Re[4]: [semanticweb] how to explain to humans the term ontology or the name of the rose

Pierre,
Sorry that was my error in the second URL :-(
It mast be - http://ototsky.mgn.ru/it/21abreast.htm
There are some more details in it about the Ontology.
For me "objetive" and the Umwelt are mearly different points of of
view. And may be the last one is interesting. We can say about
individual Umwelt or "family Umwelt" or any "Group Umwelt" etc.
Suppose the Internet enlages Umwelt to the earth :-)
BTW I have forwarded your message to Alexei Sharov and wating for his
comments.

Best,
Leonid

> Hi Leonid,

> I'm not very fresh about that sort of things, the umwelt paper looks
> quite interesting (thanks!). For what I can make of it, I confess I
> find the idea elegant in the sense that it would be so lovely to do
> the KR for this. (I wonder how this compares to Varzi and Smith's
> notion of niche or environment which is realist, btw).

> But doesn't that go in my sense? It seems the claim is not what
> ultimately exists but what among what exists is of value for an agent.
> The sphere that surrounds the cognitive agent is a selection of
> reality, not a creation. The form of that sphere and its texture are
> coordinated with the need of the agent and the properties attributed
> to the elements of the sphere are all relational (more or less direct
> relations to the agent). All of this is to say that there's only a
> portion of reality that matters and that there is selection of the
> entities and their properties insofar as valued causal interactions
> are concerned.

> That's a difficult debate, but I'm quite confortable with a view
> characterized as positivist in the paper. I don't think for instance
> that existence has a meaning in the sense I could gather from skimming
> through the paper. On the other hand, I don't deny that cognitive
> agents impose value. But there seems to be no incompatibility with
> this and what I was trying to say. There's an objective reality which
> is objectively structured. The cognitive agent is part of it and adds
> more structure -- but that's structure is not private to the agent,
> it's there. So, there is no 'existence for'. There is 'is among what
> exists something which matters for'. That's what makes cognitive
> phenomena and, by extension, private representations belonging to a
> domain ontology, rather than constituting an ontology.

> Btw, I got an error message for the second link.

> Cheers,
> Pierre




> On 1/13/06, Leonid Ototsky <leo@mgn.ru> wrote:
>> Pierre,
>> Suppose it very helpful to take into account a "relativity" of
>> ontolgy."From the pragmatism point of view, the ontology refers to what
>> humans have agreed to call "existing" and what can be operated following
>> the same rules as formulated in our language. We separate mind from matter
>> for communication purposes
>> (http://www.ento.vt.edu/~sharov/biosem/txt/umwelt.html )."
>> (see http://ototsky.mgn.ru/it/21abrest.htm) .
>>
>> Leonid - http://ototsky.mgn.ru/it
>>

Received on Friday, 13 January 2006 19:11:04 UTC