RE: ontology as science (was: Re: SUO: Re: (ELP's summary of MRW's standards experience))
Thanks, John:
Perhaps I should have inserted the word "objectively" and said "objectively testable".
>Every axiom and definition of ontology makes a testable claim
>about one or more of the following three kinds of things:
>
> 1. What is in the world,
>
> 2. What do people say about what is in the world,
>
> 3. What are the relationships among the things in #1 and #2.
I agree that physical science has developed methods for objectively determining "what is in the world" independently of individual perspective or time. (And is still refining these methods.) However, #2 and #3 will always be subjective and therefore of questionable testability from a scientific perspective.
>By this criterion, lexicography is a science. It gathers data
>consisting of word occurrences and the surrounding context,
>and formulates definitions that cover the data. Those
>definitions can be tested by anyone else who cares to gather
>similar data and check whether the definitions apply.
Yes, it would be considered a science because it's dealing with lexical symbols as the data under objective analysis. With respect to semantics, however, it cannot take into account the semantic drift of words in a language as a language evolves over time. Nor can it take into account different languages except as a distinct data sets.
>That kind of science satisfies the point #2 above, which deals
>with things that people say about the world. It is true if and
>only if people do indeed say such things about the world.
I don't think any here is objectively testable. It is all subjective and will always be subjective - hence the problem.
Can you describe any kind of objective test that will succeed or fail (unambiguously given any tester at any point in time) that will prove that when I say "tree" that there are trees in the world? Sense perception might be one such test, but then I'm left questioning what is a "tree" and what isn't, and where do the boundaries of "treeness" end.
>The kind of science stated in point #1 above is physical
>science, which has an enormous overlap with ontology. Just
>look at the information in Cyc, SUMO, and other ontologies.
>They are filled with testable information about scientific
>topics.
I agree that point #1 is about physical science, but disagree about the enormous overlap with ontology except insofar as ontology is an example of #2. Ontologies are not testable (setting aside syntactic validity, but we're not talking about that.) The only "test" of an ontology that is of any value is whether or not in represents the information that I want my information processing machines to deal with and whether that representation can be communicated effectively with other information processing machines. (And note that the "test" is about value to a person, not about whether the tested hypothesis succeeds or fails.)
I still stand by the claim that if it involves semantics - perceivable symbols that "mean" something - that it cannot be a science. (At least as we're dealing with it here.)
Bill
-----Original Message-----
From: John F. Sowa [mailto:sowa@bestweb.net]
Sent: Wed 6/18/2003 6:26 PM
To: Burkett, Bill; Mike Pool; John F. Sowa; standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
Cc:
Subject: RE: ontology as science (was: Re: SUO: Re: (ELP's summary of MRW's standards experience))
Bill,
Every axiom and definition of ontology makes a testable claim
about one or more of the following three kinds of things:
1. What is in the world,
2. What do people say about what is in the world,
3. What are the relationships among the things in #1 and #2.
WB> To be "science", it must be falsifiable and it must be
> possible to devise experiments to test hypotheses indepedently
> of any particular individual or any particular point in time
> and achieve the same results....
By this criterion, lexicography is a science. It gathers data
consisting of word occurrences and the surrounding context,
and formulates definitions that cover the data. Those
definitions can be tested by anyone else who cares to gather
similar data and check whether the definitions apply.
That kind of science satisfies the point #2 above, which deals
with things that people say about the world. It is true if and
only if people do indeed say such things about the world.
The kind of science stated in point #1 above is physical
science, which has an enormous overlap with ontology. Just
look at the information in Cyc, SUMO, and other ontologies.
They are filled with testable information about scientific
topics.
The kind of science stated in point #3 is mathematics. It is
not an empirical science, but a very hard-edged discipline for
counting, analyzing, and relating everything and anything in
points #2 and #3.
I agree that many things in social sciences are "soft" and
hard to falsify. But if the ontology attempts to define and
axiomatize what people say about those subjects, then its claims
can be tested by the same methods used by lexicographers.
John Sowa