Tom Gruber wrote:
> John Sowa wrote:
>> 1. I don't believe that the definitions in philosophy and
>> computer science differ in any significant way.
>> 3. If possible, we should adopt a common definition that
>> is acceptable to both fields
>
> The draft document is written as a logical walk down a set of distinctions,
> so that we could discuss the source of disagreements and clearly identify
> the point of departure. John's objections to the first and most fundamental
> distinction (philosophy vs. computer science word senses) makes evident the
> reason why certain topics are never "put to rest" by philosophers and other
> dialectic sportsmen. To say there is no difference between what a professor
> of Aristotelian ontology means by ontology and what a bioinformatics
> computer scientist managing a gene database means is absurd. (01)
Wow. I find the absurdity the other way around - and I have studied
both. No matter what you study you will have armchair theoreticians
and hands-on practitioners. Sounds to me like that is the distinction
you are alluding to here. All ontology, whether practiced by
"philosophers" or "computer scientists" is grounded in the same things. (02)
The biggest problem here is precisely this position of arrogance
stemming from a belief that computer scientists have invented
something new. I thought so, too, when I started doing this two
decades ago as a computer scientist. But I was wrong; ontology is
very, very, old. The only thing we (computer scientists) have added
are ways to implement, test, and run them. (03)
-Chris (04)
--
Dr. Christopher A. Welty IBM Watson Research Center
+1.914.784.7055 19 Skyline Dr.
cawelty@xxxxxxxxx Hawthorne, NY 10532
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/w/welty (05)
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