Dear Colleagues,
This is the second of a series of emails I intend to write to reflect on the
excellent session we had last Thursday. If you haven't were unable to attend
and haven't had the chance to catch up, the archive is here:
http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2013_02_07 (01)
Chris Partridge made a plea for an architectural approach to developing a
top ontology, considering the ontological commitments. There were two slides
in particular that struck me. The first listed typical ontological choices
that a top ontology needs to make, and be adopted by domain ontologies that
use the top ontology, to ensure consistency. These are: (02)
Perdurantism versus endurantism
This makes the choice between whether e.g. physical objects wholly exist at
each point in time, and pass through time, or are extended in time as well
as space and have states that are the physical object for a period of time. (03)
Presentism versus eternalism
Presentism takes the view that only things that exist now exist, and that
things in the past and the future do not exist. Eternalism take the view
that all points in time exist, and we can talk about historical objects as
existing, and future objects. (04)
Absolute versus relative space, time and spacetime
Absolute space-time essentially supports a Newtonian view of the world.
Relative space-time would be the view of Einstein. (05)
Modally extended versus unextended individuals
Modality is about supporting what could be as well as what is. You can
choose not to support modality, use a modal logic, or take a Possible Worlds
approach. (06)
Materialism and non-materialism
Materialism takes things that exist as matter or energy. Idealism is an
alternative that considers that reality is essentially mentally constructed. (07)
Extensionalism versus non-extensionalism - I - Universals
Are sets/types defined by their membership, or to put it another way, can
the membership of sets/types change or not? (08)
Extensionalism versus non-extensionalism - II - Particulars
Can two objects share their the same space (or space-time if you are a
perdurantist)? (09)
Topology of time - branching or linear.
In branching temporal logics, each moment in time may split into various
possible futures. Linear time does not have this possibility. (010)
Chris was arguing that you need to consider the order of the choices you
make, there are natural dependencies between them. These are not the only
choices that need to be made, and the combinations may seem daunting, but in
practice, the choices naturally cluster together. Certainly, your top
ontology will be making assumptions about these issues. It is always much
better to know what assumptions you have made, than find yourself tripped up
by them having made the choices implicitly, or find yourself with domain
ontologies that are inconsistent from making different choices. (011)
Together the choices you make can be considered an ontological paradigm that
a top ontology embodies. (012)
The second slide was about evaluating the resulting paradigm, and he
followed Kuhn with his criteria:
Kuhn's six criteria
. Generality: where the scope of the improved theory increased.
. Simplicity: where the improved theory is less complicated (it is typically
more 'deeply simple' in the complexity theory
sense).
. Explanatory power: the ability of the improved theory to give increased
meaning.
. Fruitfulness: the ability of the improved theory to meet currently
unspecified requirements or to be easily extendable to do so.
. Objectivity: the ability of the improved theory to provide a more
objective (shared) understanding of the world.
. Precision: the ability of the improved theory to give a more precise
picture of the world. (013)
These are quite high level criteria, but they certainly ring bells for me. (014)
Regards (015)
Matthew West
Information Junction
Tel: +44 1489 880185
Mobile: +44 750 3385279
Skype: dr.matthew.west
matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/ (016)
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