Dear G.P. Zarri -- (01)
Thank you for your comments. For me, this conversation is very instructive.
Though I am a database programmer, my background in ontology is mostly
self-educated exploration of cognitive science and analytic models of
conceptual structure. I am certainly interested in "expressive" knowledge
representation. (02)
I tend to be motivated by broad humanistic concerns -- politics, governance,
human collaboration in a context of extreme complexity and diversity -- and
see semantic ontology as a kind "universal bridge-work science". So, I am
out there doing what I can to identify what seem like critical general
principles, that might help align some collaborative approach. (03)
This morning, I am looking at one of the most potent books I ever saw on
this subject -- "Object Oriented Design, With Applications", by Grady Booch
(1991) -- which I would say strongly states many of these basics, generally
in ways that are consistent with the principles taught by John Sowa. The
complete book in its most recent edition is available in a high-grade PDF at
http://www.nicolasdanino.com/tongji/OOAD_Booch_3rd_Edition.pdf (04)
The book is rich with charming illustrations on fundamental issues of
hierarchy and abstraction. I expect to go through this PDF and paste
essential elements and the illustrations into a word.docx file. Do these
principles illuminate the argument for a revolutionary simplification -
consistent across disciplines and industries and cultures? I am inclined
to say "yes"... (05)
With appreciation, (06)
- Bruce Schuman (07)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Gian Piero
Zarri
Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 2015 4:09 AM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] The "qua-entities" paradigm (08)
Dear Bruce, (09)
I reply to the original mail, given that your subsequent discussion with
John Sowa goes well-beyond the original "qua-entity" topic. (010)
I agree completely with you that the so-called "counting problem" is not
conceptually too difficult to solve, and I think that the "qua-entity"
solution the SW people have imagined to solve this "problem" is equivalent
to cracking a nut with a sledgehammer. Moreover, the proliferation of
"individuals" associated with that solution is in patent contradiction with
the Occam's principle proscribing the multiplication of entities without
necessity. (011)
Reducing the problem to the relationships between two tables is, however, a
little bit simplistic. To be complete, you should in fact multiply your
tables to take into account also the spatio-temporal information, the
circumstances of the flights, the modalities, the interactions among the
protagonists of the flying events, and so on. Not too long ago, well-known
data base specialists denied any interest to the knowledge representation
discipline saying that a well-designed relational DB system could solve any
possible representational problem.
Trying, however, to model everything as "flat tables" often leads to awkward
database design and to unnecessarily complicated queries. "Good"
and "expressive" knowledge representation systems are today still
particularly necessary - of course, not those in the "qua-entities" style. (012)
Best regards, (013)
G.P. Zarri (014)
Le 01/06/2015 18:45, Bruce Schuman a écrit :
>> With this ontology, multiple "passenger" events can be recognized as
> temporal parts of the same "person" process.
>
> Hmmm. What am I missing here...? Must be a lot.
>
> Maybe this isn't a universal approach, or overlooks something
> important, but from the point of view of simple database design, all
> this issue seems to require is a database table of unique individual
> people -- with a list of descriptors/attributes adequate for whatever
> the purposes might be, and another database table of "flights".
>
> Every passenger (with their check-list of attributes or tags) has a
> unique ID number, and so do the flights. Associated with every flight
> is the list of passengers.
>
> For me -- a "person" is an irreducible object with any number of
> attributes (that may or may not be transient -- and yes, maybe
> "duplicates" are a problem). A "flight" is (or would seem to be) a
> well-defined object or class. This complexity looks to me like
> nothing more than a simple many-to-one mapping (many people from the
> "people" table mapped to 1 flight, where they become "passengers")
>
> I guess I am following Russell's definition:
>
> "The thing-property ontology, which Russell (1918) pushed to the
> extreme of treating objects as nothing but "a bundle of properties,"
> is derived from the substance-property-accident representation of
> Aristotle's early philosophy."
>
> http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/signproc.pdf
>
> But this is so obvious, I must be grossly underestimating something or
> missing some huge point. Sorry if this is a mindlessly trivial comment.
>
> - Bruce Schuman
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F
> Sowa
> Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2015 10:12 PM
> To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] The "qua-entities" paradigm
>
> Leo and Gian Piero,
>
> Leo
>> Krifka, Manfred. 1990. "Four Thousand Ships Passed Through The Lock:
>> Object-Induced Measure Functions on Events". Linguistics and
>> Philosophy
>> 13 (1990), 487-520.
> Gian Piero
>> Thanks for telling me about [Krifka's paper] - even if, in my humble
>> opinion, a complex formal analysis is not really necessary to deal
>> with this topic.
> I agree that the paper is (a) interesting, but (b) far more complex
> than it should be. It has 34 pages of formalism -- see below for
> excerpts that show why it's so complex.
>
> I agree with Matthew that a 4D system can simplify many descriptions.
> That is the basis for Whitehead's process ontology:
>
> 1. Mereology + 4D space-time
>
> 2. Processes are fundamental, with events as spatial and temporal
> parts of processes.
>
> 3. Objects are slowly changing processes that are sufficiently
> stable that repeated events can be recognized as parts of
> the same process.
>
> With this ontology, multiple "passenger" events can be recognized as
> temporal parts of the same "person" process.
>
> Whitehead's ontology is far more compatible with modern science than
> any ontology that takes macroscopic objects as primitive.
>
> Rescher wrote a very good critique of the object-based ontologies by
> Quine, Strawson, and others. For a summary with references, see pp. 5
> and 6 of http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/signproc.pdf
>
> John
> ______________________________________________________________________
> _
>
> http://semantics.uchicago.edu/kennedy/classes/s07/events/krifka90.pdf
>
> [The solution] is couched in a more general framework for the
> semantics of mass nouns, count nouns, measure constructions, and
> temporal constitution (i.e., aspectual classes), which was developed in
Krifka (1986, to appear).
> This framework takes on the one hand the treatment of mass nouns and
> plural nouns in an algebraic (lattice-theoretic) semantics, as
> developed by Link (1983), and the event semantics developed by
> Davidson (1967) and Parsons
> (1980) on the other (cf.
> Hinrichs, 1985; Bach, 1986; Link, 1987; and Lasersohn, 1988 for
> related approaches). Furthermore, it combines them with notions
> developed in the theory of measurement...
>
> In Section (3), I will present two versions of this analysis, the
> second of which is semantically somewhat more complicated, but more in
> agreement with the syntactic structure...
>
> In Section (4), I will go into some cases which seem to pose special
> problems for at least one of the two analyses - namely, coordination,
> quantifiers, comparison, anaphora, and phase nouns. Finally, I will
> argue that the event-related readings of our examples are a special
> case of a more common phenomenon, which in general can be described as
> the extension of measure functions from one domain to another...
>
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