On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 08:06:31PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: > > I think we're talking past one another. You're talking about > ontology as the ur-stuff that's really real. I'm talking about the > stuff that is assumed as fundamental in a theory. > > Brent >
Yes, to me an ontology is a statement about what's really real. The ur-stuff, as you say. I've never heard of ontology as something that any theory has. What does information theory have as an ontology, for example? It certainly makes no claims about existence. Possibly you are using ontology in the sense defined by Tom Gruber? http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/kst/what-is-an-ontology.html If so, then that is a completely different word, that just happens to sound the same and have the same spelling. Certainly, any theory will have a collection of undefined referrents - in formal theories these would b called the axioms. It looks like in some circumstances, "ontology" refers to these collections. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
