Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontologies and languages

[Thomas Johnston <tmj44p@xxxxxxx>]

John,

I completely agree with you, too. I wanted to emphasize that winnowing down a vocabulary is, at the same time, and depending on how one defines the basic terms one ends up with, making important ontological choices, and that by studying some of the important philosophers of the past, we can become more aware of what positions our winnowing down commits us to, and what positions it prevents us from adopting.

On Friday, June 19, 2015 1:30 PM, John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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).

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