[SCL] naming ontologies

[Christopher Menzel]

On Dec 2, 2003, at 9:40 AM, pat hayes wrote:
> [Bill wrote:]
>> Hi Pat...
>>
>> I'm glad you're thinking about this because it's an important 
>> subject.  However, Chris wrote a paper for ECAI 2002 (attached)
>
> Thanks for sending this (which I confess I hadnt read and didnt even 
> know about, sigh.) However, after a quick read, I think Chris is 
> hoeing a different kind of row here. This is, as the title implies, an 
> ontology *theory* where that last word is being used in a technical 
> sense, ie a formal ontology.

Yes, that's right.

>> Once that's done, I'll be 110% behind doing what you suggest and let 
>> me also suggest - although I'll let Chris speak for himself on this - 
>> that we use Chris' paper as a starting point to get the ideas right 
>> and then figure out where the ontological hooks are to hang the 
>> syntax off of.
>
> Well, lets see about that. Im not sure I agree with Chris' way of 
> doing these things. For example, why bother to axiomatize the notion 
> of being a syntactic part of? Being a syntactic part of is well 
> understood already and we have precise, machine-readable ways to 
> express it. I think this idea that its not real unless its axiomatized 
> is kind of beside the point for most practical purposes (though it 
> fits well into a certain tradition in philosophical logic). Suppose 
> there were a formal ontology of ontologies: what language would it we 
> written in, and what use would it be? I want to USE ontologies, not 
> reason ABOUT them. Ontologies, for me, are essentially syntactic 
> entities; and I disagree with Chris' view that this way of thinking is 
> somehow awkward or unsatisfactory.  I also do not share his 
> philosophical scruples about using set theory in a metalanguage, do 
> not find model theory 'austere and formal' compared to a theory of 
> propositions (which I guess Chris feels are made from some kind of 
> soft velvet material, as opposed to the wire-mother of set theory) and 
> I do not think that it is 'far removed' from 'ordinary semantic 
> notions' (which Im not sure what those are, but whatever they are, 
> axiomatizing them in first-order logic is hardly a warm fuzzy way to 
> get at them.)

I actually don't disagree with a lot of what you say here.  What I was 
trying to in the Ontology Theory paper was largely conceptual 
clarification -- somewhat analogous to the technical SCL document.  And 
your criticisms here, like Tanel's with regard to the SCL doc, are not 
particularly apposite -- though I am not nearly as convinced of the 
importance of the ontology theory paper for getting clear about 
treating ontologies as objects as I am about the SCL document (or 
*such* a document, even if it disagrees with my understanding) for 
getting clear about the nature of SCL.

Sorry to have been so silent -- semester's just about over.

-chris