Re: D1. Separate computer science ontology from philosophical ontology
John,
I'm not quite sure what you mean. There is the total science TS that
includes philosophy (also philosophical ontology PO), theology, sociology,
electrical engineering, particle physics, and all that can be called
science. But TS does not include, only for the sake of the case at hand,
those things that we call computer ontology CO, that includes things such as
ontology engineering tools, langueges like RDF, RDFS, OWL and others, and
the individual ontologies created with the languages.
And now we should ask how CO and TS are related? This is at least more messy
than to investigate the relation of CO and PO. The relation of PO and CO is
a special case of the relation of TS and CO, because PO is a proper part of TS.
In what other way do you suggest that the case can be opened, except to
divide TS into parts such as PO, and investigate the relations of the parts
of TS, and CO, like the relations of PO and CO?
Avril
Lainaus "John F. Sowa" <sowa@bestweb.net>:
> Avril,
>
> It corresponds to the relationship between science and engineering.
>
> AS> D1. Separate computer science ontology from philosophical ontology
> >
> > How can philosophical ontology PO help to understand or benefit in
> > any way computer science ontology CO, and vice versa? Can and should
> > PO and CP be somehow separated, and how are they connected?
>
> I suggest that we replace the word "separate" by asking how they
> are related. The short answer is that PO is the science, and CO is
> the engineering. But there are many more issues involved.
>
> As an example, suppose you asked two different people to build a radio:
>
> 1. A twelve-year-old child who got a radio kit for Christmas.
>
> 2. A scientist with a PhD in electromagnetic theory.
>
> The first would take some parts out of the kit, snap them together,
> and give you a working radio in 15 minutes. The scientist would write
> a grant proposal for a three-year project to design and construct
> a portable electromagnetic radiation to acoustic signal converter.
>
> That little story makes the scientist look ridiculous, but the radio
> kit is itself the product of several centuries of science, a lot of
> hard engineering to design various kinds of radios, and some clever
> packaging of the results into a kit that a child could use.
>
> When the SUO project was started, a lot of people wanted an ontology
> kit. But what they got was seven years of long-winded philosophy
> discussions, some proposals, various resources written in unreadable
> notations, and a bunch of tools that do various things. Those tools
> remind me of a poignant plea by a programmer who was trying to use
> the software development tools of about 20 years ago:
>
> Any one of those tools by itself is a tremendous aid to
> productivity.
> But any two of them together will kill you.
>
> In ontology development, we are still in the stage were radios were
> in the 1920s. There are some products, but the science is still under
> development, the engineering has not produced industrial-strength
> systems, and the human factors needed for an ontology kit that a child
> could use are nonexistent.
>
> John
>
>