Re: D1. Separate computer science ontology from philosophical ontology
Rob,
I agree there is a lot that we agree about.
But statements like the following raise serious
disagreements:
RF> Since the discussion (as it has developed) is all
> about our philosophical inability to find objective
> meanings....
There most definitely are objective meanings. Every
major dictionary, such as the OED or the Merriam-Webster
Third, is filled with objective summaries of how people
have been using many thousands of words.
RF> We need to stop looking for things which are true or
> false independent of contextual premises.
With suitable qualifications, I would agree with that.
But context dependence does not imply subjectivity.
Wittgenstein's language games, for example, are highly
context dependent, but any particular game can be
objectively recorded and summarized in an appropriate
set of rules.
One reason why NLP is so difficult to automate is that
people can freely invent new language games, and they
can mix and match different language games at any time,
even within a single sentence.
I would grant that any new language game that anyone
invents is invented for some subjective reason. But as
soon as two or more people reach an agreement on how to
play a game, the ways in which words are used in that
game are objectively observable.
John