 cites related readings for more
detail. (031)
DP
> MD may be... (032)
Your lists of "language games" with 'MD' and 'MDM' are similar to my
examples for the words 'chair', 'number', etc. (033)
Re Wikipedia: Since it can be edited by anybody and everybody, I use it for
quick information. But for anything important, I always do more digging.
For the word 'ontology', as used in DBs and KBs, their definition is not
bad: (034)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_%28information_science%29
> In computer science and information science, an ontology is a formal
> naming and definition of the types, properties, and interrelationships
> of the entities that really or fundamentally exist for a particular
> domain of discourse. It is thus a practical application of
> philosophical ontology, with a taxonomy. (035)
But the phrase "really or fundamentally exist for a particular domain of
discourse" is confusing and inaccurate. I would replace it with "are
assumed to exist in a particular domain". (036)
I'd raise similar issues about many of the other points in it. (037)
John (038)
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