RE: SUO: RE: Reductions Among Relations
Matthew,
I don't think anyone has ever argued that the power of logical atomism, to
which you seem devoted, extends to areas where meanings are plural, where
polysemy rules, and where repurposing also involves reconceiving (as
opposed to merely recombining or reconfiguring) the selfsame "units" of
information. To the extent that any upper level ontology is concerned
with such difficulties your underlying logical base will prove
inadequate, though as a practical matter in a computational database this
can be partially corrected.
Do you remember this contribution by Adam Pease a while back?
> > In a long ago thread, I suggested that the SUO need to support stating
> > things such as
> >
> > Hamlet the fictional character
> > Hamlet an edition of the printed play
> > A performance of Hamlet
> > A performance of Hamlet captured on video and encoded as a bit stream
> > The text of Hamlet as character strings
> > What Fritz Lehmann has called a "conceptual work" - the timeless
> > informational content of the play
> >
> > These notions require a well worked out theory of semiotics but this would
> > have a practical focus rather than being an academic exercise.
> >
> > Adam
>
>
>
What the primitive informational unit can be, if it is not a sign, escapes
me. And if it is a sign, then the underlying position for accommodating
it is not the one on which you rely and in which you seem very well
versed.
I would respectfully submit that the position you take is a limited one
for an upper level ontology. I would at the same time recognize that it
fits neatly with a conception of the world as composed of 'things', that
it falls naturally into tuples notation where a thing is the relate of
each symbol, that it draws on a static theory of prediciation assumed in
such a system, and-- most persuasively for computational purposes-- that
it fits nicely with the physical primitive of relational databases: the
Boolean bit. So within a certain range it is workable, and on its own
terms invincible.
It will predictably prove decreasingly useful as we move away from the
range populated by technical speicialities with normalized and relatively
static terminology toward sciences of discovery, toward deliberation, and
toward attempts to traverse wide swaths of meaning.
To me, your last sentence seems to argue more in favor of a triadic than a
diadic position for the underlying logical approach: we can translate the
dyadic relation between some object and the sign representating it, in
terms of the interpretant this effects in some mind or quasi-mind, but the
interpretant-sign-object relation is not adequately translatable into a
concatenation of sign-object dyads with is-a relations. But whoever
claimed that logical atomism was designed to deal with problems of
meaning, anyway?
Best,
Lee
PS Now that I have been assured-- though not yet in writing-- that IEEE
standards work is a bona fide charitable activity, I am trying to move my
emails on such topics to my foundation account: lee@sabre.org.
On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, West, Matthew MR SSI-GREA-UK wrote:
> Dear Lee,
>
> Interestingly it is precisely because we have needed to support different
> views of information that we have found it desirable to break information
> down into the smallest possible units, so that it can be reconstituted in
> sometimes unexpected ways. Put more simply, I don't think that being between
> things is more fundamental than being in a space or a space having
> boundaries. Yet having both without the understanding of one in terms of the
> other means that you cannot translate between them.
>
> Regards
> Matthew
> ===============================================================
> Matthew West http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/
>
> Principal Consultant Shell Visiting Professor
> Operations & Asset Management The Keyworth Institute
> Shell Services International The University of Leeds
> http://www.shellservices.com/ http://www.keyworth.leeds.ac.uk/
>
> H3229, Shell Centre, London, SE1 7NA, UK.
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> ===============================================================
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Josiah Lee Auspitz [mailto:lee@textwise.com]
> > Sent: 24 March 2001 14:16
> > To: West, Matthew MR SSI-GREA-UK
> > Cc: Stand Up Ontology; Robert E. Kent; Pat Hayes; lee@sabre.org
> > Subject: Re: SUO: RE: Reductions Among Relations
> >
> >
> >
> > Matthew, Pat, et. al.
> >
> > There is a non-theological reason why in an SUO it is useful
> > not to reduce
> > betweennesses to dyads. On this list it has been addressed by Robert
> > Kent. The "glue" among the elements of an ontology-- the relational
> > betweenness-- is the basis of the artifact. Typically, what
> > are called
> > ontologies have varied interstitial relations ranging from
> > narrower-broader terms to strict logical entailment grounded in
> > well-developed theories. If one is to share ontologies and to traverse
> > them, it will be important to specify these relations. If the SUO is
> > conceptually disabled from doing so, it will not be "wrong", but its
> > application will be limited.
> >
> > Josiah Lee Auspitz
> > lee@textwise.com
> > 17 Chapel Street
> > Somerville, MA 02144
> > 617-628-6228
> > fax -9441
> >
> > Please send attachments pasted within text or in ASCII
> > Plain Text non-proprietary software.