Pat and Martin, (01)
PH>>> There is no evidence for, and considerable pragmatic evidence
>>> against, the thesis that ontology engineering is improved by
>>> approaching it with the tools of philosophy, and certainly not
>>> with the methodologies of contemporary professional philosophy. (02)
MH>> I think that is too bold a statement, and I would like to see the
>> "pragmatic evidence against the thesis that ontology engineering
>> is improved by approaching it with the tools of philosophy". (03)
PH> Oh, for a start: the fact that OBO is founded on the idea of a
> 'continuant', a close-to-incoherent idea with its roots in 19th
> century Polish phenomenology. (04)
I personally prefer Whitehead's ontology, which is closer to both
Heraclitus and modern physics: Everything is in flux, and what
people call "objects" are relatively slow moving processes. (05)
But those aren't arguments against philosophy. They're a choice
between competing philosophies. (06)
Einstein's breakthroughs in relativity and quantum mechanics were
based on philosophical arguments of the kind that were denounced
as "unscientific" by Ernst Mach. Einstein also wrote a criticism
of Bertrand Russell's "Angst vor der Metaphysik" as a "disease
(Krankheit) of modern philosophy." (07)
And I like to quote C. S. Peirce's criticism of Ernst Mach: (08)
Find a scientific man who proposes to get along without any
metaphysics -- not by any means every man who holds the ordinary
reasonings of metaphysicians in scorn -- and you have found one
whose doctrines are thoroughly vitiated by the crude and uncriticized
metaphysics with which they are packed. We must philosophize, said
the great naturalist Aristotle -- if only to avoid philosophizing.
Every man of us has a metaphysics, and has to have one; and it will
influence his life greatly. Far better, then, that that metaphysics
should be criticized and not be allowed to run loose. (09)
F. H. Bradley (around the same time) said (010)
The man who is ready to prove that metaphysics is wholly impossible
... is a brother metaphysician with a rival theory. (011)
John (012)
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