SUO: Re: ONT Relevance
On 6/3/02 21:41, "Douglas McDavid" <mcdavid@us.ibm.com> wrote:
Hi, Doug..
Comments below.
> Bill --
>
> I'll take my response to John's characterization of, especially Whitehead,
> offline, so as not to annoy you further. However, I think you have taken
> your annoyance a little too far in your note below. Specifically with
> respect to disease-producing agents, it is clearly important to understand
> their nature. Are they chemical agents that can be countered with specific
> antidotes? Or, are they living invaders, that will respond to treatment
> that stops their processes by killing them, removing them from the
> bloodstream, etc.
>
> This is exactly on my point about the purpose of the observer, which
> translates into perceived purpose of the system that is called out for
> description, and ontologization. I think one of the ongoing arguments in
> this working group is about what we might call context-free ontology. What
> a lot of critics of SUMO seem to be saying is that a large collection of
> concepts and statements about them (axioms, propositions, etc.) can only be
> so helpful in addressing real issues of meaning in various domains of
> interest.
>
> This is why I have several times tried to stimulate discussion about what
> contribution a standard ontology can make to the problem of context. My
> feeling grows stronger that the way to focus this in a valuable direction
> would be to create a detailed ontology of the types of purpose that users
> might bring to the problem of disambiguation. In this way the standard
> (upper?) ontology would provide the framework for users of ontologies to
> find the more specific ontologies most suited to their particular purposes
> for looking for ontologies.
>
> Does that make any sense to you?
This makes perfect sense, Doug. And it's very constructive to introduce
such an issue in the way you just did - you're not selling Peirce, or anyone
else, rather you are trying to independently motivate the need and in fact
your motivation is convincing.
That said, I'm still not convinced that the great bulk of ontology cannot be
done without reference to minds, beliefs, or conceptual systems. At any
rate I sure hope that I'm right because if I'm not, we'd all better pack up
our tents and keep SUO a strictly academic, rather than IEEE exercise,
because we're not going to get to anything usable anytime soon. I think my
minimalism on this issue stems from my realist philosophical bent.
As for function, this comes (like everything else) in flavors and degrees.
Take a catalyst, for example. Is it necessary to have a theory of context
or function to capture the fact that a catalyst accelerates the rate of a
given chemical reaction? I really don't think that my thinking about this
in one way and you in another changes chemistry any.
With respect to the organism, I think we can make the same argument as with
the chemical reaction. The bug is a chemical system (albeit a complex self
sustaining one) which we can disrupt in principle by applying the right
drug, just as we can prevent an ICBM from destroying a target by lasing its
fuel tank in the boost phase.
One might reasonably say that my notion of function that I'm advocating here
is reductionist - the only functions we can talk about are those for which,
in principle, we have good reductions to physics or chemistry or at any rate
something that is not grounded in mind. That is true, but I claim that this
will cover a great deal of what we want to do with SUO.
For those things that resist reduction - preferences, emotions, beliefs, etc
- we may very well require some notions of observer or viewpoint or context
as you and others suggest. Here, I would take whatever pragmatic approaches
are available for now and leave the scientific/philosophical questions for
later.
.bill