Re: No universal things Re: comparing XML and RDF data models

=On 4 Jul 2008, at 14:37, Azamat wrote:

> On Thursday, July 03, 2008 4:45 PM, Bijan wrote:
> My official position, scarily enough, is that you don't need a   
> definite metaphysical view in order to build good ontologies ;)
>> I do think that the family of views in computational ontologies  
>> generally called "realist" is indeed naive and fundamentally  
>> wrong  headed. Whether it's a "useful fiction" that helps people  
>> write  better or more compatible ontologies is an open empirical  
>> question.
>
> On Thursday, July 03, 2008 12:52 PM, Bernard wrote:
>> If you think my statement is senseless, feel free to explain why,  
>> as Alan took the time to do.
>
> Bernard and Bijan,
>
> Your ''official'' position, hope hardly prescribed by the W3  
> Consortium office, falls into a category of bad intellectual fashion:
> to see the world as ontologically unreal.
[snip]

Definitely not. And you clearly don't have much experience with the  
spectrum of views and arguments in philosophy of science and  
mathematics or you would recognize that there are a variety of "non  
realist" views.

More importantly, you don't seem to be a very careful reader. I *did  
not give* my metaphysical views in the above quote. I claimed that  
metaphysical views of the sort being bandied about aren't necessary  
to building good ontologies. They also aren't necessary to doing good  
science. You can be a social constructives, even a strong one, and  
still do good science.

So, you know, spend more time being careful in your reading and  
attributing of views and less time blathering.

Furthermore, in order to discuss the original question of this  
thread, we certainly don't need any grand metaphysics. If one is  
going to appeal to some metaphysics, do so concrete, as Tim did, and  
show how it drives concrete behavior.

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Friday, 4 July 2008 13:54:27 UTC