I hope this is not percieved as being
pretentious, but:
"Alle Ontologie, mag sie über ein
noch so reiches und festverklammertes Kategoriensystem verfügen, bleibt
im Grunde blind und eine Verkehrung ihrer einstigen Absicht, wenn sie nicht
zuvor den Sinn von Sein zureichend geklärt und diese Klärung als ihre Fundamentalaufgabe
begriffen hat" - M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit.
What Heidegger is saying is that any
classification of the world is blind, in fact contraproductive, if it does
not concern itself with the question of *being*: ultimately the question
of classification is a question of being.
And not of substance. Substance is something
which *becomes*, i.e. instantiates, through being. i am not claiming that
the apple is not there if i do not look at it - but without a perciever
there can be no perception.
The question of substance presumes the
question of being.
Western philosophy has been arguing
about this since Aristotle (sic), and there are still more questions than
answers. Applied to Ontologies in the computer science sense, the only
approach which it seems to me to be worth following is to understand how
our thought processes develop, and thus how we categorise.
I have the feeling that I am not even
getting close to explaining my thoughts here..
regards,
Mark Mattingley-Scott, Ph.D.
Principal
Wireless Broadband & Sensing Solutions EBO
Leader Asset Monitoring EMEA Central Region
Senior Member I.E.E.E., M.G.K,
Chair I.E.E.E. SMC Germany Chapter
Avril Styrman <Avril.Styrman@helsinki.fi> Sent by: astyrman@mappi.helsinki.fi
13.12.2005 15:48
To
Mark Mattingley-Scott/Germany/IBM@IBMDE,
Rolf Lindner <lindner@igd.fhg.de>
cc
"John F. Sowa"
<sowa@BESTWEB.NET>, standard-upper-ontology@IEEE.ORG
Subject
Re: Fwd: SUO Quo Vadis
Rolf, exactly that!
> No more problems now! With this definition, "Substance"
is o.k.
> What I wanted to point out is that, using designators, one does not
> address
> meaning reliably. Designators do not carry meaning; they are just
> associated with meaning (and usually with more concepts than a single
> one..).
I believe that there is now some sort of a consensus. The
designator can be Being, Thing, Substance, Universe, Cosmos,
or anything else that has a clear meaning. [I included a little
clarification of Aristotle's Categories in the end to separate
the meaning of Substance and substances (no capital s).]
Based on the consensus of the designator (Substance, if nobody
has a better designator) further a priori truths can be
asserted:
Substance:
Everything that exists is a part of Substance.
Everything except Substance itself is a proper
part of Substance.
Ontology:
If ontology exists, ontology is a part of Substance.
Ontology is not the same as Substance, and therefore
ontology is a proper part of Substance. If ontology
exists, ontology must describe a part of Substance.
There does not exist an ontology that does not describe
a part of Substance.
When ontology O 'describes' a proper part of Substance Y,
O must have causal powers upon Y, i.e., O must explain
partly or totally how Y really is. This requirement can
be found from many popular passages.
Well, does anybody disagree with this addition then?
Quoting Rolf Lindner <lindner@igd.fhg.de>:
> No more problems now! With this definition, "Substance"
is o.k.
> What I wanted to point out is that, using designators, one does not
> address
> meaning reliably. Designators do not carry meaning; they are just
> associated with meaning (and usually with more concepts than a single
> one..).
>
> So, trying to achieve agreement on "the" root of ontology,
it is an
> agreement on
>
> (1) the root represents anything humans can imagine
>
> (2) the designator of this root is chosen to be "substance"
>
> Humans are not able to recognize "what is out there"; they
are just
> synchronizing their "internal world model" with what they
experience with
>
> "what is our there".
>
> I suppose that we are in agreement.
>
> Yours,
>
> Rolf
Aristotle used Substance in two ways in Categories.
1) Substance as a designator (as Rolf points out above) for
the sum of all that exists, and he used also 2) substance
(no capital s) as a designator of proper parts of Substance.
Therefore, substances (like particular cats and dogs) have
properties like speed and position, but Substance as a whole
cannot have speed nor position simply because these can be
measured only relative to something external to the object
that is under measurement. There is nothing external to
Substance, and therefore Substance cannot have speed or
position.
<Mark>
ontological gap-----------------
\/
domain-specific-ontologies |-------| upper level ontology
formal logical based
natural language based
conceptual basis is
conceptual basis is human-cognitional
computation, i.e.
i.e. substrate is learning and
substrate is counting and experience
logic
my *point* is that we need to be aware of this gap, and develop an
approach to understand it and develop an approach to bridge it.
</mark>
Certainly, we need to be aware of this gap. The agreement in
the very SUO might be the only way to bridge it.