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

To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Edward Barkmeyer <ebarkmeyer@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2015 17:57:45 +0000
Message-id: <SN1PR11MB07330013BAD49F88BFBA3B01BCD60@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
John,    (01)

I agree with this:
> Possibility and necessity affect the logic, not the ontology    (02)

I disagree with this in more than one way:
> They can be treated in the same way as plans for the future.
> For example, if you're designing an airplane or a bridge, it's a possibility 
>until it's actually built.    (03)

The handling of future things is very much about what the ontological 
commitments are.  One "can" treat future things as 'possibilities', by making 
that ontological commitment, but one can also treat them as 'facts' by making a 
different commitment.  In a 4D logic, for example, it is entirely acceptable to 
provide the time stamp for temporal parts of a thing as future dates and times. 
 And it is a common practice in creating business calendars.  It is also 
possible to treat them as "mental events" a la Davidson.  Future is yet another 
ontological can of worms.    (04)

My engineering (and semiotics) background objects to your example.  The design 
for an aircraft is a design, not an aircraft.  The design exists independently 
of its realization.  The design itself may undergo state changes, which are 
modeled in various ways, including "versions", which are much more common than 
"temporal parts".      (05)

And one can make the same argument about "plans" for future events.  The "plan" 
is the "mental event" that conceptualizes the expected event.  It can exist 
long before the actual event, which may never come to pass.    (06)

In short, this is all about your ontology, and only some ontological choices 
affect the choice of logic.    (07)

-Ed    (08)

P.S.  Confusing a design for a thing with the thing itself is a semiotic error 
-- it is ontologically simply wrong.  The problem in many engineering 
disciplines is that the design engineers *only* work with designs and 
prototypes, and they use the *terms* for the actual things in describing their 
design objects.  But that is a term/denotation practice; and the denotation of 
the same terms in the manufacturing and operations environment is different.    (09)

-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F Sowa
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2015 8:13 AM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Watchout Watson: Here comes Amazon Machine 
Learning - ZDNet- 2015.04.10    (010)

Dear Matthew,    (011)

Possibility and necessity affect the logic, not the ontology:    (012)

> Another problematic category is possibilia (things that might be, or 
> possibly are in some parallel universe).    (013)

They can be treated in the same way as plans for the future.
For example, if you're designing an airplane or a bridge, it's a possibility 
until it's actually built.    (014)

> The criteria for including possibilia (or not) is utility vs the 
> baggage that comes with the extra commitment.    (015)

The categories of parts, part numbers, etc., might be empty in actuality, but 
they are specified in the ontology by the same methods before and after the 
things are built.    (016)

There are, of course, issues about storing information about the future in the 
database -- orders for future delivery of things that don't yet exist, 
reservations for hotels, travel, etc.
The orders and reservations exist in the present (or past), but they refer to 
things and events in the future.    (017)

Tom Johnston wrote a book about time and temporal issues in databases.  Perhaps 
he might care to comment on this point.    (018)

Following is an article in which I discuss issues about modality, possible 
worlds, and the laws that govern them:    (019)

    http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/worlds.pdf
    Worlds, models, and descriptions    (020)

And by the way, possibilities are another area where a strictly nominalist 
position (e.g., Quine's or Goodman's) gets into trouble.    (021)

Clarence Irving Lewis, who defined the first modern versions of modal logic, 
had been the chair of the philosophy department at Harvard while Quine was a 
student and later a professor.    (022)

But Quine was very strongly opposed to any version of modal logic and any talk 
of possibilia.  Hao Wang, who had earned a PhD under Quine's supervision, was 
very critical of Quine's attitude.  He called it *logical negativism*.  See    (023)

    Wang, Hao (1986) Beyond Analytic Philosophy: Doing Justice
    to What We Know, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.    (024)

John    (025)

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