Re: SUO: Re: Proposed SUO Content Outline
>John --
>
>It seems to me that an upper-level ontology should strive to avoid most of
>the problems that you outline below. The kinds of things that an uppermost
>ontology could say, that would actually be useful to organize subtending
>ontologies would be things along the lines of:
>
>There are spacial coordinate systems.
>There can be any number of such coordinate systems.
>Each coordinate system exists in relationship to some specified reference
>point.
>Coordinates from one system can be mapped onto coordinates of another
>system.
>Some coordinate systems are based on fixed units of length.
>Some coordinate systems are based on dividing a geometrical figure into a
>fixed number of units.
>Etc.
>
>I wonder why anything in an upper ontology would ever be so particular as
>to require reference to any specific spacial coordinate system whatsoever?
That is a good question, and your point is well taken. But look where
it leaves us. We will need to write axioms which say that spatial
coordinate systems exist, without saying anything in particular about
any spatial coordinate system. How do we do that? What can be
usefully said about spatial coordinate systems in general, or about
the general concept of a spatial coordinate system? I do not mean to
imply that this task is impossible, but I do think it is considerably
harder than the task of describing one or two coordinate systems and
the mappings between them. At the very least, such a limited exercise
might be a very useful preliminary study before attempting to write
the mathematical masterpiece of generality required for a universal
theory or coordinate systems in the abstract. The basic
methodological point being that these 'upper' theories, if they are
to be nontrivial, are likely to be very difficult to get right. We
are trying to break the sound barrier before we know how to walk.
Pat Hayes
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