RE: [uos-convene] RE: Upper Ontology Summit

["Obrst, Leo J." <lobrst@xxxxxxxxx>]

>
> MW: Ontology is supposed to be about what exists, not the meaning of
> terms.

CM: I think you're equivocating on both "ontology" and "about" here,
Matthew.  True enough, a *given* ontology purports to be about some
chunk of the world.  But we talk about the world by using language, and
surely it is a primary function of an ontology to fix the meanings of
its component terms with sufficient rigor to faciliate the accurate
exchange of information.  In that sense big-O Ontology -- the nascent
science of constructing and using little-O ontologies -- is very much
about meaning.  In fact, I would argue that Ontology is much more about
meaning than "what exists". 

 

BS: There are many expressions whose meanings are of no (specifically ontological) interest to ontology, e.g.:

good, valid, rational, Abelian group, entailment, disjunction, doubtful, creamy ...

Hence the question arises, which sorts of expressions are of interest to ontology (= Greek: 'science of entities'). My suggestion would be: those which designate entities. 

 But those expressions are in fact of interest to us (little o ontology) since we are involved with designing ontologies as engineering constructs. Furthermore, those qualities and notions are stuff of the world, if only the stuff of human internal experience and mathematics, which I would say are just as much part of the real world as anything else, if not quite as fixed.

 

Leo