Just to chime in very briefly -- I wanted to tack into this agenda elements of a previous slide from John, that I think contributes additional perspective to this emerging clarification, that I personally sense is quickly becoming more significant.
In this message, I am putting together three elements from John, which I understand as:
A. General sociological observations about the professional real-world facts of life, and a problem we might (?) be able to do something about
B. Immediate recommendations for a compression or general clean-up of the language in common use
C. Real-world constraints about real-world ontology -- and the issue of "relating multiple ontologies"
- Bruce
****
A. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
1. The overwhelming majority of the programmers don't understand
the philosophical issues. For them, those mysterious words
may have some hidden meaning. So they carefully preserve them.
2. If those mysterious words weren't present, the programmers
would examine the software to see exactly what is going on.
But they have a vague feeling that those words have some
deep power that goes beyond what is in the executable code.
3. For the philosophers who don't understand the software,
they may have a comfy feeling that their ideas have somehow
filtered down into the implementation. If so, they are
even more confused than the programmers.
4. The result is a total breakdown in communication between
the philosophers and the people who develop and use the
software that is supposed to be based on the philosophy.
B. IMMEDIATE RECOMMENDATIONS
1. A formal logic with the barest *minimum* amount of terminology.
It must at least contain FOL + the option of quantifying over
functions and relations + the option of using metalanguage for
talking about whatever languages are being defined.
2. A huge *purging* of the immense philosophical terminology
to a minimal set that is formally defined in the logic of #1.
3. The option of designing an open-ended family of formal notations,
linear and/or graphic, that have a precise mapping to #1 and #2.
4. There may be huge debates about how to map NL terminology
(including any and all terms in philosophy, science, business,
the arts, etc., to the terms in point #2). But any proposed
solution must be defined in the logic and minimal terminology of
points #1 and #2 (or #3, which is defined in terms of #1 and #2).
C. CONSTRAINTS FROM REAL-WORLD ONTOLOGY
I agree with every point of this slide -- but want to understand each of these points as true with specific clarifications.
Slide 3 of http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/patolog4.pdf
RELATING MULTIPLE ONTOLOGIES
The lack of consensus is inevitable.
● Different applications, different fields, different requirements.
● General-purpose systems require multiple paradigms.
● Many logics, many reasoning methods, many ontologies.
Descriptive ontology is always fallible:
● Describes the concepts of empirical sciences and everyday life.
● Must accommodate anything anyone observes or does.
● Changes with every new discovery or theory.
Normative ontology is only true by convention:
● Specifies detailed conventions for specific fields or applications.
● Changes with every new policy, invention, or innovation.
For interoperability among heterogeneous systems,
● An underspecified, descriptive upper level ontology.
● Open-ended variety of descriptive or normative microtheories.
*********************************
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F Sowa
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2015 10:31 AM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontologies and languages
Tom,
I completely agree with you:
> What the history of Philosophy, and especially of ontology, shows us
> is that important philosophers have not failed at the winnowing task,
> but simply worked hard and carefully to -- with apologies for the
> shift of metaphor -- slice the ontological pie in different ways.
I would *never* try to stifle philosophical debate. That is absolutely essential for clarifying the issues and deciding what to represent, how to represent it, and what to do with the results.
But everything that can be implemented on a digital computer can be expressed in first-order logic. Some extensions to FOL for supporting metalanguage and quantifying over relations and functions can simplify and clarify the mapping.
What we have today is a huge amount of words taken out of context from the vast literature of philosophy and used to decorate the formal notations. It's OK to put some of those words (with citations to the original context) in the comments.
But the meaning of the formalism is precisely defined by the model theory. None of the philosophical subtleties survive the translation from the original context into the software.
When you use philosophical words to decorate the formal language, they are *worse* than useless because they confuse *everybody*:
1. The overwhelming majority of the programmers don't understand
the philosophical issues. For them, those mysterious words
may have some hidden meaning. So they carefully preserve them.
2. If those mysterious words weren't present, the programmers
would examine the software to see exactly what is going on.
But they have a vague feeling that those words have some
deep power that goes beyond what is in the executable code.
3. For the philosophers who don't understand the software,
they may have a comfy feeling that their ideas have somehow
filtered down into the implementation. If so, they are
even more confused than the programmers.
4. The result is a total breakdown in communication between
the philosophers and the people who develop and use the
software that is supposed to be based on the philosophy.
My recommendation (copy below) is to force both sides to face the fact that digital computers are limited to FOL (or modest variations of FOL). Any terms that don't have a precisely defined mapping to FOL can't have any useful effect on any implementation -- but they can create a lot of confusion.
Therefore, the philosophers and the implementers must agree on a simple terminology that *both* sides understand and that has a precisely defined mapping to what the computer does.
John
______________________________________________________________
As a general strategy, I would recommend:
1. A formal logic with the barest *minimum* amount of terminology.
It must at least contain FOL + the option of quantifying over
functions and relations + the option of using metalanguage for
talking about whatever languages are being defined.
2. A huge *purging* of the immense philosophical terminology
to a minimal set that is formally defined in the logic of #1.
3. The option of designing an open-ended family of formal notations,
linear and/or graphic, that have a precise mapping to #1 and #2.
4. There may be huge debates about how to map NL terminology
(including any and all terms in philosophy, science, business,
the arts, etc., to the terms in point #2). But any proposed
solution must be defined in the logic and minimal terminology of
points #1 and #2 (or #3, which is defined in terms of #1 and #2).