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

["Smith, Barry" <phismith@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 01:17 PM 2/22/2006, you wrote:
> > 
> > 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.

Not quite. For 'good', 'valid', 'rational', etc. all have
meanings, but they do not quite get you to a 'those'; they are not nouns.
I would be quite happy to agree that 

'goodness', 'validity', 'rationality', etc., 

are terms with which ontology should be concerned; my only point is that
ontology is not just about meanings. 
BS


>  
> Leo
>