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Garry,
Definitely, how we know the world of things
in the course of cognitive development has its own conceptual value
but must be presented as a relevant issue to the SUO task.
Maybe, it will do all us good to derive some object lesson
from 'constructivism' as well, in any version and edition, even an extreme
one.
Reading the reference you supplied,
where the author is indulging in metaphorical comparisons with evolitionary
biology, one can run into the following 'revolutionary' claims:
1. ''Radical constructivism is radical
because it breaks with convention and develops a theory of knowledge in which
knowledge does not reflect an "objective" ontological reality, but exclusively
an ordering and organization of a world constituted by our experience. The
radical constructivist has relinquished "metaphysical realism" once and for all,
and finds himself in full agreement with Piaget, who says: "Intelligence
organizes the world by organizing itself"'.
2.''It does not matter what an object might be like
in "reality" or from an "objective" point of view'';
3.''The definition of the relationship between
knowledge and reality, and that is precisely the point where radical
constructivism steps out of the traditional scenario of epistemology. Once
knowing is no longer understood as the search for an iconic representation of
ontological reality but, instead, as a search for fitting ways of
behaving and thinking, the traditional problem disappears.''
Being quite symptomatic and self-revealing, these
statements come from clear misunderstanding of the nature of the world and
knowledge. For, to find the rational answer to the question 'how do we
know the world of entities?' , one first needs to resolve 'what is the world of
things we know?'. As I have noticed in my communication with
Chris, dual thinking, the tendency to classify things into two opposed
classes, the damnation of all metaphysical argumentation, makes all
the confusion here again. As it stands to any unprejudiced mind, there
is one grand reality as the entire totality of entities, as the whole world
of things, as the aggregate and the sum of real things (objects, persons,
situations, changes, processes, and relations). But we, human beings, wallowing
in the egotistic belief that to be (for real things) is to be known by us,
created our personal reality, presenting this mental experience as
a separatly existing world. Thus opposing the reality (as it actually
is) to the personal, experiential reality (determining how things appear to
us). Which is actually nothing else but one part of the whole world along
with the physical universe, biological reality, social reality,
and information reality.
Unlike nonliving things, Nature saw to it that
all living beings were endowed with capacity to accomodate, adjust, or
adapt to the surroundings by detecting changes (stimuli) in the
external and internal environment via chemical means and diffuse or
centralized nervous systems. It is a lucky fact that some of them are
added on the top by knowledge processing mechanisms: mental operations of
perception, attention, learning and remembering, intuition, representation, and
believing and higher cognitive processes of knowing, thinking, deciding, and
language. But being equipped with active consciousness and intelligent mind
only aditionally contributes to better adjusting (via Peaget's assimilation
and accomodation) to the real states of things by
generating constructs, concepts, hypotheses, rules, theories, and actions
capable to survive the reality testing of life. All points to that
the relationship of knowledge (cognitive agents) and reality is
the dynamic part-whole interrelationship, where the meaning of a
relative term must be drawn from its correlative. Namely, the meaning of the
world as 'objective reality' involves the concept of experiential reality as
'subjective reality', and vice versa. For neurologists and neuroscientist as
well as for prospective artificial agents our personal, experiential reality is
a piece of objective world, to be described, explained, and represented in
a systematic and scientific way.
Instead of exaggerating the role of
higher cognitive structures and mechanisms, aggravated with futile copying
and simulating the human mind by formal logical models (see Project
Halo on 'Digital Aristotle'), we need to discover a canonical formal
representation of the 'ontological reality', including the experiential
reality as its inherent component in spite of this inflated idea of
our importance in the world of things. This is a realistic way to construct
a 'viable' knowledge and
reasoning system which virtue will be measured by what it knows
about reality, by the accuracy of the world knowledge representation,
that is, by the universality of the formal ontology
constructed and its potency to be applicable to all major realms of being,
to every basic sphere of reality, to any knowledge domain.
Regards,
Azamat
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2005 6:53
AM
Subject: RE: Idealism vs Materialism :
Idealism and the Differentiating Element
Azamat,
You pointed in response to my message on
primitives the advance that Kant proposed moving from "substance" and "state"
to concepts of pure thught that he argued as more foundational. I wanted to
follow up in a pragmatic/Piagetian fashion.
