On Apr 17, 2010, at 7:43 PM, mike cole wrote:
if i ever understand the term, ontology (or have the illusion I do!)
Mike, the term ontology is actually pretty straightforward! Its
sense is the assumptions, tacit or explicit, about what kinds of
entity exist, and how they relate to one another. Philosophers talk
a lot about ontology, but so do computer scientists. Your computer
is an instantiation of several ontologies. One is the "world" of the
desktop, where the objects are files, folder, disks and so on.
Folders can contain files, and other folders. Disks contain folders
and files. Files come in various kinds, each of which holds
different kinds of data.
The "world" of a Microsoft Word document is a different ontology.
Here the objects are letters, words, sentences, headers and footers,
margins, and so on.
This is what is called "object-oriented"programing: the programer
explicitly defines all the different kinds of objects in the domain
of interest, their properties and the possible ways they can
interrelate, and the actions that can be formed on them. (Short
article here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_oriented_design_ontology
>)
In the same way, a philosopher may take a shot at defining the kinds
of entities that exist. A dualist, for example, will say there are
two basic kinds, material entities and spiritual entities. And as
Kuhn famously suggested, a scientific paradigm has implicit
ontological assumptions "embodied" in its practices, which a
philosopher or sociologist of science can have fun spelling out.
Hope that helps!
Martin
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