SUO: RE: RE: A proposed SUO content outline - role of philosophy
Ian,
I think you and I disagree about the uses of philosophy.
My experience is that there are some (and only some) parts of metaphysics
that are very useful for dealing with the semantic issues people face when
trying to integrate computer systems.
These issues are, it seems to me, sufficiently well understood and well
documented for our purposes - though philosophers will want to provide
'better' solutions.
You wrote:
OK, I think we should be clear about what we mean by philosophical theory
(and I'll be the first to admit that I've been very unclear in the past
about what I've meant by this term). I'm not against making use of formal
ontologies that have been developed by philosophers. In fact, about half of
the ontologies that were the basis for the merged ontology were developed by
philosophers. What I am opposed to is "getting clear about philosophical
foundations" before going any further, i.e. hashing over the basic
metaphysical/epistemological questions about what really exists, what are
the basic categories of the world, what are the primitive concepts that we
use to perceive the world, etc. These questions will quickly enmesh us in
philosophical quandries which will, I think, effectively doom the SUO
project.
Firstly I can understand your frustration - it would be great if someone had
already re-interpreted philosophy for our purposes but they have not.
Seondly your sentence "What I am opposed to is "getting clear about
philosophical foundations" before going any further" can be interpreted in
two ways. 1) to make clear to a philosopher's satisfaction or 2) to make
sufficiently clear to people who are going to use the SUO. I suspect you are
trading on conflating the two.
It seems to me (and from what I have read, others on this list) that one
cannot talk meaningfully without some metaphysical suppositions. And
experience shows it is extremely difficult to align a lot of 'information'
without some consistent metaphysical suppositions.
One of the things I have noticed is that these metaphysical suppositions are
inter-twined - and I believe that understanding how they are inter-twined is
important for understanding why one ends up with the ontological
architecture one does.
If we had no information about possible ontological architectures and the
choices involved and their interconnections - I would agree you're your plan
of just trying to work something out - and empirically arriving at an
understanding of the metaphysics.
But we do have a lot of knowledge about the choices - though maybe not so
much about how they work in practice - so why ignore this work.
I have been quite careful not suggest that the SUO should say one view was
right, merely that it should be clear about any metaphysical choice it might
make, and the implications. Though my experience has been that the '4-D'
view is significantly (orders of magnitude) better for commercial work.
My objective in my paper 'ontological architecture' was to list the
important metaphysical choices.
Here is the list again.
There are three key architectural choices:
* Firstly, whether universals can exemplify universals. It makes practical
sense to allow this.
* Secondly, whether there are any structural restrictions on what kinds of
entities universals can exemplify.
* Thirdly, whether universals and individuals exhaust the kinds of entities
there are. This is a moot point. One kind of entity that needs to be
accommodated is relations - but one can argue for relational individuals and
relational entities.
General issues:
· Do distinctions give rise to disjoint categories?
· How are disjoint categories related?
The options noted are:
· Perdurantism versus Endurantism
· Presentism versus Eternalism
Other options include:
· Absolute versus Relative Space, Time and Space-Time
· Modally extended versus unextended individuals
· Materialism and Non-Materialism
· Extensionalism versus Non-Extensionalism - I - Universals
· Extensionalism versus Non-Extensionalism - II - Particulars
· Topology of time - branching or linear.notions What I am arguing
I do not think this is exhaustive - but I think it cover more than half of
the high level points that would concern me.
I also think you would find stuff on most of these in most undergraduate
text books on metaphysics.
It seems to me that you are being too rash to suggest that there are no
metaphysical choices that can be reasonably characterized for the purposes
of the SUO.
It also seems to me that you are missing out on an important way for people
to understand what is going on - describing a metaphysical choice can help
people to understand why certain design decisions were taken. For example,
describing the metaphysical choices behind your 'merged ontology' would make
it much more accessible (to me at least :)).