AA>This method is old as the Greek
world, Aristotle drawn such elemental classes as substance, state,
quality, quantity, change, and relation from experience, seemingly from verbal
classification of Greek grammar. And they mold the matrix of human experience
and knowledge, all forms of thought. Alternatively, Kant proposed his
table of categories as pure concept of human understanding with some
modifications, lifting the class of relations over substances. As a result, no
good formal and general ontology can do AA>without substances, states,
changes, and relations.
Kant's
distinction is a good departure point recognizing the constructionist
nature of concepts like "substance" from more primitive things. Piaget's
constructionsist cognitive psycholgy gave us an idea about how some of these
ideas emerge in children as part of development. The psychologist
Ernst . von Glasersfeld came built on Piaget
in his "Radical Constructivism, (see his The construction of
knowledge, Intersystems Publ., Salinas, CA, 1988.). He distinguishes between "ontological reality" and "experiential
reality" in the following way: ontic reality delivers the
raw material out of which our knowledge processing system constructs the
familar modell made up of objects, events, relations, etc. It is these
constructions that are our experiential reality (the order of things
embodied in our knowledge). You can read more about
these ideas in his article "An Introduction to Radical
Constructivism" which is online at :http://www.umass.edu/srri/vonGlasersfeld/onlinePapers/html/082.html
A final connection I would make is back to your position that it isn't
important how concepts are formed in the human
mind:
AA>It is not so
important how the concepts formulated in the human mind, by pure thought,
intutition, experience or experiment, or under divine inspiration. What is
crucial, ontological concepts must represent the basic kinds of reality, they
have to mean real distinctions and AA>differences. And so to be the master
terms whereby any cognitive agent can effectively reason about the
world.
Well this idea
of a "basic reality" gets me thinking back to the old discussions of some
pragmatic base to such basic/objectivity reality. If we use the ontic
to experiental distinction as one of "ingredients" forged by constructionist
model building into mental "product" (concept of substance etc.)
then these mential products (knowledge) can not "represent" reality (the
raw material), instead it must prove to be pragmatgically valid by a
"functional fit", that is by allowing us to attain the goals we happen to have chosen. In Glaserfeld work this is called the
"Model validation hypothesis" which
says;
A good model is not a copy of an independent order, but a working
(viable) formalisation (one which fulfills
the aim for which it is beeing used) of the order which we ourselves
generate in knowledge. So we can't assume that basic
reality is adequately modelled in terms of what we call "objects". Objects are
given to us as "objects of experience" as we develop cognition and only
after we have constructed an order for them in our knowledge.
Thus we can think about objects only after we have ourselves
constructged them. Putting it
in a combination Piaget and pragmatice terms we might say that - A
model (like an ontological model) is not really an abstraction of the observed
system/world reality, but a construction that allows us to interact
succesfully with the observed system/world
reality."
Gary
-----Original Message-----
From: azamat abdoullaev
[mailto:abdoul@cytanet.com.cy]
Sent: Wed 3/23/2005 4:17 PM
To: Gary Berg-Cross
Cc:
standard-upper-ontology@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG; ONTOLOGY@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
Subject: Re: Idealism vs Materialism : Idealism and the
Differentiating Element
Gary,
See my comments below.
Azamat
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2005 5:01
AM
Subject: RE: Idealism vs Materialism
: Idealism and the Differentiating Element
Azamat,
Your illustrations helped me
understand your approach to these very difficult topics of
primitive/fundamental ideas that ground an upper ontology.
As in the quantum realm our naked commonsense may not
serve us well here but a consistent exploration of different, fallible
hypotheses of these fundamentals concept should do it.
This might include, to use Thagard’s (1992) related discovery
methods, -data-driven (generalizations from observation and
from experiments with ontologies, abductive processes to explain patterns,
and coherence-driven corrections to resolve contradictions
arising between hypotheses and observation. We then
attempt to restore consistency adapting, removing or
modifying one or more assumptions which are judged contributes to the
derivation of contradiction.
