Re: Re[2]: [semanticweb] how to explain to humans the term ontology or the name of the rose

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 15:56:15 UTC