SUO: RE: Re: Standard Upper Ontology Procedure Topics
Jon:
If I'm misunderstanding you, it's not intentional, I assure you. Perhaps
it's a function of my haste to make my way through probably a hundred or so
emails, going back almost a month. Perhaps this working group should adopt a
rule that if someone gets that far behind, he shouldn't clutter up the forum
with replies to ancient history. Perhaps I should adopt a rule that I should
read more carefully before replying. And just barely perhaps, what you write
isn't as clear as you think it is, and if I've misunderstood you, so too
have others who haven't bothered to respond.
So correct my misunderstandings if you think it might help others. Tell me
to go back and reread what you wrote in all other cases.
No offense meant, and none certainly taken.
Tom
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org
[mailto:owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org]On Behalf Of
Jon Awbrey
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2003 12:05 PM
To: SUO
Subject: SUO: Re: Standard Upper Ontology Procedure Topics
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SUOPT. Note 9
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SUOPT Outline. http://suo.ieee.org/email/thrd1.html#11635
JA = Jon Awbrey
TJ = Tom Johnston
Referring to:
JA: SUOPT 02. http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg11652.html
TJ responded:
TJ: If this exercise of defining our basic terms before
we get started is to have any value, it must be in
clarifying the meaning of those terms so, in using
them among ourselves, we are likely to use them in
a more consistent way, and thus be less likely to
misunderstand one another.
TJ: Not wishing to be offensive, I still have to say that
the definitions given below not only fail to clarify
the meanings of the terms, they make it more likely
that we will deviate from standard usage and end up
misunderstanding one another. See the embedded TJ
remarks below.
Tom,
This is now the 3rd time that you've misundrystood
what I said the 1st time, so I have have no option
but to adopt some responsibility for my issue, and
that behooves me to try to raise it different ways.
It's not that what you say is something that I can't relate to,
but I relate to it as being very akin, the very spitting image,
of what I imagined I'd already related in my saga of Goyathlay.
It's not your father's definition of definition? You tell me.
It's my father's "definition of definition" -- DOD? Who'd've
thunk it of a peacenik like me!?
The point is that we are at the point before we have a definition,
at least of the brand that our schoolings and trainings taught us,
I'll guess, to hanker after and to hunker down for the getting of.
Being at that point, anaphorismic or predefinitive, it behooves us
to recognize it, as if for the very first time, to comprehend that
what we seek is a form of reasoning that reasons toward definition,
and not yet upon it.
I'm sure the Greeks had a word for it, or maybe the Sanskritics.
I will distribute your topical remarks to the appropriate topoi.
Jon Awbrey
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