This method is old as the
Greek world, Aristotle drawn such elemental classes as substance,
state, quality, quantity, change, and relation from experience, seemingly
from verbal classification of Greek grammar. And they mold the matrix of
human experience and knowledge, all forms of thought. Alternatively,
Kant proposed his table of categories as pure concept of human understanding
with some modifications, lifting the class of relations over substances. As
a result, no good formal and general ontology can do without substances,
states, changes, and relations.
To put this back, for a
moment, in the philosophical contexts we started with in earlier messages,
I would add an idea from Clarence Lewis ‘s "A Pragmatic
Conception of the a priori," where he rejects Kantian concepts of
the a priori arguing that”
"The thought which both
rationalism and empiricism have missed is that there are principles,
representing the initiative of mind, which impose upon experience no
limitations whatever, but that such conceptions are still subject to
alternation on pragmatic grounds when the expanding boundaries of
experience reveal their felicity as intellectual instruments." Underlining
is mine.
Thus, paraphrasing some of
Lewis’s work and its interpretation by others, what is important about an
hypothesis, including ones on primitive ontological hypotheses, is that it
is a "concept" -- a purely logical meaning -- which we bring to bear on
experience. The concepts we formulate are in part determined by our
immediate, pragmatic interests and in part by the historical nature of
individual experience as researchers. In the sense Sowa has talked about
fundamental scientific laws they are outside our methods (a priori
in a sense) because they order experience in a way that can be
investigated consistently across all of our historical experience and our
pragmatic interests at the time.
It’s a knowledge hypothesis
that this type of ordering would be true of our more
fundamental categorical notions – the ones we need for an upper ontology.
We formulate such upper level concepts based on our experience and the
pragamatics of the time, but our intuition is that we arrive at what we
will call a ontological primitive concept that transcends these pragmatic
starting points.
It is not so important how the
concepts formulated in the human mind, by pure thought, intutition,
experience or experiment, or under divine inspiration. What is crucial,
ontological concepts must represent the basic kinds of reality, they have to
mean real distinctions and differences. And so to be the master terms
whereby any cognitive agent can effectively reason about the
world.
BTW, this discussion has
mostly slipped beyond the Idealism vs. Materialism back to one more direct
toward the pragmatics of developing upper ontological topics.
I agree, but never mind. If you
like, just change the subject name.
Best.
1
Regards,
Gary
-----Original Message-----
From: azamat
abdoullaev [mailto:abdoul@cytanet.com.cy]
Sent: Tue 3/22/2005
1:26 PM
To: Gary Berg-Cross
Cc:
standard-upper-ontology@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG; ONTOLOGY@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
Subject: Re: Idealism vs Materialism : Idealism and the
Differentiating Element
Gary,
Let me clear up the matter in a more
illustrative way.
Traditionally, reality is separated into two or
three disjoint divisions of the same rank and
status:
1. as concrete
individuals (as contingent things) and universals (as necessary
things);
2. as concrete
things, collections (or classes
or sets) of concrete things (concrete universals) and abstract, conceptual classes, or universals per
se.
Written in abbreviated forms, the above may be
presented as the CC (concrete and conceivable) schema or the CCC
(concrete, collective, and conceivable) perspective of reality; what is
commonly expressed in the natural languages as concrete names,
collective names, and abstract names. Then most existent
general and upper ontologies, like the OWL and SUO, can be assigned to
the CC or CCC schemas, closing the bottom with nothing or nonentity, the
top with the concept of individual thing or entity.
Evidently, we need to consider the things in the
right order of their presentation, neither as an equal-order separation
nor in the inverse order, commencing from the concrete objects,
properties, and events, and specific relations to the abstract
ontological classes of substance, state, change, and relation. The order
of things here makes all the difference; after all, a young woman
personality may be quite different depending on the order of occurrences
of her life experiences: becoming a mother, a college graduation, and
becoming a wife.
