SUO: RE: A New Fundamentally Different Formal Motion
At 07:30 2003-06-09, Adam Pease wrote:
>Eric,
>
>>Even if this group could or should toss out those members that don't
>>really believe in a single SUO, the relatively unified remaining group
>>members (including myself) would not be able to let go of their pet
>>content. The content merging process would be a battle at every
>>pair/group of competing axioms.
>
>I think such a "battle" could actually be extremely
>productive. Conversations about particular axioms is exactly what I
>would expect a more focused version of this group to be engaged
>in. Even if agreement could not be reached, then we would have a far
>more concrete justification for particular, possibly incompatible
>theories. If agreement were reached, then we'd have achieved a single
>standard. No matter what, we'd still learn something.
>
>Adam
Adam,
I think for those that have worked with large-scale declarative
systems, whether rule-oriented or logic-oriented, the value of debate
and conversation about specific formal expressions of ontological
conceptions or intent is limited. In Cyc, for example, the range of
unintended consequences is huge and few people can fully anticipate the
actual result of including a particular axiom in its knowledge base.
It seems to me that what's needed is a way to experiment readily with
different axiomatizations, not just talk about them. If Cyc's logic
were better specified, it would constitute a platform for such an
experimental effort, but since it differs so widely and unspecifiedly
from FOL or any other well-defined logic, it's value in experimental
ontology design is limited as well.
Randall Schulz