Tom, (01)
I strongly agree with that point: (02)
> I feel that the ontology work I have already done in BDTP is pretty
> solid, and does establish my claim that there is a descriptive, not
> prescriptive, upper-level ontology common to all relational databases,
> and that it is essentially (pardon the pun) Aristotelian (03)
I believe that a solid understanding of classical logic is important.
By 'classical', I mean (04)
1. Aristotle's syllogisms with Venn diagrams for the model-theoretic
semantics. This is the original "Description Logic". It's still
the most widely used subset, and it's a good introduction. (05)
2. Stoic-Boolean propositional logic with truth tables for semantics.
For a summary of #1 and #2: http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/aristo.pdf (06)
3. Ockham's theory of propositions as a combination of #1 and #2 with
an informal (stated in Latin) Tarski-style semantics. (07)
4. Traditional first-order logic with Tarski-style models. (08)
But it's also important to recognize the many variations. Among them
are the many versions of nonmonotonic logics with open world semantics
instead of the Tarski-style of closed world semantics. (09)
There are also the huge number of very complex issues about the way
that names, indexicals, and IRIs refer to things in the world. The
thorny issues about open worlds and IRIs are at the heart of many
complex discussions about the Semantic Web and the various logics. (010)
I gathered 100+ documents on these issues in my IKL page:
http://www.jfsowa.com/ikl (011)
If you or anybody else has suggestions for adding more documents
(preferably freely available on the WWW), please let me know. (012)
> I also think that the correlations between that ontology and the
> mathematics of relational databases, described in Chapter 5 of that
> book, are correct, and that my use of both speech act theory and
> an extension of Gricean rules of conversational implicature I
> propose, to define a theory of tritemporal data management, have
> led to useful developments. (013)
I agree. I believe that more IT people should become familiar with
those issues. They are especially important for anyone who is
designing user languages and interfaces. (014)
On that page, I mentioned that John McCarthy's writings are
relevant to nearly all the issues. Among them is his proposal
for Elephant 2000. For references, see the second paragraph
after Figure 1 of the IKL page. He proposed the language in
1989, but the last two references cite an interview and slides
he presented in 2008. (015)
John (016)
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