SUO: Re: Ontology, Epistemology, Semiotics
Pierre, Murray, Gary, et al.,
What I'm trying to do in this thread is, in Wittgenstein's
terms, to present a series of reminders of what everybody
knows, but not everybody has considered important enough
to mention, much less to adopt as the foundation for
ontology and related issues.
I'll start by responding to Pierre:
JS> Every means of communication, including every language,
> every notation, and every means of recording, processing,
> or transmitting information, is a semiotic system.
>
PG> It is hard for me to understand why you would write this
> chunk of a taxonomy of semiotic systems in this context.
That's what I hope to make clear. I believe that without
a solid semiotic foundation (in Peirce's sense) we cannot
develop a satisfactory SUO.
PG> This project is a a worthy endeavour in a narrow
> subdomain of theoretical KR.
I'll keep piling up examples that show it is central to
any SUO that could ever be practical enough to support
applications (which is the ultimate goal of the SUO project).
PG> I won't argue on whether it is even meaningful to call
> theoretical physics an ontology. The claim makes no sense
> to me anyway.
I was being brief. To be explicit: the core of theoretical
physics is its categories and axioms -- and that's what
we have been calling an ontology.
PG> There are other domains: basic subdomains of biology and
> medicine (not only human of course), anatomy, physiology;
> chemistry; molecular biology; physical geography and its
> subdomains; physics and its subdomains, particularly applied
> in engineering sciences; mathematics, arguably; and so on and
> so forth.
Yes. And my point is that every experimental and applied
subject (i.e., with the exception of pure math or pure
theoretical physics) cannot be defined without introducing
the purposes and intentions of the agents who do the
experiments or the applications.
In chemistry, for example, there are terms from physics,
such as "hydrogen" and "energy". But you cannot go
any further without introducing words like "solution",
"precipitate", or "result" -- which cannot be defined
without considering the intentions of the agent who
is dissolving, precipitating, or producing results.
In medicine, the entire subject is based on the normative
assumption that being healthy is better than being sick
or dying. Every aspect of every drug or medical procedure
is determined by what it does to promote those goals. You
might be able to describe the physical structure of some
drug without considering its purpose. But you can't talk
about the relationship of a drug to a disease or of the
relative efficacy of different drugs without considering
purpose and intention.
I'll skip to the end of your note, which gets to the
heart of the issue:
JS> They are the deciding factors in determining what to
> represent and how to represent it.
>
PG> Even there, from a representation point of view, you
> don't need a sophisticated exegesis of social reality,
> suitability can probably be a stand alone relation.
> It's not always clear that you care for expliciting what
> suitable for a purpose means.
Notice that you want to replace my words "purpose and
intention" with another word "suitable", which is just
a disguised synonym for one aspect of "purpose".
How many "stand alone" synonyms for purpose do you want?
In chemistry, you have "result". In medicine, you have
"efficacy". In engineering, suitability means that the
"results" "satisfy" the "specifications" within the limits
of some "criterion". And you can't define specifications
or criteria without talking about the people whose
purposes determine the spec's and the criteria.
Another example is Matthew's recent 4D ontology, which
has words like "state" and "system", which he and Jon
have been trying to define. But those words also have
disguised purposes built into them:
1. A "system" is an "integrated" collection of
interacting parts "designed" for some "purpose".
2. A "state" is a time period during which the
"relevant" aspects of some "system" do not
change "significantly".
All the quoted words in these definitions and in the
previous paragraphs cannot be defined independently
of the purpose or intentions of some agent.
Murray commented on my claim that the attempt to divorce
epistemology from ontology has been a dismal failure:
MA> I'm not sure what qualifies as "dismal failure", but much
> of the last half century or so in philosophical inquiry has
> not been an attempt to "divorce" ontology from epistemology,
> but to consider both as expressions of human communication
> rather than expressions of universality, which is where
> in my opinion Aristotle has fallen on his face (i.e., if
> those ideals truly exist, we would have "discovered" them
> after several millenia of trying, and if they do exist but
> are undiscoverable, they are useless and misguid_ing_).
Whitehead said that all of western philosophy can be considered
as a series of footnotes to Plato and Aristotle. That core,
which has also been called "philosophia perennia", is what I
consider central. Hilary Putnam supported that point by
telling his students "Whenever I become clearer on some subject,
I find that Aristotle has become clearer as well."
The dismal failure is the period from Descartes to Hume,
in which philosophers tried to reach certainty by starting
with universal doubt. That was the highpoint of epistemology,
which Kant ended by reintegrating epistemology and ontology.
Peirce characterized the mistake of Descartes and Hume
as pretending to doubt in philosophy what they would never
doubt in practice. Kant, Peirce, and Whitehead were all
on Aristotle's side in dismissing the attempt to do ontology
independently of epistemology.
John Sowa