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Gary,
See my comments below.
Azamat
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2005 5:01
AM
Subject: RE: Idealism vs Materialism :
Idealism and the Differentiating Element
Azamat,
Your illustrations helped me
understand your approach to these very difficult topics of
primitive/fundamental ideas that ground an upper ontology. As in the quantum realm our naked
commonsense may not serve us well here but a consistent exploration of
different, fallible hypotheses of these fundamentals concept should do
it. This might include, to use
Thagard’s (1992) related discovery methods, -data-driven (generalizations from
observation and from experiments with ontologies, abductive processes to
explain patterns, and coherence-driven corrections to resolve
contradictions arising between hypotheses and observation. We then attempt to restore consistency
adapting, removing or modifying
one or more assumptions which are judged contributes to the derivation of
contradiction.
This method is old as the Greek world,
Aristotle drawn such elemental classes as substance, state, quality,
quantity, change, and relation from experience, seemingly from verbal
classification of Greek grammar. And they mold the matrix of human experience
and knowledge, all forms of thought. Alternatively, Kant proposed his table
of categories as pure concept of human understanding with some modifications,
lifting the class of relations over substances. As a result, no good formal and
general ontology can do without substances, states, changes, and
relations.
To put this back, for a moment, in
the philosophical contexts we started with in earlier messages, I would add an idea from Clarence Lewis
‘s "A Pragmatic Conception of the a priori," where he rejects Kantian
concepts of the a priori arguing that”
"The thought which both
rationalism and empiricism have missed is that there are principles,
representing the initiative of mind, which impose upon experience no
limitations whatever, but that such conceptions are still subject to
alternation on pragmatic grounds when the expanding boundaries of
experience reveal their felicity as intellectual instruments." Underlining is
mine.
Thus, paraphrasing some of Lewis’s
work and its interpretation by others, what is important about an hypothesis,
including ones on primitive ontological hypotheses, is that it is a "concept"
-- a purely logical meaning -- which we bring to bear on experience. The
concepts we formulate are in part determined by our immediate, pragmatic
interests and in part by the historical nature of individual experience as
researchers. In the sense Sowa has talked about fundamental scientific laws
they are outside our methods (a priori in a sense) because they order
experience in a way that can be investigated consistently across all of our
historical experience and our pragmatic interests at the time.
It’s a knowledge hypothesis that
this type of ordering would be
true of our more fundamental categorical notions – the ones we need for an
upper ontology. We formulate such upper level concepts based on our experience
and the pragamatics of the time, but our intuition is that we arrive at what
we will call a ontological primitive concept that transcends these pragmatic
starting points.
It is not so important how the
concepts formulated in the human mind, by pure thought, intutition, experience
or experiment, or under divine inspiration. What is crucial, ontological
concepts must represent the basic kinds of reality, they have to mean real
distinctions and differences. And so to be the master terms whereby any
cognitive agent can effectively reason about the world.
BTW, this discussion has mostly
slipped beyond the Idealism vs. Materialism back to one more direct toward the
pragmatics of developing upper ontological topics.
I agree, but never mind. If you
like, just change the subject name.
Best.
1
Regards,
Gary
-----Original Message-----
From: azamat
abdoullaev [mailto:abdoul@cytanet.com.cy]
Sent: Tue 3/22/2005
1:26 PM
To: Gary Berg-Cross
Cc:
standard-upper-ontology@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG; ONTOLOGY@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
Subject: Re: Idealism vs Materialism : Idealism and the
Differentiating Element
Gary,
Let me clear up the matter in a more
illustrative way.
Traditionally, reality is separated into two or three
disjoint divisions of the same rank and status:
1. as concrete individuals
(as contingent things) and universals (as necessary
things);
2. as concrete
things, collections (or classes or
sets) of concrete things (concrete universals) and abstract, conceptual classes, or universals per
se.
Written in abbreviated forms, the above may be
presented as the CC (concrete and conceivable) schema or the CCC (concrete,
collective, and conceivable) perspective of reality; what is commonly
expressed in the natural languages as concrete names, collective names,
and abstract names. Then most existent general and upper
ontologies, like the OWL and SUO, can be assigned to the CC or CCC schemas,
closing the bottom with nothing or nonentity, the top with the concept of
individual thing or entity.
