Chris, John, (01)
I've changed the subject line of this message to better describe the
topic. (02)
In general, I tend to agree with you both concerning profligacy of
models -- but for logical theories. And it seems to me that ontologies
add (or subtract) something to that notion, i.e., their concern with
the real world *. And yes, I don't want to get into long philosophical
arguments either, amateurish or otherwise. And I know that "real" begs
the question. But I still think there is something crucial there. (03)
I think one needs to use the best ideas, principles, analyses that come
out of formal ontology and formal semantics in the development of
(little o) engineering ontologies. For example, I think the OntoClean
methodology is an excellent step in the right direction, focusing on
meta-properties that semantically distinguish choices in the
subclass/is_a taxonomic backbone of an ontology. Similarly, the 3D/4D
distinctions and analyses that come out of formal ontology are
excellent for considering how you develop an ontology, as are notions
of intension/extension, possible worlds, etc., distributed/cumulative
readings, abstract individuals, fusion operators, interval semantics,
etc., from formal semantics. And to me, all these are rooted in the
real world. They are important precisely because they are tools that
try to help our understanding of some real domain **. (04)
* Real world to my mind allows for conditionals, abstract realms,
fictional or dream domains or other cognitive states (internal
experience is still real experience). Mathematics to me is real, even
though not all mathematics is known. In a very real sense, I think even
mathematics is like science, partially empirically determined or
discovered. (05)
** One potential example: phlogiston theory. I think that it is or can
be a logical theory, even today. But is it an ontology? Nowadays, I
would say no, because it doesn't represent our best science of what is
real. Was it an ontology at one time: yes, quite possibly. (06)
Thanks,
Leo (07)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F.
Sowa
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 1:12 PM
To: Ontology Summit 2007 Forum
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] Defining "ontology" (08)
Chris, (09)
Yes, I agree: (010)
> I am general agreement with your definition, John, except for the
> criterion of consistency -- not that it isn't a good idea, but the
> consistency problem in propositional logic is NP-complete and it's
> flat out undecidable in predicate logic (by Church's theorem, a
> corollary to Gödel's incompleteness theorem). Hence, it is simply
> theoretically impossible in general to enforce. (011)
I was trying to give some modest support to Leo's desire to eliminate
nonsense, but I admit that there are no good ways of doing that. (012)
The equivalent for programming languages would be to outlaw any
program that gets hung up in a loop. Although it may be desirable
to do so, such a prohibition would cause Microsoft to go bankrupt
and create an inconvenient hiccup in the stock market. (013)
John (014)
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