Re: Misclassification of packages; "libs" and "doc" sections

["Eray Ozkural \(exa\)" <erayo@cs.bilkent.edu.tr>]

Hi Thomas,

I got back to working on ontology, and I'd like to give an answer to
one of your previous remarks. Your last e-mail was a bit harsh but
I'm hoping that you will find my view worthwhile. ;)

"Thomas Bushnell, BSG" wrote:
> 
> I think that logic has a great deal to do with semantics.
> 
> I think that the mathematical notion Category Theory has a great deal
> to do with logic and semantics.
> 
> And I don't think that the mathematical notion "Category Theory" has a
> great deal to do with the traditional philosophical notion of
> "Category".

As I read the views of Category Theorists themselves, I found out
that their views were quite parallel with yours. They thought of
metaphysics to be a distinct sphere of endeavor from that of mathematics
as is the general attitude of a mathematician. In countless encounters,
mathematicians did admit that they held their task as a subjective and
intuitive effort rather than an objective "hard" science and that
it had a boundary of its own. That its use did not necessarily indicate
a relation with another field. I may use mathematics to explain a
sociological phenomenon, but mathematics is not related to sociology;
it remains separate. I believe most would claim such even for physics
which itself has given way to new branches of mathematics.

Anyway, mathematicians would mostly tell me
  mathematics != philosophy
in strong words.

Unfortunately, I have to disagree :)

The creators of mathematical theories, which have been used in AI
to explain how facts of world are to be represented, would say
that the terms they have used are only borrowed. *The semantic content
is entirely different* That I believe is also what you have
stated in various ways. That the term "category" in Category Theory
is very different from Category in study of ontology in philosophy.

That is precisely where I think we *should* be skeptical about. After
thinking about Feyerabend's view of scientific practice, I reached
the following argument:

  Artificially separating mutually related theories into predefined
domains of theories is not a fruitful methodology.

It isn't because it is the enforcement of a particular "progress"
methodology. That it is the correct way to draw a hard line between
the philosophy and science of "a thing". I cannot offer a proof of
my argument why this methodology is wrong, because it has to be a
"historical" rather than an analytical one. That I am not very skilled at;
and I have limited space in this e-mail.

In the context of our discussion, I think my argument would imply
something of the following sort:
  We should not exclude the possibility that a "new theory" of
categories, be it more metaphysical or more mathematical, depends
on an important relation between the mathematical Category and
philosophical Category regardless of whether prominent philosophers
or mathematicians deny such a relation.

That was a cumbersome sentence, but I can't word it better now :)

The simpler statement would be that in new research we should
utilize ideas from both worlds and try to exploit similarities
as well as differences between them. I know this sounds confusing
but I think it is an "anything goes" argument for research. We should
not inhibit scientific practice before it happens.

I've written this small piece because I was inspired by a work
of Nicola Guarino. If you're interested I can send you links
to some of his papers. Of course you can take a look at his work
yourself. At this location there are many papers authored by him:

http://www.ladseb.pd.cnr.it/infor/ontology/Papers/OntologyPapers.html

Merry Christmas,

-- 
Eray (exa) Ozkural
Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara
e-mail: erayo@cs.bilkent.edu.tr
www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo