ONT Re: Zeroth Order Theories (ZOT's)
Jon, I'm on the Ontology list -- there is no need to reply to me AND the
list.
> CM: What does this baroque framework do that a hundred other little
> programs for doing propositional logic and model theory don't do?
> As with every other comprehensible part of your work that I've seen,
> you are simply reinventing the wheel -- illustrated with ASCII art.
>
> Chris,
>
> Coming as it does from a fan of Bach, I will take take the "baroque"
> as a compliment,
Well, ignoring the inference from "S thinks baroque music is good" to "S
thinks anything baroque is good", as in music so in logic. Detail and
ornamentation are good when they have a purpose. My objection to your
stuff, as clever and even as elegant as it might be, is that, as far as I
can see, it just has no purpose. It either provides nothing that isn't
already available in familiar (and generally far more straightforward)
forms, or else it does things that appear to be utterly pointless. What
are the data structures depicted by your ASCII art *for*? Why should
anyone give a rip? Do they enable us to represent knowledge that is
otherwise unrepresentable? Can they be used to improve the computational
efficiency of existing theorem-proving engines? Do they enable to see
anything that we didn't see before? By my admittedly often dim lights,
the answer in each case is "No". All this impressive energy of yours
would seem to me to be far more usefully turned to, say, the construction
of real ontologies. Or maybe to writing poetry.
Chris Menzel