Regards
Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
[mailto:owner-standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org]On Behalf Of Ian Niles
Sent: 02 March 2001 20:14
To: Standard-Upper-Ontology (E-mail)
Subject: SUO: RE: A proposed SUO content outline - role of philosophy
Chris,
See my comments below.
-Ian
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Partridge [mailto:chris_partridge@csi.com]
> Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 9:27 AM
> To: Ian Niles; Standard-Upper-Ontology (E-mail)
> Subject: SUO: RE: RE: A proposed SUO content outline - role of
> philosophy
>
>
>
> Ian,
>
> You wrote:
> From what you
> say below, it sounds like you are recommending that we put a
> halt to the
> actual ontology construction, take a step back, and get
> straight about the
> philosophical foundations before we go any further. Well,
> this approach,
> one might regard it as the top-down approach to ontology
> design, has been
> tried, and, as you know, it comprises the metaphysical
> component of the
> 2,500 year history of western philosophy. Unfortunately,
> this approach has
> not netted us any real conclusions. It has given us a nice
> KR language, the
> first-order predicate calculus, but it has not yielded any
> content which a
> majority of philosophers could agree on.
>
> I am not sure what you are trying to say here - this is a
> point you have
> made many times, but as far as I can understand it does not
> make sense.
>
> What you seem to be saying is this:
> There is a problem P. The world's greatest minds have worked
> on this problem
> for 2500 years - many of them devoting a major part of their lives to
> resolving it. They have not come up with an answer to this
> problem with
> which most people can agree.
> Therefore, I (Ian Niles) am going to solve this problem by
> ignoring all the
> work they have done. This seems to me (Ian Niles) the best
> way of answering
> the question that the philosophers were trying to solve.
No, this isn't my argument. I can see that you could have read me this way,
since I did speak too loosely in some cases. What I have claimed is that
traditional metaphysics and epistemology are not relevant to SUO work,
because (i.) there is not one result from these branches of philosophy that
a majority of philosophers can agree on and (ii.) philosophers working in
these areas have had a radically different aim from our own - they're trying
to get clear about the nature of ultimate reality and what we can know about
it.
>
> We can even apply this argument in other areas:
> Physicists have been trying to find a TOE (Theory of
> Everything) since its
> earliest beginnings. So far they have no succeeded. They
> have, for example,
> not managed to find exact theories, only reaching an accuracy
> of 10*-28m. We
> will manage to avoid their failure by ignoring all the work
> they have done.
Well, there is a large and impressive body of results that physicists agree
on, and, to the extent that these are relevant to the SUO, I think we would
do well to bear them in mind.
>
> Surely you must know some of the history of philosophy.
> Mathematics and
> science were originally within the scope of philosophy, hence
> its name in
> some old universities of Natural Philosophy, and these are
> now successful
> enterprises. So philosophy has not done so badly. I suggest
> you consider
> Kuhn's division of disciplines into pre- and post-paradigm.
> Does a lack of a
> general agreement (in fact, I suspect there are large areas
> of agreement in
> ontology) imply that there is nothing of value there? Then we
> can dismiss
> and ignore all the soft sciences.
It doesn't imply that there's nothing of value there, but it does inspire a
sense of futility. If some of the best minds of the western world have
spent 2,500 years working through these problems and they still haven't come
to any solid conclusions, what hope is there that we mere mortals can do any
better?
>
> I suspect part of the answer to what is going on here is that
> ontological
> engineers and ontological philosophers are not asking the
> same questions -
> so it should be unsurprising that the ontological
> philosophers have not
> answered the ontological engineers' questions. But they are
> working in the
> same territory.
I don't think we disagree here. See my comment below.
>
> Just as process engineers will take what they need from their related
> science (and pay due respect to the scientists'
> achievements), it makes
> sense for the ontological engineers to do the same to their 'science'
> counterparts. And just as engineers make do with scientific
> theories that
> have been discarded by scientists as too inaccurate for their
> enterprise
> (e.g. Newtonian physics), so the ontological engineers can
> make use of some
> of the philosophical theories.
