RE [crm-sig] Have endurance!
martin
martin at ics.forth.gr
Fri Apr 1 15:11:55 EEST 2005
Hi Aldo,
Aldo Gangemi wrote:
> Hi all, just a few comments.
>
> IMO, categories (as used in ontology engineering) are not in psychology
> or in nature, but they must be good enough in order to construct an
> efficient ontology for a large variety of tasks.
OK. So are they constructed, and then from what? BTW "psychology" I meant
structures in our mental states. I'd argue that some are "built-in" in
our mind and some constructed. At least I read such arguments about the
"boot-strapping" of a new-born's mind?
> Philosophers usually do
> a different work, which consists in challenging every distinction: their
> work should not be taken as definitive. Of course, when biology will
> tell us more on the nature of rationality, we'll measure the biological
> compliance of an ontology.
>
> Concerning end/perd (object/event), I've just had a long discussion with
> Pat Hayes on the W3C SWBPD OEP list. We arrived at a good compromise:
> endurantism and perdurantism (in their better, state-of-art logical
> formulation) result to be notational variants, with different pros and
> cons from the readability, efficiency, etc. viewpoints. For those
> interested, I can forward parts of the discussion.
Yes, please forward some of the discussion.
>
> Concerning logical basis of categories, I think there is none: logic
> uses its own categories which are detached from any practical
> application of them (they are "neutral"). Then there is no reason to
> choose one category or the other, if logic is the rationale. But if we
> want useful notions that drive our modelling projects, categories become
> relevant.
I like that.
Best,
Martin
>
> Best
> --Aldo
>
> At 13:07 +0300 1-04-2005, martin wrote:
>
>> Hi Edmund,
>>
>> I agree with you completely. My point was however the opposite:
>> Practitioners distinguish clearly between things and events, but
>> the philosophers seem not to have found so far a clear understanding
>> of what the difference between the two is. So some propose not to
>> distinguish between both, whereas in the CRM we declare that there is
>> no common instance of Persitent Item and Temporal Entity. If two concepts
>> are not well-distinguished, one would however expect to find instances
>> in the
>> "grey zones" in between. So either they don't exist, or we have not
>> encountered
>> them in the practical scope of the CRM, or the generalization of the
>> psychological difference between things and events is based on other
>> essential
>> properties than those discussed by the respective philosophers.
>>
>> So, either the distinction is real, and our psychology supports it due to
>> innate biological experience, or we are deceived by our psychology,
>> and there is no
>> difference, or, the nature of the difference is different from the one
>> discussed (e.g. "being wholy present at each point in time).
>>
>> I would not exclude the case that certain very high abstraction levels
>> have no logical justification. I am no philosopher, but I have the
>> impression
>> that Aristotle and Feyerabend support this idea, which does not mean that
>> this case is already at this level of abstraction.
>>
>> I like this discussion for methodological reasons, because the AI and
>> Semantic Web community attempts to declare everything logically, which
>> poses the question of where the limits of logical explanation are.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Martin
>>
>> LEE, Edmund wrote:
>>
>>> Hello folks,
>>>
>>>> Anyhow it seems, that practitioners do not have any problem
>>>> with the perdurant-endurant distinction, independent of how it puzzles
>>>> logic-driven thought. To which degree should an ontology be
>>>> non-logic?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I've been fascinated by this on an intellectual level, but I think
>>> Martin has it exactly right. If practice does not require us to make
>>> this distinction, then our tool for conceptualising the world (the CRM)
>>> need not be concerned.
>>>
>>>> Another idea could be, that nature gave us an intuitive understanding
>>>
>>>
>>> of
>>>
>>>> the difference, but not the means to describe it...
>>>>
>>>
>>> I'm reminded of theories (of which I know little) that suggest that we
>>> (i.e. humans) only put as much effort into perception as will be useful
>>> for the task in hand. A car driver will be familiar with the experience
>>> of driving a very familiar route and not being able to recall a few
>>> minute later what the traffic conditions were at a particular junction
>>> although it was crossed without a problem. Compare this to driving in an
>>> unfamiliar city, where a much greater level of perception is used.
>>>
>>> Not really on topic, but I thought I'd chip in
>>>
>>> Best wishes
>>>
>>> ed
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>> Dr. Martin Doerr | Vox:+30(2810)391625 |
>> Principle Researcher | Fax:+30(2810)391638 |
>> | Email: martin at ics.forth.gr |
>> |
>> Center for Cultural Informatics |
>> Information Systems Laboratory |
>> Institute of Computer Science |
>> Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) |
>> |
>> Vassilika Vouton,P.O.Box1385,GR71110 Heraklion,Crete,Greece |
>> |
>> Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl |
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Martin Doerr | Vox:+30(2810)391625 |
Principle Researcher | Fax:+30(2810)391638 |
| Email: martin at ics.forth.gr |
|
Center for Cultural Informatics |
Information Systems Laboratory |
Institute of Computer Science |
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) |
|
Vassilika Vouton,P.O.Box1385,GR71110 Heraklion,Crete,Greece |
|
Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl |
--------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the Crm-sig
mailing list