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Re[2]: [ontac-forum] Semantics (1, 2, and 3), Ontology and Semiotics

To: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: ONTAC-WG General Discussion <ontac-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Leonid Ototsky <leo@xxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 23:56:47 +0600
Message-id: <1606447062.20060606235647@xxxxxx>
John,
Your items are good for me !
> My suggestion would be to drop the word "mind", which leads to too
> many distracting issues.  Instead, I would suggest the idea of
> viewing computer networks of any kind and the Internet in particular
> as a political system.
Suppose a political system itself must be a "viable system" following
the Stafford Beer's VSM - see my presentation at the Metaphorum-2006
in Liverpool - http://www.ototsky.mgn.ru/it/abroad_menu.html    (01)

Leonid Ototsky - http://ototsky.mgn.ru/it    (02)


> Arun and Chris,    (03)

> The issues that Arun raised are very broad, but I think that
> all of them can be reduced to three fundamental points:    (04)

>   1. Purpose is central to everything that people (and computer
>      systems designed by people) do.  More generally, purpose
>      is central to everything that any living organism does.
>      Without a clear notion of purpose, reasoning systems
>      (human or computer) churn endlessly on irrelevant details.    (05)

>   2. In the 1930s, Charles Morris modified and renamed one of
>      Peirce's triads with the labels Syntax, Semantics, and
>      Pragmatics.    (06)

>   3. With the attitude that "two out of three ain't bad", logicians,
>      linguists, and philosophers focused on the first two, and
>      relegated everything that might be purposeful to pragmatics,
>      which promptly became the trash heap of hard problems that
>      people ignore.    (07)

> As I said in my previous notes, I agree with Chris that model theory
> is good, logic is good, axioms are good, precise definitions are good,
> and lots of other things that philosophers, logicians, and computer
> scientists have been doing for the past century are good.    (08)

> But without a clear focus on purpose, all that good stuff is, to put
> it bluntly, *purposeless* .  It can't give us any help in determining
> what we should be doing or why.    (09)

AM>> My conjecture is to see if the notion of "mind as political system"
 >> is perhaps a more useful fundamental starting point from which to
 >> design a process model.    (010)

> I think that would be a much better starting point than the currently
> popular "mind as a theorem prover" model of Cyc and most of the
> formal ontology proposals.    (011)

> My suggestion would be to drop the word "mind", which leads to too
> many distracting issues.  Instead, I would suggest the idea of
> viewing computer networks of any kind and the Internet in particular
> as a political system.  Each module in the network, which may be
> of any size, always communicates with other modules for a purpose.
> The focus of network design should be on the purpose of each
> communication.  Any attempt to design systems of any kind, including
> ontologies, without focusing on purpose is a total waste of time
> and money.    (012)

> John    (013)


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-- 
С уважением,
 Leonid                          mailto:leo@xxxxxx    (015)



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