Re: [ontolog-forum] Watch out Watson: Here comes Amazon Machine Learning

[Thomas Johnston <tmj44p@xxxxxxx>]

Matthew,

<<<<<

MW>] I take logical existence to mean the things you can talk about, which is different from do things exist in the sense of being able to kick them.

 >>>>>

Ah, I take it that you are alluding to Dr. Johnson's refutation of Berkeley's idealist metaphysics.

1) Do prime numbers and compassion exist as more than "things you can talk about"? You certainly can't kick them. Do they not exist at all, then? Do they exist in some sense that is less "real" than the sense in which things you can kick exist?

2) For anything that has more than "logical existence", how do we discover anything about it that we can then talk about? How can we "see" what things are like independently of the perceptual gestalts (in the case of sense-data-accessible objects) and the conceptual gestalts that we use to think about them and make judgments about them? And if we can't see what things are like independently of these gestalts, then how can we say anything at all about what they are like -- really like, independent of the distorting effects of our gestalts?

This takes us back to Kant, who concluded that we could say nothing about the thing-in-itself (the ding-an-sich). And then on to the German Idealists who concluded that, in that case, why distinguish between things as we judge them to be and things as they are in themselves? Why not just drop the ding-an-sich?

So, mutatis mutandis, why distinguish between "logical existence" and "things exist(ing) in the sense of being able to kick them"? 

3) Supposing you want to make the distinction regardless, to what use would you put it? How would holding that distinction cause an ontology engineer to build different things than he would have built had he not held that distinction?

Tom

On Saturday, April 25, 2015 2:53 PM, Matthew West <dr.matthew.west@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Dear Leo,

I think the real question is “What does it mean to exist in a logical context?”

 

LO> I think Quine had it mostly right, as Thomas mentioned, because he (Quine) tried to connect the semantics to the underlying ontological referents (once again, as many have tried) by using logic and the objects quantified over. However, I don’t think that is quite right, since at least to my mind, you can quantify over notions that you don’t really think exist, ever or even potentially (and so logic is a language for describing, not a language for telling you what there is). However, logic does allow you to have access to those things, and if you quantify over them, then they are at least candidates for real things, i.e, they provide a kind of low level entry for ontological commitment. So an ontology is a logical theory, yes, but about something in the real world. The “logical theory” part of that is easier than the “real world” part.

[MW>] I take logical existence to mean the things you can talk about, which is different from do things exist in the sense of being able to kick them.

 

Regards

 

Matthew West

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