RE: SUO: Re: Ballot Comment - 3D versus 4D.
John,
. Further comments interspersed below, prefaced "GH> ".
Cheers Graham Horn
National Data Standards Unit
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
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-----Original Message-----
From: John F. Sowa [mailto:sowa@bestweb.net]
Sent: Tuesday, 28 August 2001 9:43
To: Chris Partridge
Cc: Adam Pease; standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org; West, Matthew R
SITI-GREA-UK; 'pat hayes'
Subject: Re: SUO: Re: Ballot Comment - 3D versus 4D.
Chris and Adam,
This is another of the very many reasons why the goal of a monolithic
ontology is hopeless:
> I never suggested - or hoped I did not - that there was a simple single
> answer to this question. Philosophers will be arguing about this for
> decades - they have a vested interest in doing so - and one of the
standard
> arguments will be that the distinction is misguided. My point is that the
> issue is well enough understood to recognize some of its important
> features - one of which is that there are serious problems in having a
> single consistent way of talking about 3D and 4D - along with a variety of
> other metaphysical positions. And that deciding on these points is a
> particularly important aspect of any top ontology.
I believe that there are strong arguments for both sides (and maybe there
are even more than just 2 options on this and many related issues). The
lattice of all theories very nicely accommodates all of these views; it can
show exactly what axioms are common to both, and what axioms are
contradictory.
All the effort spent in arguing over these issues could have been much more
profitably spent in making a clean division of the axioms for both
approaches and giving developers a choice.
GH> I guess this approaches the heart of the distinction with my own
perspective. I believe the developers should be making a flexible structure
that accommodates both perspectives, and works with the appropriate one for
the circumstances in question at any particular instance.
GH> The underlying difference with this approach is that most of the
ontology development seems to want to concentrate on a single conceptual
dimension, meaning that the perspective on any particular item is to be
rigidly fixed (eg. We may decide to always treat cars as 3D, but people as
4D). I don't think this will ever achieve the universality we want. That's
why I am calling for a more complicated approach that has "depth", and
accommodates more precisely to the conceptual circumstances and requirements
of any particular task.
John Sowa