Re: SUO: RE: RE: Re: Missing Ingredients
Richard Cooper wrote:
> Murray Altheim wrote:
>
>>Jay Halcomb wrote:
>>
>>>Request for clarification: what are the
>>>fearful/never-to-be-sufficiently-damned 'nominalistic
>>
>>patterns of thought'?
>>
>>>Jay
>>
>>Nominalism by definition (Random House):
>>
>> the doctrine that general or abstract words do not stand for
>> objectively existing entities and that universals are no more
>> than names assigned to them
>>
>>In a nutshell, the oversimplification of the world, the idea that
>>by putting a name on something you somehow understand it. Yes, you
>>can recognize a dog when you see one, but does "dog" provide an
>>understanding of doggedness? (doggyness? i.e., what constitutes the
>>class of things known as dogs) A typically good example is "male"
>>and "female", as if they were two poles of gender. They're not, and
>>this is the typical kind of simplification that labelling tends to
>>promote. As I mentioned previously, "species" has been proven a
>>useful concept but turns out to be specious, nonexistent, and
>>probably set us back in terms of actually investigating the real
>>nature of evolutionary development, the real nature of the world.
>
> <snip/>
>
>>Murray
>
> An earlier email mentioned INDIVIDUALS, which might constitute
> EXAMPLE(s) that we want to group into TYPE(s) and CLASS(es).
> Are you claiming that the TYPE(s) and CLASS(es) are also
> INDIVIDUAL(s)?
>
> It seems to me that, taking the above definition literally, a
> nominalist would say that TYPE(s) and CLASS(es) are not in
> fact INDIVIDUAL(s), while an antinominalist would claim that
> they are.
>
> Is this interpretation consistent with your thinking?
>
> And from your expressive text, I assume you must be an antinominalist.
> Is that also true?
>
> But if, as you stated earlier (and I agreed to), interpretation
> of words is entirely in the brain, not in the objects themselves.
> Therefore, isn't it self contradictory to believe that TYPE(s)
> are INDIVIDUAL(s)?
>
> Please help me understand your position on this.
Rich,
I don't know that I'm firmly committed at this point to one position;
I'm still in investigation mode. I don't use the term "individual" in
my own authoring ontology, since I'm trying to develop it for writers
and other non-experts in the field of KR, and the difference between
"instance" and "individual" seems a bit blurred.
My understanding of individuals, based on reading Sowa's books, a
number of KR-related papers, etc., and upon the Cyc and ISO 15926
ontologies (IOW, there is no definitive answer, just ontological
commitments -- you choose among the field), is that an "individual"
can be thought of either as a class to which all individuals are
members, or as a specific individual, i.e., an instance. The
definitions in ISO 15926 are quite complex as regards this particular
aspect of representation, way more complex than I myself need. I'd
recommend browsing the links I provided for ISO 15926 and Cyc in
this regard, as all I'd do is probably quote from them. [Oops!
I just realized my response was on the CG list:
http://mars.virtual-earth.de/pipermail/cg/2003q4/005244.html
There seems to often be a lot of overlap.]
I generally don't use the word "type" the way you have. I think
of things "having a type" and "being a member of a class". I tend
to use "class-instance" rather than "type-instance" because of
this, perhaps just based on my use of (natural language) English.
To try to answer your questions, the question of what consistutes
an individual vs. what constitutes a class -- I'll leave "example"
out completely because it has a completely different domain --
I tend to think in terms of the divide between concrete and
abstract, that great chasm between reality and representation.
The areas of semiotics and epistemology are ripe for study, and
my own reading has been lately in Peirce and Robert Brandom.
To approach your questions directly,
> Are you claiming that the TYPE(s) and CLASS(es) are also
> INDIVIDUAL(s)?
No, unless you define "individual" as a class, the class to
which all individuals are members. Then "individual" is a
kind of class. That's all.
> It seems to me that, taking the above definition literally, a
> nominalist would say that TYPE(s) and CLASS(es) are not in
> fact INDIVIDUAL(s), while an antinominalist would claim that
> they are.
I really can't grok that question. I think an anti-nominalist,
also considered as a Pragmatist (or Pragmaticist), would
consider that the difference between extensional classes (i.e.,
classes defined by the their membership) and intensional
classes (i.e., classes defined by some intrinsic set of properties),
are at a different level of abstraction than the questions
regarding naming and identity. (Hence, I don't know how to
answer the question exactly, accurately.)
> Is this interpretation consistent with your thinking?
>
> And from your expressive text, I assume you must be an antinominalist.
> Is that also true?
I would say that is an accurate statement of my beliefs. I
consider myself a Taoist, a Pragmatist, a relativist. I don't
believe in absolutes, or perhaps, I don't believe we as
humans have access to those absolutes if they do exist, so
for pragmatic (lower case p) reasons it's irrelevant to think
in those terms. John Sowa has a belief that it's possible to
"discover" those absolutes via a Pragmatic process -- he may
be right -- I'm more skeptical.
In either case, I think building an ontological system from
the ground up that takes into account such Pragmatism, IOW,
embodies Peirce's ideas of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness
(the latter is where meaning and interpretation enter the
picture) is a necessity in doing *real* knowledge representation.
Otherwise, you're only dealing with absolutes and you have no
means of connecting them (except via faith) with the real
world.
Murray
......................................................................
Murray Altheim http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK .
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