Re: SUO: *Date 16 Feb 2002
I would like to endorse the following comments extracted from
Jon Awbrey's recent note:
> I gather from my off-list comments that some people
> get me all wrong -- they think I'm saying that this
> project is impossible, that any notion of designing
> an onotological theory that is standard enough, and
> uppery enough, to get the job done is just destined
> to fail. That's not what I'm saying at all. And I
> wouldn't waste any of our times with it if it was.
> I'm just saying that we won't get there this way,
> not in this direction, and not trying to work on
> the long-shakey grounds of what appears to be
> our current set of (non)working assumptions.
I fully agree with these comments at this level of generality,
but if we started to get into the details, I'm sure that there
would be many issues on which anyone working in the field would
find lots of room to disagree.
I would state the basic points in the following words: Any fixed set
of ontological categories defined and edicted by any human authority
(whether ISO, ANSI, IEEE, or whatever) would be useful for at most
a limited number of applications (perhaps one or two, maybe a dozen).
Only an omniscient legislator (e.g., God) could define an ontology
that would be adequate to meet the goals that some of the people
on the SUO list have been claiming for a "Standard Upper Ontology".
> Maybe I should stress some of the other things that I am not saying.
> I am not saying that inter-communicability and inter-operability are
> impossible. In fact, I take it for granted that these things happen
> all the time in everyday life among intelligent creatures, from mice
> to men and back again, so the question is one of an established form:
> What are the grounds of this possibility already in progress, and how
> can we but further it a little?
I also agree with these comments. I am in the process of preparing
another talk on these topics, which I plan to present at a conference
in March. I'll send a note next week with a pointer to the slides.
John Sowa