Evidently, we need to consider the things in the
right order of their presentation, neither as an equal-order separation nor
in the inverse order, commencing from the concrete objects, properties, and
events, and specific relations to the abstract ontological classes of
substance, state, change, and relation. The order of things here makes all
the difference; after all, a young woman personality may be quite different
depending on the order of occurrences of her life experiences: becoming a
mother, a college graduation, and becoming a
wife.
We have to lift up
Entity or Thing or Being as the topmost class of all classes complemented
with the concept of nothing (the null class as part of everything, which has
nothing to do with absurdity). The ultimate class of thing or
entity will then denote a single, unitary ontological category having
as its parts the entity classes and the relationship classes, as well as all
the infinite gamut of their instances and occurrences. We thus attached to
the scientific way of considering reality as the whole class of entity
consisting of entity classes and relationship classes, all together
constituting the nature and essence of the individual things in the real
world. So to have a universal ontology, you have just
follow the C/C/C descending model of the world, where sets and
individuals are only instantiations or representations of the
entity-universal, that is, they must be considered of much lower rank in the
ontological status.
Note when sets and
individuals are recognized as basic as universals, we are doomed to create
redundant entities and relationships, i.e., an imaginary world of
nonexistent things, while trying to construct a formal general ontology
language, like GOL, an otherwise interesting
project.
So it looks that
your second reading is closer to the point.
Regarding you entity
classification (or rather object?), maybe it would of use at your top to
divide objects into two wide categories, material, spatial substances
and nonspatial, conceptual objects, and somehow include the
term 'representation' as well, before 'icon'.For more particulars,
visit my website: 'Standard Ontology for Global Intelligent
Cyberspace'.
Regards,
Azamat
Abdoullaev
EIS Intelligent
Systems LTD
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 3:59
PM
Subject: RE: Idealism vs Materialism
: Idealism and the Differentiating Element
Azamat,
>You are raising intriguing
questions regarding meaning and processible ontologies. I hope my short
contribution will make the picture clearer.
Thanks for the kind words.
From what you wrote signs we may share some ideas from the semiotics realm
and connecting this to what you called “ontological linguistics”, - a new
phrase for me, but if its subject matter is “ontological grammar, syntax,
and real valued semantics) this sounds like the issues that the
development of such things as OWL struggle although you might have to
spell out what you mean by and real valued semantics.
AA>In the ontological
language, real meaning is fixed as the semantic values of signs,
determined by the entities and relationships in the real
world.
Are you talking about relating
signs to the set-theoretic (logical) aspect of an ontology?
That is using signs in the ontology construction
as a formal logical system composed of its
objects-primitives, classes, individuals, and properties, logical syntax
(notation techniques, formation and transformation rules), and formal
semantics (model theory), such as the OWL is doing?
Another way of speaking about
this is to imagine using “sign meaning” to develop a
“meaningful” primitives Entity, Thing etc. the kinds of objects with
fundamental definitions, axioms and those “real-world semantics” you
mentioned. This allows a common
interpretation by humans and systems of the ontological
theory and its truth conditions in the world of things,
entities, or beings.
BTW, given
that we want to discuss signs and symbols our ontology will include
concepts like “contentbearing objects: such as in the small taxonomic part
shown below (just to connect to the linguistic part of
ontology)
•
Entity
Physical
Object
ContentBearingObject
Icon
SymbolicString
LinguisticExpression
WrittenLinguisticExpression
Text
Sentence
Phrase
Word
Morpheme
Regards,
Gary Berg-Cross
-----Original Message-----
From: azamat
abdoullaev [mailto:abdoul@cytanet.com.cy]
Sent: Mon 3/21/2005
4:11 PM
To: Gary Berg-Cross
Cc:
standard-upper-ontology@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
Subject: Re:
Idealism vs Materialism : Idealism and the Differentiating
Element
Dear Gary,
You are raising intriguing questions
regarding meaning and processible ontologies. I hope my short
contribution will make the picture clearer.
To have correct understanding of knowledge,
meaning ought to be viewed as a meaning relation between signs
(symbols, words or ideas, thoughts) and things in the real
world. Any relation by nature is two-sided or bi-directional (from
signs to things as well as form things to signs). The ontological
perspective comes out here as most fundamental; for it is mapping the
real structures to the sign structures (which include conceptual
structures). This is the subject matter of ontological linguistics
(ontological grammar, syntax, and real valued semantics), which
shouldn't be mixed with its complement, linguistic ontology. In the
ontological language, real meaning is fixed as the semantic values of
signs, determined by the entities and relationships in the real
world. Once the sign structures with their associations in a
certain domain knowledge are sorted out as truly conforming to the
ontological structures, you can enjoy a machine-processible
ontology.