OK, I think we should be clear about what we mean by philosophical theory
(and I'll be the first to admit that I've been very unclear in the past
about what I've meant by this term). I'm not against making use of formal
ontologies that have been developed by philosophers. In fact, about half of
the ontologies that were the basis for the merged ontology were developed by
philosophers. What I am opposed to is "getting clear about philosophical
foundations" before going any further, i.e. hashing over the basic
metaphysical/epistemological questions about what really exists, what are
the basic categories of the world, what are the primitive concepts that we
use to perceive the world, etc. These questions will quickly enmesh us in
philosophical quandries which will, I think, effectively doom the SUO
project.
>
> If you were arguing for:
> 1) only taking the philosophical theories that are useful for
> the job in
> hand (i.e. not taking philosophical input uncritically) and/or
> 2) that a pure philosophical training does not prepare you
> for the job in
> hand (i.e. pure philosophers do not make good ontological engineers),
> I would be the first to agree with you.
Actually, I think philosophers make great ontological engineers, and I think
we should make full use of the methodology and many of the formal ontologies
developed by philosophers. I would just recommend that we be as neutral as
possible about metaphysical/epistemological questions.
>
> My personal experience in dealing with commercial systems (as
> with Matthew's
> in a different commercial domain) is that a large number of the
> philosophical notions are directly relevant (and also that
> some do not seem
> to have any relevance).
>
> Most basic textbooks on metaphysics give you some basic notions (and
> questions), which are useful in building an ontology (e.g.
> Endurantist/Perdurantist - and the Statue/Clay question) -
> why should we
> ignore them?
>
> Your comments seem to me no more than prejudice - though I am
> more than
> willing to listen to an explanation.
>
> My version of your story is much simpler.
> IT engineers have been trying to semantically integrate
> commercial systems
> for decades.
> They have ignored many of the semantic (philosophical) issues
> and had only a
> little success - and at great cost.
> Most of the worlds biggest companies are trying to
> semantically integrate
> their systems at great cost - and with little understanding of the
> underlying issues.
> The lesson seems to be - if you want to spend a lot of money
> and achieve
> little, ignore the semantic issues (this includes the
> philosophical/ontological ones).
I agree with everything you say here - I would only qualify your notion of
"philosophical issues". I think that the semantic integration efforts will
see much greater success if a philosophical methodology is followed (i.e.
use of the first-order predicate calculus and the philosophers' technique of
conceptual analysis). I don't think semantic integration efforts will be
helped (and, in fact, I think they'll be stymied) by consulting various
epistemological and metaphysical theories and trying to pull together
different data models by developing a consistent and complete theory of the
universe.
> Hence I see underlying your comments a guarantee of expensive failure.
I hope you don't see them that way now.
>
> However, I would whole-heartedly agree with the use of 'lower-level'
> structure as a mechanism for testing the higher-level
> structure. In fact, I
> think it is important to follow the philosophers' example and
> have a series
> of well-understood test cases (e.g. Statue/Clay) for checking the
> implications of a position.
>
> Regards
> Chris
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> [mailto:owner-standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org]On Behalf Of Ian Niles
> Sent: 26 February 2001 20:22
> To: Standard-Upper-Ontology (E-mail)
> Subject: SUO: RE: A proposed SUO content outline
>
>
>
> Hi John,
>
> I agree with you that one of the biggest challenges
> in constructing
> an overarching ontology is that many of the various chunks
> that have to be
> merged to create the ontology will be, to a lesser or greater extent,
> incompatible. In some cases, the incompatibilities can be
> smoothed over by
> tweaking the formalizations; in other cases, wholesale
> theoretical revision
> may be required. Although we agree that this is a major
> challenge for our
> project, I guess we disagree about how it should be tackled.
