Re: SUO: Universal Time, other universals, and cultural contextof SUO.

[Adam Pease <apease@ks.teknowledge.com>]

Pat,
   My point is simple, that linguistic analysis may help remind or inspire 
us about KR issues.  One certainly should not blindly follow a methodology 
of purely linguistic analysis because that would indeed lead to ontological 
problems.  Some linguists like Davidson, Parsons, Krifka and others, 
realized that the strict surface structure of roles in events needed to be 
expanded into a richer underlying KR in order to be able to understand 
common natural language utterances.  Those insights should be useful to us.

Adam

At 12:23 PM 5/18/2001 -0500, pat hayes wrote:
>>Pat,
>>
>>At 10:52 PM 5/17/2001 -0500, pat hayes wrote:
>>
>>>>Pat,
>>>>Davidsonian semantics is a good start
>>>
>>>But what has that got to do with KR? Are you suggesting that we change 
>>>KIF to a language with Davidsonian semantics?
>>
>>Davidsonian semantics, at least as I understand it, is just an approach 
>>to reifying event instances in order to render English sentences more 
>>effectively in logic.  The notion of an event instance, "surrounded" by 
>>roles that attach to the event is a KR issue.
>
>Ah, I misunderstood you. That idea is KR, true, but it was invented in KR 
>independently of the linguistic input. It is indeed interesting that NL 
>seems to utilise this kind of structure, let me say, and this fact is an 
>interesting datum; but even here, the exact kind of 'roles' that one gets 
>from NL do not correspond in detail to the 'roles' (this term is 
>linguistic, so may warp the discusion if not scarequoted) that arise when 
>one takes a more objectively ontological perspective. Many properties of 
>events have no explicit linguistic markers, so are simply ignored by 
>linguistic analysis: if there is no case role or prepositions for it, a 
>linguist will not even consider it.
>
>>After reading Davidson, or Parsons one may get a sense that it's 
>>"obvious" but that to me is often the sign of good research, that it's so 
>>correct that after absorbing the idea, one can't think of why I shouldn't 
>>be so.
>>
>>>>, as well as the more fully developed and formal theories of event 
>>>>interpretations found in Terence Parson's "Events in the Semantic of English".
>>>
>>>OK, I will take a look, I do not know this in detail.  But if it really 
>>>is a semantics of English, I doubt if it will be of great KR interest: 
>>>there are so many things in the world that English has no semantics for.
>>
>>Well, even though English itself may not have explicit semantics for 
>>certain notions, that's not to say than an analysis of the meaning 
>>implicit in many English sentences can't have a beneficial impact on KR 
>>research.
>
>It could, I agree, but it can also have a very negative impact, which I 
>think is much more common. Many linguistic analyses make distinctions 
>based entirely on lexical or syntactic phenomena in NL, or even in a 
>single natural language (usually English), and are based on an explicit 
>methodology which insists that unless some distinction has, or is needed 
>to account for, some such linguistic phenomenon, then it must not be 
>allowed in the theory. Linguists, and linguistically oriented 
>philosophical logicians, are often quite explicit about this, cf.
>Hans Kamp:
>"At present there isn't much that we can say with certainty about the way 
>in which the human mind represents and processes information ... there is 
>little hope that this situation will significantly improve in the 
>foreseeable future... So theorizing about these matters...is something one 
>had better stay away from. ... A theory of attitude reports ought to be 
>independent of any specific assumptions about the organization of mental 
>states and the mechanisms which transform them."
>
>Or Piek Vossen on the distinction between 'first order' and 'second order' 
>entities, for him a central distinction: (from old email:)
>
>> >The discussion we had is whether wind and fire are 1st order or 2nd order
>> >entities. Is wind a phenomenon and therefore second order or is it a
>> >physical thing involved ina blowing event. What we would like to capture is
>> >the normal standard interpretation and classification of phenomena such as
>> >wind, fire.
>
>Sounds like an ontological matter, but it turned out to bea lexical, not 
>an ontological distinction, based on whether or not you could legitimately 
>use the continuous present ("...ing"):(Email from Livia Polyani)
>
>>I think the key distinction is between being able to use the sentence 
>>"The wind
>>blows" versus using the sentence "the wind is blowing". From a linguistic 
>>point
>>of view, they are very different animals.
>
>The point being that for Piek (and Livia), this was not linguistic 
>evidence of some underlying ontological distinction: it was the 
>*definition* of the distinction itself. Which seems to my ontologist's 
>mind to make the distinction ontologically useless. There might be (surely 
>is) a related ontological distinction, but the linguistic methodology 
>actively prevents one from approaching it properly.
>
>Pat
>
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Adam Pease
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