We have to lift
up Entity or Thing or Being as the topmost class of all classes
complemented with the concept of nothing (the null class as part of
everything, which has nothing to do with absurdity). The ultimate class
of thing or entity will then denote a single, unitary ontological
category having as its parts the entity classes and the relationship
classes, as well as all the infinite gamut of their instances and
occurrences. We thus attached to the scientific way of considering
reality as the whole class of entity consisting of entity classes and
relationship classes, all together constituting the nature and essence
of the individual things in the real world. So to
have a universal ontology, you have just follow the C/C/C
descending model of the world, where sets and individuals are only
instantiations or representations of the entity-universal, that is, they
must be considered of much lower rank in the ontological
status.
Note when sets
and individuals are recognized as basic as universals, we are doomed to
create redundant entities and relationships, i.e., an imaginary world of
nonexistent things, while trying to construct a formal general ontology
language, like GOL, an otherwise interesting
project.
So it looks that
your second reading is closer to the point.
Regarding you
entity classification (or rather object?), maybe it would of use at your
top to divide objects into two wide categories, material,
spatial substances and nonspatial, conceptual objects, and
somehow include the term 'representation' as well, before
'icon'.For more particulars, visit my website: 'Standard Ontology for
Global Intelligent Cyberspace'.
Regards,
Azamat
Abdoullaev
EIS Intelligent
Systems LTD
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005
3:59 PM
Subject: RE: Idealism vs
Materialism : Idealism and the Differentiating Element
Azamat,
>You are raising
intriguing questions regarding meaning and processible ontologies. I
hope my short contribution will make the picture clearer.
Thanks for the kind words.
From what you wrote signs we may share some ideas from the semiotics
realm and connecting this to what you called “ontological
linguistics”, - a new phrase for me, but if its subject matter is
“ontological grammar, syntax, and real valued semantics) this sounds
like the issues that the development of such things as OWL struggle
although you might have to spell out what you mean by and real valued
semantics.
AA>In the ontological
language, real meaning is fixed as the semantic values of signs,
determined by the entities and relationships in the real
world.
Are you talking about
relating signs to the set-theoretic (logical) aspect of an
ontology? That is using signs in the ontology
construction as a formal logical system composed of
its objects-primitives, classes, individuals, and properties, logical
syntax (notation techniques, formation and transformation rules), and
formal semantics (model theory), such as the OWL is doing?
Another way of speaking
about this is to imagine using “sign meaning” to
develop a “meaningful” primitives Entity, Thing etc. the kinds of
objects with fundamental definitions, axioms and those “real-world
semantics” you mentioned. This
allows a common interpretation by humans and systems of the
ontological theory and its truth conditions in the
world of things, entities, or beings.
BTW, given
that we want to discuss signs and symbols our ontology will include
concepts like “contentbearing objects: such as in the small taxonomic
part shown below (just to connect to the linguistic part of
ontology)
•
Entity
Physical
Object
ContentBearingObject
Icon
SymbolicString
LinguisticExpression
WrittenLinguisticExpression
Text
Sentence
Phrase
Word
Morpheme
Regards,
Gary
Berg-Cross
-----Original Message-----
From: azamat
abdoullaev [mailto:abdoul@cytanet.com.cy]
Sent: Mon
3/21/2005 4:11 PM
To: Gary Berg-Cross
Cc:
standard-upper-ontology@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
Subject: Re:
Idealism vs Materialism : Idealism and the Differentiating
Element
Dear Gary,
You are raising intriguing questions
regarding meaning and processible ontologies. I hope my short
contribution will make the picture clearer.
To have correct understanding of
knowledge, meaning ought to be viewed as a meaning relation
between signs (symbols, words or ideas, thoughts) and things in the
real world. Any relation by nature is two-sided or
bi-directional (from signs to things as well as form things to
signs). The ontological perspective comes out here as most
fundamental; for it is mapping the real structures to the sign
structures (which include conceptual structures). This is the
subject matter of ontological linguistics (ontological grammar,
syntax, and real valued semantics), which shouldn't be mixed with
its complement, linguistic ontology. In the ontological language,
real meaning is fixed as the semantic values of signs, determined
by the entities and relationships in the real world. Once
the sign structures with their associations in a certain domain
knowledge are sorted out as truly conforming to the ontological
structures, you can enjoy a machine-processible
ontology.
The second issue is inherently
connected with the successful resolution of the first one.
