Re: propositions
phayes@cs.uiuc.edu (Pat Hayes)
Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 12:08:31 -0500
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To: macgregor@ISI.EDU
From: phayes@cs.uiuc.edu (Pat Hayes)
Subject: Re: propositions
Cc: interlingua@ISI.EDU
>>>.... We should be very sceptical of a
>>> committee of even the *very best* computer scientists claiming it
>>> has a 'standard'.
>>
>>Agreed, it would be sheer hubris to propose *the* standard account of
>>propositions. What might more modestly be hoped for, however, is for
>>several conceptions of proposition to be isolated ....
>
>Mike, Richard Fikes, Tom Gruber, and myself discussed this point recently.
>We had in mind that a "standard" ontology could contain several
>distinct theories, each defining a different notion of proposition
>(or perhaps we should have a single theory defining PROPOSITION1,
>PROPOSITION2, etc.). We never had in mind that a single notion
>of proposition would suffice for all applications. Thats why we
>suggest putting propositions into an ontology rather than
>into KIF itself.
Hi Bob.
I have no quarrel with this idea. I guess I am puzzled by the use of the
word "standard". I took this to mean that there is one of it, whatever it
is, and its the one that people are supposed to use, as in 'gold standard',
or 'ADA'. It now seems to mean precisely the opposite. Also, can an
"ontology" contain several different, incompatible, theories (and therefore
be inconsistent, for example)? I thought that "ontology", in this
community, was just a (bad) synonym for "theory".
Pat
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