Re: On the definition of "ontology"

Don Dwiggins <dwig1@village.ios.com>

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Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 23:22:40 -0400
From: Don Dwiggins <dwig1@village.ios.com>
Message-id: <199510060322.XAA15862@village.ios.com>
To: phayes@ai.uiuc.edu
CC: Paul van der Vet <vet@cs.utwente.nl>, guarino@ladseb.pd.cnr.it,
        srkb@cs.umbc.edu
Subject: Re: On the definition of "ontology"
Reply-to: Don Dwiggins <dwig1@village.ios.com>
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Apoogies for that last post; I hit the wrong button before editing.
   >Of course, since we have wonderful
   >tools like logic, it's tempting to apply them wherever we can, but one can
   >become like the man with a hammer.

   PS What man with the hammer?

Sorry, I should have completed the saying: "to a man with only a hammer,
everything looks like a nail".

   PPS. It seems OK to apply concepts of computablity to thoughts, doesnt it?
   What objection could there be?

Computability, as I understand it, still presupposes a particular sort of
formal system that may or may not be relevant to mental activity.  I think
that the tools used for investigating complex continuous dynamic systems
(from differential equations to chaos theory) are as likely to be applicable
here as the tools of discrete symbol systems.

Don Dwiggins				"Solvitur Ambulando"
dwig1@village.ios.com