Chris and Fabian, (01)
Despite all the philosophy that has been kicked around
on this list, some readers might not have heard of Gettier
or his (in)famous problem: (02)
http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html
Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? (03)
Following is a more detailed discussion: (04)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/
The Analysis of Knowledge (05)
The short summary is that the traditional definition of
knowledge as justified true belief was challenged in 1963
by the above article. Gettier presented examples of beliefs
that were true and justified, but justified for the wrong
reasons. Therefore, they should not be considered knowledge. (06)
Gettier's examples were so disturbing to the philosophical
community over the past 45 years that they responded with
numerous articles in JTP (Journals of Tenure and Promotion). (07)
My jaundiced view of most of those articles is that they
confirm the observations by Kant, Wittgenstein, and others
that natural concepts, such as Knowledge, cannot be defined
by necessary and sufficient conditions. (08)
That is just one among many reasons why I believe that an attempt
to define a large ontology whose categories are fully specified
by necessary and sufficient conditions is not only a waste of time,
money, and energy, but a misguided and counterproductive approach. (09)
However, there are good reasons for having many special-case
theories (say, domain ontologies or microtheories) that can be
defined by detailed axioms. Then much looser terminologies, such
as WordNet and others, can be used to cross-index the words in
natural languages and an open-ended library of domain ontologies. (010)
John (011)
_________________________________________________________________
Msg Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontology-summit/
Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontology-summit/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontology-summit-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Community Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/OntologySummit2008/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2008
Community Portal: http://ontolog.cim3.net/ (012)
|