At 9:38 AM -0500 1/26/08, John F. Sowa wrote:
CP>> Jonathon Lowe (a philosopher I recall you meeting) has
a
>> technical definition of ontology as "the set of
things whose
>> existence is acknowledged by a particular theory or
system
>> of thought." (E. J. Lowe, The Oxford Companion to
Philosophy)
PH> He is clearly using the word in its philosophical sense, not
its
> IT sense. Nobody in this forum is doing philosophical
ontology.
I have no idea what distinction Pat is
trying to draw, ...
....
With that qualification, I don't see any
reason why there would
or should be any difference whatever between a philosophical
ontology and an IT ontology. If anything, I would say that
a philosophical ontology should *include* an IT ontology
as
a special case.
I thought the distinction was well-known. There is a very active
subfield of modern philosophy which calls itself 'ontology'. Its
self-definition is the study of what there is, in contrast for
example with phenomenology, which studies the structure of subjective
experience. Philosophical ontology is a purely philosophical
enterprise with its own literature and history, one which pre-dates
anything at all to do with technology by hundreds, possibly thousands,
of years. If one says "ontology" in the presence of a
philosopher, he or she will almost certainly take this to be a
reference to this field. Jonathon Lowe is a prominent and respected
philosophical ontologist.
The word "ontology" used in our sense in this forum
refers to the construction of computational artifacts written in
formal languages. This is an entirely different subject from
philosophical ontology. It does not have the same motivation,
methodology, history or ambitions. Its criteria for success are those
of an engineer rather than a philosopher. And it uses the word
"ontology" with a different meaning.
The relevance of philosophical ontology to ontology engineering
is debatable. For myself, I believe it to be usually over-rated: IMO,
engineering based on purely philosophical thinking and distinctions is
almost always bad engineering. I know others have very different
opinions on this issue. But for sure, the two fields are certainly
distinct.
Pat
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