On May 28, 2009, at 1:43 AM, Richard H. McCullough wrote: (01)
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>> Dick,
>>
>> It is hard to imagine how anybody could say anything more
>> simple-minded that that:
> #### Is it really so simple-minded, when the next words out of
> #### your mouth are "context is certainly relevant"?
>>
>> RHM> All of your "problems" can be summarized in one word: CONTEXT.
>>> The "solutions" are readily available: use a CONTEXT LANGUAGE.
>>> mKR is a CONTEXT LANGUAGE.
>>
>> Context is certainly relevant. There are many well thought out
>> theories and formalisms that have addressed the subject of context.
>> But doing justice to the subject requires far more than a notation
>> that happens to be decorated with the word 'context'.
> #### If context is the central problem, then how can you deal with
> #### the problem, unless you have a language based on context? (02)
Consider the argument: If mud is your problem, how can you deal with
the problem, unless you have a pump made of mud? You are making
essentially the same mistake here. There is no single thing called
'context'. What people mean when they use this word varies enormously,
and can be broadly paraphrased as "anything else that my main theory
of meaning didn't explicitly take into account". Your notion of
context in mKR is woefully naive and completely confuses several
distinct notions, and BTW bears almost no relation at all to the
notion used in Cyc (there called 'microtheories'), so you really can't
cite Cyc in support of your claims for your work. (03)
> #### If you think that context is only a "decoration" in the mKR
> #### language, then you don't understand mKR at all.
>>
>> Please do your homework, study the issues, and read the many volumes
>> of publications by people who have actually done their homework.
> #### Context is an essential ingredient of Cyc.
> #### Have they done their homework? (04)
Yes. They have a thoroughly worked out logic of microtheories which
also uses a complex ontology, incorporating notions of context
generalization, interactions between contexts and quantifiers and
connectives, classifications of types of context and, most critically,
how contexts influence the meanings of names. None of this applies to
your mKR notion, which is simply a linear list of lexical items. BTW,
John and I spent a year working with the Cyc team and Stanford
colleagues of McCarthy (and others) studying how to incorporate
context reasoning into common logic, and IKL was the result. IKL is
not a context logic, but it can express all that any context logic can
express, and then some; and, unlike any context logic, it can describe
relationships between other logics' context naming conventions. Which
is why we suggested it as a target translation for you, BTW. So yes,
we have done our homework. (05)
> #### Is the Cyc philosophy relevant to the
> #### "Past, Present, and Future of Ontology"?
>
> #### I grant that you are a great scholar, John.
> #### But can't you put aside your academic bias long enough
> #### to consider whether I am right or not? (06)
Dick, you should not assume that all critiques of your work are the
result of bias. We HAVE considered whether you are right or not, and
come to the obvious conclusion. (07)
Pat (08)
>
>>
>> John
>>
> Dick McCullough
> http://mkrmke.org
>
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> (09)
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