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I'm detecting a tone of agression/defensiveness in recent
messages.
I see phrases like:
* 'to say X is absurd' and
* 'this
style of long-winded argument by attrition'.
* 'arrogance',
* 'tacky'
*
'cheap potshot'
* 'Or is it based on a few anecdotes and your own personal
feelings'.
Many people are saying 'YOU said this' or 'YOUR idea is
silly' which comes across a personal attack.
I believe our goals will be
better served by toning down the judgemental and personal wording.
It is
more constructive to attack the idea or belief and wording it like "the claim
that X is unfounded because..."
Michael
==========================
Michael Uschold
M&CT, Phantom
Works
425
373-2845
michael.f.uschold@xxxxxxxxxx
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-----Original
Message-----
From: Christopher Menzel [mailto:cmenzel@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday,
April 20, 2007 12:02 PM
To: Ontology Summit 2007 Forum
Subject: Re:
[ontology-summit] Ontology Framework Draft Statement for theOntology
Summit
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.
This is a just cheap potshot. Very tacky.
> 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.
It just ain't so. Both
the philosophical ontologies past and present and modern web ontologies are
attempts to organize our experience theoretically by identifying certain
fundamental categories of things and the principles that characterize
them. At root -- focusing on *content*, not representation -- there are
only two notable differences between (most) philosophical ontologies and
web
ontologies: (1) Scope and (2) the assumption of realism. Re
(1), most web ontologies have a more limited scope (e.g., the human
genome)
that many philosophers would consider part of some more specialized
science. (Though many would not, especially these days
-- the
philosopher W.V. Quine, for example, thought that the only legitimate source of
ontological knowledge was the physical
sciences.) Re (2), as you
yourself note, many, though certainly not all, philosophical ontologies have
been attempts to characterize the structure of "big-R" Reality. And there
certainly is overall a much more pragmatic, even skeptical view among modern web
ontologists about whether or not their ontologies reflect anything about Reality
per se. But the fact is, many folks working on web ontologies (gene
ontologies being a notable example) *do* believe that their ontologies are
accurate reflections of Reality, albeit with respect to a more specialized,
concrete domain than a traditional philosophical ontology. Second, though,
the assumption of realism, while arguably a useful methodological principle, is
completely irrelevant to the assessment of an ontology. Even in
philosophy, ontologies are judged by their effectiveness at solving problems,
whether philosophical, conceptual, or computational. The ontologies that
endure are the ones that most effectively solve the problems at hand. If
one wishes to infer from its effectiveness that a given ontology is big-T True,
that's fine, but, for web ontologies especially, it has no practical
upshot. So this distinction between philosophical ontologies and web
ontologies isn't even especially relevant.
> There is a new word sense
for ontology, just as there are new word
> senses for other technical
terms in computer science: process, client,
> server, etc. While my
training in philosophy is surely inferior, I
> would dare say (with no
loss of irony) that John's argument makes an
> ontological category error.
The Ontologies of philosophy are theories,
> ideas, ways of thinking about
the world, and arguments about the
> nature of Reality. The
ontologies that are the subject of W3C
> standards, manipulated by
software, and used to represent huge stores
> of data in databases are
material, concrete, objective documents in
> the same category as
programs, database schemata, and other digitally
> stored
representations.
I think it is you who is making the category mistake
here. You are confusing the *content* of an ontology with its
representation. It is the *form* in which a web ontology is expressed --
notably, OWL -- that is subject to W3C standards and manipulated by
software. But the content of the data and documents they are used to
express reflects some organization of the information in some domain according
to basic categories and principles -- just like a philosophical
ontology.
> There is a reason why a lot of people have stopped reading
this list.
> It is because of this style of long-winded argument by
attrition.
Have you done a survey to confirm your claim here? Or is
it based on a few anecdotes and your own personal feelings? If the latter,
it is irresponsible and unjustified rhetoric.
Chris
Menzel
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