> From what you
> say below, it sounds like you are recommending that we put a
> halt to the
> actual ontology construction, take a step back, and get
> straight about the
> philosophical foundations before we go any further. Well,
> this approach,
> one might regard it as the top-down approach to ontology
> design, has been
> tried, and, as you know, it comprises the metaphysical
> component of the
> 2,500 year history of western philosophy. Unfortunately,
> this approach has
> not netted us any real conclusions. It has given us a nice
> KR language, the
> first-order predicate calculus, but it has not yielded any
> content which a
> majority of philosophers could agree on.
>
> In any case, I would argue for a "reflective
> equilibrium" approach
> to ontology design. Let's start with a set of high-level
> categories and
> then successively incorporate new content into the ontology.
> As we discover
> incompatibilities between new content and existing content,
> we can resolve
> them on a case-by-case basis. If we find that some
> high-level categories
> are not needed to support lower-level nodes, then we can
> excise them from
> the conceptual structure. If we find that a lower-level
> structure can be
> simplified by locating part of its semantic endowment in a
> new higher-level
> node (from which the lower-level structure can inherit this
> content), we can
> add that node to the ontology. It seems to me that this sort
> of approach
> has the advantage of making the various incompatibilities
> between formal
> theories as concrete as possible (as Wittgenstein once
> pointed out, many
> philosophical muddles can be traced to a dearth of real examples).
> Furthermore, it has the benefit of incrementally building up
> an engineering
> artifact that could potentially be very useful for
> integrating information
> systems, even if we have to neglect some philosophical niceties.
>
> -Ian
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: John F. Sowa [mailto:sowa@bestweb.net]
> > Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2001 9:19 AM
> > To: West, Matthew MR SSI-GREA-UK; Standard-Upper-Ontology (E-mail)
> > Subject: Re: SUO: RE: RE: A proposed SUO content outline
> >
> >
> >
> > Dear Matthew and Ian,
> >
> > Every term on your outline is necessary for a complete system
> > of knowledge representation. Indeed, all of these terms have
> > been used for many years in mathematics and physics, and they
> > have been formalized, axiomatized, and reasoned and computed
> > with in great depth in many different ways for a long time.
> >
> > The big question is not whether they belong in the SUO. The
> > answer to that is simple: yes, of course.
> >
> > Even the issue of writing definitions and axioms for them is
> > not a big problem. There are plenty of axiomatizations for all
> > of them that can be taken out of the literature of math, logic,
> > and physics, dusted off, and translated into KIF, CGs, and
> > many other notations.
> >
> > One issue that has to be recognized: all those axioms
> > were designed for different purposes, and they use very
> > different primitives. As an example, I use the Eulerian and
> > Langrangian systems of coordinates for fluid mechanics. Many
> > of the same phenomena can be represented in either one, but
> > the representations have very different structures and
> > relationships. That is true of all those categories in
> > the outline: there are many, many different coordinate
> > systems and representations that have been used, all of them
> > are valuable for different purposes, but the relationships
> > between them are very far from clear. Taking one coordinate
> > system instead of another is a purely arbitrary choice, and
> > you have to know how they are related before you can make
> > a rational decision about how they should be positioned
> > in the ontology.
> >
> > The first thing that has to be determined is which of these
> > issues belong to the logic, which of them belong to the
> > ontology, how the logic relates to the ontology, and how
> > the logic and the ontology relate to the real world and/or
> > any possible world, situation, state of affairs, etc. And
> > the next thing is how can you reason about them with the
> > logic and talk about them with language(s) you want to use.
> >
> > We all know that the knowledge representation must accommodate
> > individuals, states, events, space, time, space-time, process,
> > activity, agents, etc. But you cannot start to put these things
> > into a hierarchy until you have a very clear idea of what these
> > things are, how you can refer to them in logic, how they are
> > classifiable by the ontology (Note: classifiable is a
> > prerequisite to being classified), and how they relate to
> > what is in the world, what is perceived by humans, animals,
> > or robots, how evidence for them is obtained, etc.
