SUO: Re: A Common SUO Document To Focus On
Philip Jackson wrote:
>
> Jim,
>
JS: These items will probably cut down on the volume, but without one
> > or more documents to focus on, we won't be making much progress.
>
> I agree, and would like to note that we now have a web-enabled
> framework for developing a common, documented definition of
> a standard upper ontology, with examples of its use provided
> by Robert Kent. It's at:
>
> https://www.quickbase.com/db/6urbwpxk
>
> Perhaps to make clear that it is intended to be used for this purpose, I
> should rename it something like "SUO Common Ontology Development Framework",
> insted of "SUO Dictionary" (?) -- Readers may still think it is just a glossary,
> to be developed and used as an appendix or afterthought -- rather, I hope that
> SUO members will find it a useful tool in the development of SUO itself. It
> can support collaboration in development of one or more ontology efforts,
> i.e. "merged ontology", "4D", "IFF", etc.
>
> Phil Jackson
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> "Philosophy cannot become scientifically healthy without an immense
> technical vocabulary. We can hardly imagine our great-grandsons
> turning over the leaves of this dictionary without amusement over
> the paucity of words with which their grandsires attempted to handle
> metaphysics and logic. Long before that day, it will have become
> indispensably requisite, too, that each of these terms should be
> confined to a single meaning which, however broad, must be free
> from all vagueness. This will involve a revolution in terminology;
> for in its present condition a philosophical thought of any precision
> can seldom be expressed without lengthy explanations." --
> CSP, Collected Papers 8:169
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Standard Disclaimers. www.philjackson.prohosting.com
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Phil,
I am sympathetic to some of the aims that I see here.
When I worked as a statistical computing consultant and
database jockey for researchers in health sciences, one
of the things that I was always arguing for was a better
integration of qualitative and quantitative methodologies.
So I spent a lot of time trying to convince data-in-a-box
people that they needed to start thinking how they could
move toward "deductive data bases" and I wasted an equal
amount of breath on trying to convince folks with rainy
afternoon brainstorms of axiomatic knowledge bases that
they ought to think about automating the connection to
data as she is spoke by those who actually go to gather.
And, no, I was vastly more positive and very enthusiastic
then -- my present cynicism is an honestly acquired taste.
Anyway, I remain hopeful that there will be a way to integrate
these diversely empirical and rational tendencies in the human
spirit, and that the very technologies that we are cutting our
teeth on and grinding our gnosis against may actually be a bit
of the answer. But I think that we have to think harder about
what this would take to really do it.
In my own work along these lines I spent a whole decade just in order
to integrate two modules of roughly empirical and rational capacities
over a common data structure. I learned some things. I have devoted
another whole decade just to tell people what I learned. So far, not
so good. I am wishing you better luck.
Jon Awbrey
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