ONT [Fwd: Quantity of Postings]
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Jim,
With respect to the Main SUO Work I am but a "mildly intersted onlooker"
at this point. I have unsubscribed from the main list and removed its
address from my address book, so unless I inadvertently hit <reply-all>
you should not have gotten any e-mail from me on that line since the
message of Mon, 09 Jul 2001 19:40:38 -0400 on "Quantity of Postings"
that I have attached for your reference. The message that you reply
to here was sent to the "ONT" Sublist, as you have often requested.
The Archives have been down all week so I have no way of knowing
if the Archiver is cross-listing stuff.
All The Best Wishes,
Jon Awbrey
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Jim Schoening wrote:
>
> Subj: RE: ONT Re: Inquiry Into Inquiry
> Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:08:14 -0400
> From: "Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I" <James.Schoening@mail1.monmouth.army.mil>
> To: "'Jon Awbrey'" <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
>
> Jon,
>
> Please take this as a friendly request.
>
> Your volume of postings is again back to a very high level.
> Please be careful to post only those messages that contribute
> to the scope of this project.
>
> I have not been reading your recent threat [thread?] on inquiry.
> Obviously it relates to ontology and probably even to an upper ontology,
> but then everything under the sun does. Is there a direct connection
> that would justify this discussion on the SUO list. If not, could
> you move it to the Ontology list?
>
> Jim
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon Awbrey
> To: W.M. Jaworski;
> Paul Prueitt
> Cc: Arisbe;
> Stand! Unfold! Ontology!;
> Topic Map Mail;
> Organization, Complexity, Autonomy
> Sent: 7/25/01 2:44 PM
> Subj: ONT Re: Inquiry Into Inquiry
>
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>
> Subj: Re: Inquiry
> Date: Sun, 03 Sep 2000 23:36:37 -0400
> From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
> To: Stand Up Ontology <standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>
>
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> | Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
> | mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
> | che la diritta via era smarrita.
> |
> | Midway upon the journey of our life
> | I found myself within a forest dark,
> | For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
> |
> | Dante Alighieri, 'Inferno', Canto 1.1-3
> | http://www.divinecomedy.org/
> | http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/projects/dante/
>
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>
> | If, walking in a garden on a dark night, you were suddenly
> | to hear the voice of your sister crying to you to rescue her
> | from a villain, would you stop to reason out the metaphysical
> | question of whether it were possible for one mind to cause
> | material waves of sound and for another mind to perceive them?
> | If you did, the problem might probably occupy the remainder
> | of your days.
> |
> | Charles Sanders Peirce, "Vitally Important Topics", CP 1.655.
>
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> | Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason,
> | that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so
> | desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to
> | think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves
> | to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy:
> |
> | Do not block the way of inquiry.
> |
> | Although it is better to be methodical in our investigations,
> | and to consider the economics of research, yet there is no
> | positive sin against logic in 'trying' any theory which
> | may come into our heads, so long as it is adopted in such
> | a sense as to permit the investigation to go on unimpeded
> | and undiscouraged. On the other hand, to set up a philosophy
> | which barricades the road of further advance toward the truth
> | is the one unpardonable offence in reasoning, as it is also
> | the one to which metaphysicians have in all ages shown
> | themselves the most addicted.
> |
> | Charles Sanders Peirce, "The First Rule of Reason", CP 1.135-136.
>
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> | Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of
> | an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate
> | in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert
> | the elements of the original situation into a unified whole.
> |
> | John Dewey, "Logic: The Theory of Inquiry", in 'John Dewey:
> | The Later Works, 1925-1953, Volume 12: 1938', Edited by
> | J.A. Boydston, Southern Illinois University Press,
> | Carbondale, IL, 1986, page 108.
>
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> | This paper is based upon the theory already established,
> | that the function of conceptions is to reduce the manifold
> | of sensuous impressions to unity, and that the validity of
> | a conception consists in the impossibility of reducing the
> | content of consciousness to unity without the introduction
> | of it.
> |
> | Charles Sanders Peirce, "On a New List of Categories", 14 May 1867,
> | In 'Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Vol. 2,
> | 1867-1871', Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1984, page 49,
> | Customarily cited as (CE 2, 49). Cf. 'Collected Papers', CP 1.545.
>
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>
> By way of giving this question a proper form of inaugural,
> I thought that I would share with you some of my favorite
> quotations on the subject of inquiry, each one reflecting
> a different facet of this resplendently fascinating topic.
>
> With regard to the bearing of the more poetic expressions,
> I will leave you now to your own contemplations, and, for
> the moment and the immediate future, I will focus on what
> is evidently the most prosaic and derivative of the bunch,
> where I think it sufficient to echo Peirce's echo of Kant.
>
> I believe that this statement forms a cardinal expression --
> embodying the heart and serving as the hinge -- for a very
> important principle, one that goes a large part of the way
> toward explaining how the information that is stored up in
> an ontology, a "body of ontological knowledge" (BOOK), can
> work to inform the progress of inquiries on which it bears.
>
> Jon Awbrey
>
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Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I wrote:
>
> Jon,
>
> Could I make a friendly request? I think you'll agree you post more
> messages to the SUO list than anyone else. As such, could you take
> special care to post only those messages that directly contribute
> to the objectives of this group.
>
> Jim
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Jim,
I know that it will surprise some people if I say it,
but other than the sort of chatter that it takes just
to have any kind of community feeling at all, that is
all that I have been trying to do since the very start.
I think that it would be good if we had some systematic way of
analyzing our stated goals in relation to the resources that we
already have in our command, the capacities that we need to build,
the obstacles that we need to overcome, and the problems that we
need to solve -- just the way that most programmer types would
go about tackling any goal-hacking task -- but I do not see
that happening here, so why fight it?
I understand that different people have different ideas about what will
contribute to building a SUO, but unless this working group comes up with
an effective task-analytic method for the job, I think that it will just
go on with a process of seeing who can shout who down. What I do not
understand is why somebody who believes that he or she has something
positive and constructive to contribute to his or her vision of what
a SUO should be would even waste the time that it takes to write yet
another one of those messages that say in effect "I will not bring
my Imperial Circus to your town unless you clear the Arena first!"
My guess is that there is a problematic dynamic affecting this community that
will not be solved by the stifling of one poet or the scaping of one goat, but
my guess is also that you will all insist on discovering that for yourself, and
I am tired of trying to second guess the perceptions of relevance that may or may
not be in somebody else's head, so I believe that the best solution for me and for
everybody else is just for me retire completely to the Ontology sublist heneceforth.
I am posting this to the whole group so that I won't be able to go back on it.
All The Best Wishes,
Jon Awbrey
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