JOHN wrote:
''1. There will be categories called Time, Space, Object,
Process, etc.'' (01)
and BARRY replied:
''The upper ontology should contain at least the following top-level
categories:
Independent Continuant
Dependent Continuant
Process (aka Occurrent)'' (02)
John and Barry, (03)
Why we try to invent the wheel again and again, to be original or to impress
the public?
There are long existing ontological fundamentals (classes) formulated by
classic ontology, recognized by modern science and underpinning natural
language; namely:
1. Substance, of which all objects are made of;
2. State, determining the properties, qualities and quantities of things;
3.Change (process) in general;
4. Relationship in general (04)
All other things are particular kinds and special meanings of these
ontological classes of entity:
1. objects or 'independent continuants' are made of substances and expressed
by count nouns;
2. quantities and qualities are partitions of state in general;
3. events and processes are specific kinds of change;
4. relationships in time and space expressed by all sorts of prepositions. (05)
We say physical, chemical, biological, mental, social, economic, cultural
[substances, states, changes and relationships] at the first place. Nobody
speaks like this economic continuant or chemical occurrents.
No scientific theory can be viable without founding on these categories, no
human discourse is meaningful without using these fundamental classes.
Neither scientist nor laymen speak in such funny dialect of ontological
language (endurants, continuants, etc), nor machines will like it. (06)
To sum up: (07)
There is the world (or reality) as the totality of things (or entities);
There exist entities of four classes, substance, state, change and
relationship;
Particular substances (objects) have states (properties), subject to changes
and stand in various relations to each other, etc.
[for axioms and more details please refer to USECS, the ontological lattice
of entities] (08)
Regards,
Azamat Abdoullaev (09)
----- Original Message -----
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "ONTAC-WG General Discussion" <ontac-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "'SUO WG'"
<standard-upper-ontology@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "CG" <cg@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2006 6:36 AM
Subject: [ontac-forum] Re: The world may fundamentally be inexplicable (010)
>I received the following offline comment, and I gave
> the same response I've been giving for the past
> several years.
>
> John Sowa
>
> -------- Original Message --------
>
> Nobody knows exactly how many theories will be needed:
>
>> But I don't have any good idea **how many** logically
>> different theories will in fact be required. I do have
>> a strong suspicion that it will not be as many as one
>> would suppose after a casual glance at the different
>> upper ontologies that people have proposed.
>
> But there are certain things that are pretty safe bets:
>
> 1. There will be categories called Time, Space, Object,
> Process, etc.
>
> 2. There will be some assumptions common to all the
> axiomatizations: time will have a before and
> after, and space will have 3 dimensions.
>
> 3. But beyond that, all bets are off. It would be
> a mistake to adopt situation calculus instead of
> pi calculus for reasoning about time; it would be
> a mistake to insist on either 3D or 4D treatments
> of space-time; it would be a mistake to insist
> that objects are "ontologically prior" to processes;
> it would be a mistake to say that a vase and the
> lump of clay from which it is made must be or must
> not be considered different entities.
>
> That's why the only thing you can insist on is a very
> sparse, very limited set of common axioms. At that
> level, you can't do much problem-oriented reasoning.
>
> For more detailed reasoning in specific applications,
> you need the problem-oriented modules or microtheories.
>
> John
>
>
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