Re: D1. Separate computer science ontology from philosophical ontology
John,
You haven't replied to my constructive question. Which is a pity. I
really think theory might motivate ways of defining these "tags"
people are playing with which could provide constructive benefits.
And I present "tags" to SUO, especially these new "machine tags", as
an example of a "Computational Ontology" which is in accordance with
the subjectivity of 20th century philosophical theory.
In so far as it relates to the topic of this thread, my point is that
I think it would be a more constructive to talk about how we could
encourage and inform the use of user specified "tags", than to
continue attempting to find objective standards of meaning itself.
Especially if we have reached the point of making an explicit decision
to ignore most of modern philosophical theory in order to do so!
As for your detailed arguments against me below, I perceive them to be
mostly dependent on the exact meaning of the words "subjectivity" and
"objectivity", and "existence". Since the discussion (as it has
developed) is all about our philosophical inability to find objective
meanings, that seems rather pointless.
Suffice to say I was arguing in defense of your own statements, so you
can take my meaning to be yours for now:
(John Sowa, this thread, Jan. 23.)
"There is no question that much of what people think they know is
actually true for the range of experiences from which it has been
derived.
It also true that large amounts of scientific knowledge can be
preserved, even when the foundations are completely transformed.
Newtonian mechanics, for example, is still true for the range of
phenomena that Newton considered.
There are also mathematical theorems that follow from certain
assumptions. Every theorem is of the form
If hypotheses, then conclusion.
Such things can also be true. But the question of whether the
hypotheses are absolutely true of any particular aspect of the world
is fallible."
My position may be more extreme than yours, but I think yours is a
good first step.
In fact, more and more I'm learning your position is actually just
standard 20th century philosophy. It becomes the more astonishing that
we still seek to ignore it in our practice. Here is something I found
in a treatise on grammar recently:
"In a natural language, one speaks of "analytic statements" which are
true by virtue of their meaning (that is, they can be inferred from
the empty set of premises), versus "synthetic statements" whose
meaning does not give us their truth-value – we need one or more
factual premises before we can establish whether a synthetic statement
is true or false....
From the Second World War onwards, a central preoccupation of
English-speaking philosophy (I believe it would be fair to say "the
central preoccupation") was language, and the central point about
language as actually used in everyday life ("ordinary language") was
that there is in fact no distinction between the analytic and the
synthetic." (Geoffrey Sampson, http://www.grsampson.net/AGwg.html).
Incidentally, nice to see this in a grammatical context. Hopefully
linguistics will soon undergo the same revolution.
You can take my (theoretical) point to be this failure of the
analytic/synthetic distinction if you like. The resemblance is strong.
We need to stop looking for things which are true or false independent
of contextual premises.
Indeed, I thought Avril started the debate with quite a nice statement of this:
"Wittgenstein's family resemblance can make us prevent a plain
top-down approach"
If Avril was willing to concede subjectivity to that extent I don't
know why discussion needed to fall into the same old SUO groove of
debating this "analytic"/"synthetic" distinction again.
Avril, perhaps you can say. If you understand the significance of
Wittgenstein's "family resemblances", why do you think a "Perfect
Philosophical Ontology" is possible?
-Rob
On Jan 24, 2008 10:37 PM, John F. Sowa <sowa@bestweb.net> wrote:
> Rob,
>
> If something is purely subjective, it is not a truth that
> anybody but the person who experiences it can know. But an
> enormous amount of what we know is testable by objective means.
>
> RF> If truth itself is subjective it does not matter what we
> > evaluate it against, the contradiction will follow us.
>
> Nobody outside an asylum for the seriously psychotic doubts
> that they and other people exist. The existence of other people
> impinges upon our experience constantly, and there are objective
> tests for determining whether some existing individual is in our
> presence.
>
> Other truths, such as heavy objects fall to the ground when dropped,
> are objective facts that are never doubted by any people (or any of
> the higher mammals). There is nothing subjective about such facts.
>
> RF> I guess more precision will help establish subjective truths.
> > It is just we will have to concede there are conditions on those
> > truths: Descartes "exists" in this sense or that sense only.
> > They won't be universally true.
>
> The question of the reliability of historical facts has been
> analyzed in great detail for centuries. For Descartes's existence,
> the evidence from a great multiplicity of reliable sources is
> beyond a reasonable doubt. For some of the statements in Herodotus,
> the corroborative evidence is very strong; for others, however,
> it's weak; and for many statements, we have nothing but his word.
>
> Historians have analyzed such issues in great detail and have
> established good criteria and methodologies for judging the
> reliability of the claims. An enormous body of historical facts
> have been established beyond a reasonable doubt. Another large
> body of claims have been shown to be false beyond a reasonable
> doubt. Between those extremes, there is much more data of varying
> degrees of reliability, some of which will eventually be shown
> to fall into the true or false camp. But much of it will never
> be verified or falsified beyond a reasonable doubt.
>
> It's fair to question a great deal of received "truth". But
> to dismiss all of it as subjective is a sign of insincerity,
> psychosis, or a "troll" (as they call people who stir up
> pointless debates on email lists).
>
> John
>