Materialism-Idealism distinction is the
result of an innate tendency of the human mind to all sorts of
dichotomy and duality. This opposite division is a bad heritage
of classic metaphysics, born by the confused polarity of all things
as abstract, ideal realities (froms, ideas) and material,
physical realities. The practice of modern science is inclined
to deny as the only reality either ideas or matter, where
one exists as subordinate to another. The task of general
formal ontology is to view the abstract entities and the
concrete things as two parts of one real world, as two distinct
domains of reality, the universe of matter and the universe of
mind, somehow interrelated to each other. And the concepts of
mind and matter should be synthesized not within materialism or
idealism but rather within a general ontological theory encompassing
both parts as distinct levels within an all-comprehensive
hierarchy of things.
After all, to comprehend the general
rules, principles, and mechanisms of such relationships
(ideality-actuality) is the challenging undertaking
for all who signed up for ontology classes.
Regards,
Azamat Abdoullaev
EIS Intelligent Systems
LTD
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2005
4:35 PM
Subject: RE: Idealism vs
Materialism : Idealism and the Differentiating Element
This discussion,
along with Re: nature -> "human brain" -> "language terms"
==>> knowledge ?,
has
wandered over considerable ground but a
question was raised along the way about “how
then we should model meaning?.”
One issue
was can "knowledge" ("reality" yes, but not "knowledge") exist
independently of the brain?
A simple
counter question occurred to me, “if such knowledge can[t be
defined how why are trying to build processable ontologies
? Isn’t that a endeavor to capture meaning
outside of the brain?
John Sowa
covered this in passing, noting that our computer applications
include “knowledge”
JS>
First, knowledge is certainly codifiable in a way that
solves a
great many problems. Every program ever written
does
that, and there are an enormous number of very
successful
ones. But each of those programs solves a
particular
special case. The problem we face is to
relate those
special cases by general principles.
JS>And that is where
the difficulties lie.
Peirce’s distinction between REAL and TRUE
may be helpful to some of us in ontological
community discussion with an aim to building up usable knowledge
.
Perice "The real, then, is that which,
sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result
in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me
and you. Thus, the very origin of the
conception of reality shows that this conception essentially
involves the notion of a community, without definite limits, and
capable of a definite increase of knowledge" (CP 5.311).
To elaborate further this is now he
addressed the distinction between opinions on the true, and the
real in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear ":
"The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by
all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object
represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would
explain reality" (CP 5.407). ….
Peirce continues later with
"reality is independent, not necessarily of thought in
general, but only of what you or I or any finite number of men may
think about it," ….(that), "though the object of the final opinion
depends on what that opinion is, yet what that opinion is does
not depend on what you or I or any man thinks" (CP 5.408).
underlining is mine for emphasis
Which brings
me, at least, back to John’s opinion that he
accuracy of any scientific hypothesis
JS> does
not depend
> on who or what discovered it
or on any methods of thinking,
> any
techniques of problem solving, or any apparatus
that
JS> he, she, or it might have used to
arrive at the hypothesis.
I can understand this in light of
Peirce’ efforts to define clear thinking, which we need in
Ontology building.
To conclude with yet another Peircian quote.
Here’s one he used on the path to a 3rd way
between the realists and idealist.
The philosophical problem is to resolve two contradictory
claims about the basis of reality:
- the
principal thesis of realism - there is a reality that exists
independently of our representations of it
or
- Idealism claim that what we perceive
as real dependent is upon our (usually
expressed as mental) representations of “it”.
As James Liszka
observed the clash of the two theses is nicely expressed in
Peirce's "Consequences of the Four Incapacities
":
"...there is no thing which is in-itself
in the sense of not being relative to the mind, though things
which are relative to the mind doubtless are, apart from the
relation" (5.311).
Liszkae called this 3rd way a discursive
realism to distinguish it from the later effort of
Rorty or Foucault, in which there is neither a
privileged discourse, nor can any representational system that can
mirror a reality external to such a system -
what might be called the discursive idealism.
Someone may able to drawn up the realism to idealism
continuum, which seems to be as embedded in our discussions as the
ontology continuum.
Gary Berg-Cross
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