ONT Re: Inquiry Into Inquiry
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Subj: Inquiry
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 10:36:06 -0400
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
To: Stand Up Ontology <standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>
I would like to try to start a thread about this thing
that many people call "inquiry", which I think of as
a strategic way of talking about "scientific method",
without getting into, at first, at least, the issue
of whether there really is such a "method", but also
as a way of including all of those less formalized
ways that everyday reasoning manages to take us from
highly confused and uncertain states of mind about
some problem or question to states of mind that are
slightly more clear and settled, at least enough to
be capable of engaging in competent courses of action
with regard to the issues in question.
Of course, the whole point of inquiry is not just to reach
some kind of purely inner peace, but to achieve that sort
of peace of mind that is founded on an understanding of
the "objective" situation, whatever the heck that is.
How is this relevant to ontology? Well, because you might say
that inquiry is the process by which ontologies come into being.
When I say "ontologies", I mean the theories, not the things.
I get the sense that most people here already talk that way,
but I have to keep reminding myself, because of having come
from communities of interpretation where most people talk
as if they meant the being of the things in themselves.
So, if an ontology is "just a theory", a story about "what is",
then it is a story that is told by somebody, a theory that is
fashioned in a particular language, by a particular person,
group, community, or culture.
These are just more things that everybody knows, but I have
to keep reminding myself of them, especially in this context,
because there are one or two particular kinds of forgetfulness
that the ontological way of thinking is liable to lead us into,
if we are not really careful.
For example, look at the terms, the definitions, and the axioms
that we find to make up an ontology. Did all of that fall from
the sky, or did we have to dig it out of the ground of Being by
means of our "dialogue with Nature" -- to use the euphemism --
that is really more like an argument, a contest, a struggle
that we are constantly in danger of losing?
So, I will not argue with anybody that axiom systems are the
slickest way to organize ("organonize"?) and summarize what
we know, once we know it, but we should not forget about the
dynamics of the process by which these special formulations
of our knowledge came to be, and not fall into imagining that
we are thereby dictating to Nature.
My design recommendation, therefore, is that we should remember
to give the system for managing ontologies a "built in" facility
for inquiry -- at least, to make it amenable to the overall drift
and dynamics of inquiry, and better, to make it more fully capable
of supporting continued inquiry on the parts of its human users.
Enough for now. These comments are party inspired by John Sowa's
continuing emphasis on the ontology of relation (that we get, e.g.,
from Peirce) and the ontology of process (that we get, e.g., from
Whitehead), but they also arise from resonances with many of the
comments that people have been making over the past few days.
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