ONT Re: Topology
Jon,
Thanks for the response. From here it appears that you
do quite well as a two-fingered typist. My own problem
is that I can type faster than I can think. Some days I
believe I was more productive when I wrote by hand, and then
(in the good days in industry), someone else typed my
work. But I've tried working by hand, and I can't seem
to think anymore unless at the computer.
Which, by
the way, relates to your point about KIF. I've heard
that those who use lisp a lot think in it, and I suppose
that is believable. There was a time in the past when
I used to dream in Fortran, but thank goodness that time
is long gone.
The problems with "the same mix of nat lang and math
that one normally reads in technical papers and engineering
specs," are the various kinds of imprecision. Quine (somewhere
in "The ways of paradox and other essays", probably in the
essay 'The Scope and Language of Science")
recommends the 1st order predicate calculus as the basic
ideal language of science (with, of course, "to be is to be
a value of a variable").
He also notes: "In practice, one does not explicitly rid
one's work of indicator words, tense, and ambiguity, nor does one
limit one's use of logic to sentences thus purified. In
practice, one _supposes_ all such points of variation fixed for
the space of one's logical argument."
I guess that it is this purification that is needed for interchange
of ontologies. Thus KIF. However, I for one, would certainly
like to have an expression of the Standard Upper Onotology
(whatever that might be) in terms more friendly (to me) than
KIF.
If the "purified content" were recorded in something like
the "usual" notation of FOPC, but embeded in plain text
(in a way similar to literate programing, as used in the
Haskell community) providing non-binding explanations,
that might suit my taste.
The display form of CGs would be a good way to
present the formal sentences. Of course, the display form itself isn't
(currently) machine readable, as far as I know.
By the way, I've avoided using CGs in the past because I couldn't
find a reasonable tool. Currently, it looks like Cogitant will
satisfy my needs, and I'm looking forward to actually trying to
think using CGs (the linear forms are no better for thinking
than KIF).
But maybe it is more important to get a consensus on the scope
and content of the SUO than the presentation. -- I.e.,
monolithic, vs. multiple ontologies as per John Sowa.
I hope I can get to some remarks on mathematical topology
vs mereo-topology sometime.
Best,
John Velman
On 2002.03.19 13:10 Jon Awbrey wrote:
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> JA = Jon Awbrey
> JV = John Velman
>
> JV: I've skipped ahead, since at one time I knew some topology,
> and in fact I have my very own copy of JLK's book, plus
> Dugundji's book (Dugundji was my Topology prof).
>
> JV: Question: have I missed the application you are making
> to of topology to ontology (or ontology to topology?),
> or is it still to come after the intro to topology?
>
> Hi John,
>
> I'll go ahead and answer on list as I had been planning to give an
> explanation soon.
> I just wanted to lay a few maths on the floor before I opened my big
> mouth and risked
> taking a tumble myself. It's a terrible thing for a Peircean to admit,
> but I am still
> a 2-fingered typist -- unless that thumb I now spy on the spacebar can
> count for 3 --
> anyway, I really hate typing a lot and so it takes me 5 or 6 good reasons
> to push
> me over the thrash-hold of anything so tedious as this type of drill.
>
> Here are the reasons that I think I can give the shortest schrift right
> away:
>
> 1. They were just now hawking the verdues of mereo-topology on the
> Midway.
> Don't know much about mereo-top but I know it ain't the Big Top by
> far.
> So I thought I would hoist this old standard up the flagpole and see
> if anybody could tell the difference between a Goldberg Invention
> and a Rube.
>
> 2. In many on-&-off list discussions with DM, JS, MP, MW, PG, and
> others,
> I have begun, somewhat timidly for me, to express the change of heart
> that
> has gradually crept up on me over the last couple of years about the
> utility
> and lack thereof of "special purpose ontology interchange languages"
> (SPOIL's).
>
> JA: I cannot speak for KIF, and I do not know any mathematically trained
> folk
> who would actually consider trying to do any amount of serious work
> in it.
> Why any of them would bother writing things up in a post hoc format
> that
> you can't actually use to think in is beyond me. And no, it is not
> any
> better for computing or theorem proving on machines.
>
> JA: My feelings about the advisability of a "dedicated ontology language"
> are quite a bit different than they were a couple of years ago,
> mostly
> from observing the content in SUMO and the process in the SUO group.
> I now believe that we would be better off writing the specification
> for a standard upper ontology in the same mix of nat lang and math
> that one normally reads in technical papers and engineering specs,
> leaving it to the language-of-the-moment crews to implement them
> in whatever happens to be the hot format this week. The best
> that we can do is to keep pushing innovation and to challenge
> folks to put more logical and computational power into the
> hackworks that will continue to rule the scene due to the
> sorts of things that impress college dropout programmers,
> or that self-styled "logicians" continue to exercise
> their mystifyingly uninformed authority over.
>
> Okay, that was a little harsh, but sadly, it is roughly true.
> I believe that most sensible and sensitive observers understand
> the kind of rift that was widened up between the philosophical
> and the scientific communities by the "premature machinations"
> of 'Principia Mathematica', and I earnestly opine that there
> is far too much at stake now to let that sort of schismatic
> debacle go on into another century or millennium, much less
> than to start the whole damn thing all over again in this
> brave new web world of ours.
>
> Anyway, it has developed in these discussions that my interlocutors
> have a variety of different sentiments about this recommended genre
> of "mixed natural language and mathematical monographics", so I've
> been planning to exhibit some "models of style" that I personally
> think are admirable, especially in their prose presentations.
>
> That's only 2 of 5 or 6, but maybe enough for now.
>
> Jon Awbrey
>
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