The second issue is inherently connected
with the successful resolution of the first one.
Materialism-Idealism distinction is the
result of an innate tendency of the human mind to all sorts of dichotomy
and duality. This opposite division is a bad heritage of classic
metaphysics, born by the confused polarity of all things as abstract,
ideal realities (froms, ideas) and material, physical realities.
The practice of modern science is inclined to deny as the only reality
either ideas or matter, where one exists as subordinate to another.
The task of general formal ontology is to view the abstract
entities and the concrete things as two parts of one real world, as two
distinct domains of reality, the universe of matter and the
universe of mind, somehow interrelated to each other. And the
concepts of mind and matter should be synthesized not within materialism
or idealism but rather within a general ontological theory encompassing
both parts as distinct levels within an all-comprehensive hierarchy
of things.
After all, to comprehend the general rules,
principles, and mechanisms of such relationships
(ideality-actuality) is the challenging undertaking for
all who signed up for ontology classes.
Regards,
Azamat Abdoullaev
EIS Intelligent Systems LTD
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2005 4:35
PM
Subject: RE: Idealism vs
Materialism : Idealism and the Differentiating Element
This discussion, along
with Re: nature -> "human brain" -> "language terms" ==>>
knowledge ?,
has
wandered over considerable ground but a question
was raised along the way about “how then we should model
meaning?.”
One issue was
can "knowledge" ("reality" yes, but not "knowledge") exist
independently of the brain?
A simple counter
question occurred to me, “if such knowledge can[t be defined how why
are trying to build processable ontologies ? Isn’t
that a endeavor to capture meaning outside of the
brain?
John Sowa
covered this in passing, noting that our computer applications include
“knowledge”
JS> First,
knowledge is certainly codifiable in a way that
solves a great many
problems. Every program ever written
does that, and there are
an enormous number of very
successful ones. But each of those
programs solves a
particular special case. The problem we
face is to
relate those special cases by general
principles.
JS>And that is where the difficulties
lie.
Peirce’s distinction between REAL and TRUE may be helpful to
some of us in ontological community discussion with
an aim to building up usable knowledge .
Perice "The real, then, is that which,
sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in,
and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me
and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of
reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of
a community, without definite limits, and capable of a definite
increase of knowledge" (CP 5.311).
To elaborate further this is now he addressed the distinction
between opinions on the true, and the real in "How
to Make Our Ideas Clear ":
"The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all
who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object
represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would
explain reality" (CP 5.407). ….
Peirce continues later with
"reality is independent, not necessarily of thought in general,
but only of what you or I or any finite number of men may think about
it," ….(that), "though the object of the final opinion depends on what
that opinion is, yet what that opinion is does not depend on
what you or I or any man thinks" (CP 5.408). underlining is mine for
emphasis
Which brings me,
at least, back to John’s opinion that he accuracy
of any scientific hypothesis
JS> does not
depend
> on who or what discovered it or on
any methods of thinking,
> any techniques of
problem solving, or any apparatus that
JS> he,
she, or it might have used to arrive at the hypothesis.
I can
understand this in light of Peirce’ efforts to define clear thinking,
which we need in Ontology building.
To
conclude with yet another Peircian quote. Here’s
one he used on the path to a 3rd way between the realists
and idealist.
The philosophical problem is to resolve two contradictory
claims about the basis of reality:
- the principal
thesis of realism - there is a reality that exists independently of
our representations of it or
- Idealism claim that what we perceive as
real dependent is upon our (usually expressed as
mental) representations of “it”.
As James Liszka
observed the clash of the two theses is nicely expressed in Peirce's
"Consequences of the Four Incapacities
":
"...there is no thing which is in-itself in
the sense of not being relative to the mind, though things which are
relative to the mind doubtless are, apart from the relation" (5.311).
Liszkae called this 3rd way a discursive
realism to distinguish it from the later effort of
Rorty or Foucault, in which there is neither a
privileged discourse, nor can any representational system that can
mirror a reality external to such a system - what
might be called the discursive idealism. Someone
may able to drawn up the realism to idealism continuum, which seems to
be as embedded in our discussions as the ontology
continuum.
Gary Berg-Cross
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