- From: pat hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
- Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2001 14:05:22 -0600
- To: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
- Cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org, www-rdf-logic@w3.org
>¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤ > >Arisbeans, RDF Lodgers, SemioComrades, Stand Up Ontologists, > >I have a sense that the recent questions of Seth Russell and Robert Meersman >are pointing to a deeper lying qualm about the nature of our discussion here, >that -- behind, beneath, and beyond the points of a "comment on style" (COS) >that affect nothing more worthy of note than the character of one individual >author-ship's peculiar writing affectations -- putting that aside, they cast >to the fore a complex assortment of issues on which this group has long been >divided into a host of different camps, to wit, the polyphemic protean topic >that I will try, this time out, to express in terms of the following queries: > >| Why is it necessary to reflect on signs? On the whole, it isn't, most of the time. One tends to get more things done by using signs than reflecting about them. At times, of course, one needs to pay attention to the signs themselves, but one can get rather, shall I say, obsessive about this topic, since everything that is said about anything is (of course) said with a sign, and so if one always pays attention to the signs and not enough to their content, then one is in a constant state of sign-tripping, like someone with OCD who can't go outside without checking a dozen times to see if his tie is straight. As well as getting on everyone else's nerves, the result is a kind of paralysis where nothing substantive ever actually gets said or done. For the SUO there is a deeper reason, however. "Signs", in your terminology, refers to a topic in semiology. But - and please forgive me for emphasising this point, but it deserves a little emphasis - ONTOLOGY IS NOT A SEMIOLOGICAL TOPIC. That is, 'ontology' refers to what there IS, not to how people talk about it. It is, right at its very heart, fundamentally, about the world, not about signs; and still less about human *use* of signs. >| Why not just talk about the objects alone? Indeed, why not? In fact, that is almost certainly what language evolved to do, viz. to talk about objects; and since the objects (and the stuffs and events and all that other material of the World) are our Ontological subject matter, why not talk about them, indeed? >| Why not just use signs without mentioning them? Every time your finger hits a key, you use a sign. Even to mention a sign, you must use another sign. Without using signs, you can only be mute. So the force of your question might be better put as : why mention signs? Indeed. Allow me to suggest a pragmatic rule: it is usually best to use a sign first to see what it does, and to resort to mentioning it only as a last resort, if it doesnt do what one intended. Pat Hayes --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola, FL 32501 (850)202 4440 fax phayes@ai.uwf.edu http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes
Received on Friday, 2 February 2001 14:02:25 UTC