Re: SUO: RE: More KIF-ified Ontology Content
>[Chris Partridge:]
>This is closely related to another point. This is not the only way of
>thinking about holes - as shown by comments on the book (some, if I recall
>correctly, by David Lewis). If you have a different high level ontology,
>then you will end up with different axioms. This is a good illustration of
>the importance of having a clear high level ontology.
>Obviously if another 'theory' takes a different stance which leads to
>different ontological structures, and neither this nor the other theory,
>makes clear its high level ontological commitment - then amalgamating the
>theories will be more difficult.
>
>This is a general point that I think and others have raised before. Unless
>we get agreement on the high level structure (the ontological paradigm) and
>this will involve hard choices then I do not see how we can expect to
>amalgamate the lower level theories.
There is an alternative conclusion, which is that alternative ways of
thinking about a topic might all be equally valid and coherent, even
though they differ from one another. The proposal to find a single
coherent upper-level ontology then amounts to an insistence that all
but one of these alternative ways of thinking are wrong. This is a
kind of intellectual fascism which has never succeeded in the past
several thousand years, and is unlikely to make progress now either.
Maybe the SUO should focus on ways of allowing alternative
conceptions of the world to co-exist, rather than trying to legislate
which of them is 'right'. That approach would at least have the merit
of providing a standard that more than a small fraction of the user
base could use without discomfort.
Amalgamating theories will be difficult, just as most large-scale
engineering tasks are difficult. There is no magic way around this
fact of life.
Pat Hayes
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