Re: SUO: *Date 01 Apr 2002 -- Survey
On 4/1/02 15:00, "Jon Awbrey" <jawbrey@oakland.edu> wrote:
> You have just summarized, more succinctly than I myself could ever hope to
> match, quite obviously, all of the problems that I see in the way that FOL and
> KIF are currently used -- that they are in fact deployed more like implicit
> ontologies and folk weltanschauungen than genuine logics. The only
> difference, I guess, is this -- that the users of FOL and KIF do not have the
> same mass of specs before their eyes to blame for their confusion. Now, I
> know that many will still find this incomprehensible, but at least now it's
> been clearly said. And you aren't just ipsing dixi.
Hi, Jon...
I think you're being a little hard on relatively benign creatures like FOL
and KIF, which is simply an alternate syntax for FOL. Now, you can argue
with the set-theoretic basis of their model theories if you like. In fact,
Barry Smith has done this on occasion. But if you don't take the model
theories *seriously*, but only as a modeling device (no pun intended) you
can say pretty much anything you want in them.
Your recent posts have been filled with all kinds of mathematics, all of
which is based in set theory. Your earlier posts contain all kinds of
mathematical bits, all of which could be expressed in first-order languages.
Bottom line is that FOL variants aren't the problem. The problem is with
languages like OIL which are touted (even more loudly by those who don't
design them) as silver bullets for ontology. Having recently read some of
the OIL stuff I was shocked at how restrictive it is and how it forces bad
philosophical choices on you - no matter what your philosophical stand is.
With respect to FOL - I think you're going to be hard pressed to find some
*computation* that you cannot express in FOL. After all, we're talking
about implementing ontologies to run on computers here.
.bill