> >
> > Only after these questions are answered, does it become
> > possible to say where you can position the categories in
> > the hierarchy, outline, or whatever you want to call it.
> >
> > Compared to that, questions like the following are a tiny,
> > insignificant little nit:
> >
> > >MW: Do you have some things in the merged ontology that are
> > not found here?
> >
> > >(e.g. holes).
> >
> > We still haven't answered where the concepts of Circle, Sphere,
> > and Cube belong. When we know where those belong, then maybe
> > we can begin to talk about holes in a cube or sphere.
> >
> > All of Ian's questions about the following list are well taken,
> > but that is barely scratching the surface of the ones that must
> > be addressed before we can put these topics into some ordering:
> >
> > >> > 1. Thing
> > >> > 1.1. Individual
> > >> > 1.1.1. State
> > >> > 1.1.1.1. Period of Time
> > >> > 1.1.1.2. Activity
> > >> > 1.1.1.3. Physical Object
> > >> > 1.1.1.3.1. Materialised Physical Object
> > >> > 1.1.1.3.2. Functional Physical Object
> > >> > 1.1.1.3.3. Stream
> > >> > 1.1.2. Temporal Boundary
> > >> > 1.1.2.1. Point in Time
> > >> > 1.1.2.2. Event
> > >> > 1.2. Collection
> > >> > 1.2.1. Class
> > >> > 1.2.1.1. Class of Individual
> > >> > 1.2.1.1.1. Quantifiable Property
> > >> > 1.2.1.1.2. Role
> > >> > 1.2.1.1.3. Status
> > >> > 1.2.1.1.4. Organisational Level
> > >> > 1.2.1.1.4.1. Shape
> > >> > 1.2.1.1.5. Information Pattern
> > >> > 1.2.1.2. Class of Class
> > >> > 1.2.1.2.1. Number
> > >> > 1.2.1.2.2. Class of Relation
> > >> > 1.2.1.2.2.1. Specialisation
> > >> > 1.2.1.2.2.2. Unit of Measure Mapping of Property to
> Number Space
> > >> > 1.2.1.2.2.3. Class of Representation
> > >> > 1.2.1.2.2.3.1. Identification
> > >> > 1.2.1.2.2.3.2. Definition
> > >> > 1.2.1.2.2.3.3. Description
> > >> > 1.2.1.3. Relation
> > >> > 1.2.1.3.1. Classification
> > >> > 1.2.1.3.2. Cause and Effect
> > >> > 1.2.1.3.3. Whole-Part
> > >> > 1.2.1.3.3.1. Fusion Whole-Part
> > >> > 1.2.1.3.3.2. Arrangement Whole-Part
> > >> > 1.2.1.3.3.3. Assembly Whole-Part
> > >> > 1.2.1.3.3.4. Feature Whole-Part
> > >> > 1.2.1.3.3.5. Temporal Whole-Part
> > >> > 1.2.1.3.3.6. Participation in Activity
> > >> > 1.2.1.3.3.7. Temporal Bounding of State
> > >> > 1.2.1.3.3.8. Containment of Individual
> > >> > 1.2.1.3.4. Connection
> > >> > 1.2.1.3.5. Temporal Sequence
> > >> > 1.2.1.3.6. Involvement in Activity
> > >> > 1.2.2. Set
> >
> > Every level of this outline raises very serious questions about
> > why things are placed on that level, how they are related to
> > their siblings or their parents and children. Why, for example,
> > is "period of time" under "state"? What is time? Why is
> > "cause and effect" a sibling node of "whole-part"? What is
> > causality? How does causality relate to time? Which is more
> > fundamental, time or causality? Which one presupposes the
> > other in its definition? Why?
> >
> > Having a laundry list of items to be considered is useful.
> > But without a very serious answer to all these questions,
> > it should not considered as anything that has any more
> > structure than a laundry list.
> >
> > John Sowa
> >
> >
>
>