Re: SUO: *Date 05 Apr 2002 -- Formalism Engineering
On 4/5/02 07:40, "Jon Awbrey" <jawbrey@oakland.edu> wrote:
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> €~~~~~~~~~€~~~~~~~~~€~~~~~~~~~€~~~~~~~~~€~~~~~~~~~€
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> Formalism Engineering
>
> The other day, in the midst of the survey sutra, I expressed the matter this
> way:
>
> What is "formalism engineering" if not the critique of existing formalisms and
> the art of designing them more to the point of their transcendental purposes?
Well, here's one:
1. You have some intuitive desiderata for what you want the
formalism to do.
2. You might clean these up using standard tools, or not.
3. You design your new formalism to do what you want.
A lot like engineering, no? AFTER the fact, you may critique existing
formalisms in terms of what your magical new one can do, or possibly you
based your desiderata on shortcomings of other formalisms, but it is not
necessary that you start from there.
> A critical method over any domain, in any field, from any point of view,
> depends on being able to consider alternatives, to compare and contrast
> them, as our teachers used to say.
That's SCIENCE, not ENGINEERING. Engineers just build. Look at the Segway.
> But how do we find a place to stand in regard to logic?
> Where is the examen of the balance to weigh our reason?
> Where is the fulcrum of the lever to shift for thought?
For the purposes of building an ontology system (or systems), there is only
one necessary condition: that the logic be able to do any computation we can
do on our current von Neumann-style digital computers. Anything less, and
we lose the ability to choose the point in the expressivness-efficiency
space in which we'd like a given ontology to operate.
Well, quantum computers might come along you say, and I agree. But the same
goes for engineering of physical artifacts as well -- I might get my hands
on tri-lithium and warp coils someday too, and thereby change the rules of
engineering as I know them, but I'm not going to worry about that now.
Now all of that might seem like a cop out, and it certainly is from an
*ontology* point of view. But we're just talking about necessary conditions
for now..
.bill