Daniel Everett on the problem of standardizing vocabularies

[Gary Berg-Cross]

"The problem with spending a lot of time trying to standardize vocabulary in a field is not merely that it is unscientific, has zero philosophical support, and is a waste of time. It can only mask actual scientific results, creates false consensus around insignificance, and leads people to believe that this is something worth their time.

There is a range of vocabulary that we use in science, say the International Phonetic Alphabet. But such vocabularies are not helpful if we see them as anything more than conversation openers (the IPA alone cannot tell you what the sounds of a language are - you have to EXPLAIN the articulation and wave effects of each sound in each environment and no pre-agreed terminology can do that. It is that which is science, not the IPA, which is but a mnemonic aid, like all terminology).

Hilary Putnam illustrated this clearly in his "twin earth" gedankenexperiment of the fact that water, however defined, can only be understood by careful description, experimentation, and testing. Or as the Pragmatic Maxim puts it: "Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object." This maxim is the science. All else is essentialism, a waste of time and space." from a posting by Daniel Everett, Professor of Sociology and Global Studies at Bentley University

Gary Berg-Cross 

Potomac, MD

240-426-0770

[Chuck Woolery]

Gary,

I assert the only hope we have for combating Truth Decay and brain rot is working to standardize vocabulary.   It is the use of ambiguous words in politics, religion, and economics that divides and polarized us. And leads to greater mistrust...

Our systems and structures of government are failing for this reason.

People still use the word independence when in reality  “Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....” Jen Easterly. CISA director.  Oct. 29, 2021. [the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency is our nation’s newest federal agency established in 2018].   https://www.c-span.org/video/?515706-1/protecting-critical-infrastructure    And  ‘Everything’ is an autological word – defining itself.  

Too often we forget that our environment is our most fundamental and essential life support infrastructure!  And everything is totally vulnerable unless humanity works together.  "There will be no Homeland Security until we realize that the entire planet is our homeland. Every sentient being in the world must feel secure." - John Perkins

 

The most useful professions are engineers, scientists, medicine,  accountants...  where unambiguous words can be credited things that work most of the time...until conditions change.

 

People might never agree on some words...and there will always be consequences...and eventually they, or those they love will suffer.

 

The greatest flaw of the human mind is its capacity to believe ANYTHING.  And then keep on defending it to the death...even when all the evidence proves otherwise.

 

Cw

 

Chuck Woolery, Former Chair
United Nations Association, Council of Organizations
315 Dean Dr., Rockville, MD 20851
Cell:240-997-2209   ch...@igc.org

 

Blogs:  435 Campaign:  www.435globaljustice.blogspot.com  (May 2017  through today)

Dothefreakinmath http://dothefreakinmath.blogspot.com  (June 2006 to Nov 2016)

The Trilemma  http://trilemma.blogspot.com/  (Oct 2011 to Nov 2013)

 

“Today the most important thing, in my view, is to study the reasons why humankind does nothing to avert the threats about which it knows so much, and why it allows itself to be carried onward by some kind of perpetual motion.  It cannot suffice to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions.  It is necessary to change and improve our understanding of the true purpose of what we are and what we do in the world.  Only such an understanding will allow us to develop new models of behavior, new scales of values and goals, and thereby invest the global regulations, treaties, and institutions with a new spirit and meaning.”  President Vaclav Havel, Czech Republic.

 

Here’s a video of optimism if you dare watch it  https://www.rethinkx.com/videos

 

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security."   -Albert Einstein.  As quoted in Quantum Reality, Beyond the New Physics, p. 250.

 

“The sad truth...is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.” Hannah Arendt quoted in The Bulwork.

 

What are you doing to ensure the funding and achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by or before the year 2030?   Connect the dots!  See the web of life!  Achieve ‘justice for all’.  Or, prepare for the catastrophic consequences.  cw

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From: ontolo...@googlegroups.com <ontolo...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Gary Berg-Cross
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2025 8:50 AM
To: ontolog-forum <ontolo...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [ontolog-forum] Daniel Everett on the problem of standardizing vocabularies

 

"The problem with spending a lot of time trying to in a field is not merely that it is unscientific, has zero philosophical support, and is a waste of time. It can only mask actual scientific results, creates false consensus around insignificance, and leads people to believe that this is something worth their time.

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[Alex Shkotin]

Gary,

If we have theoretical knowledge, a theory, then there is no "The problem with spending a lot of time trying to standardize vocabulary in a field" as we just extract vocabulary from theory (it's just an appendix). And this is the only correct way to do it. 

We may discuss the problem of standardizing theory in a field, but not vocabulary.

To keep a vocabulary (ontology) separately from the theory is not a good idea.

Where is our theoretical knowledge in a field? This is a question.

Alex

вс, 23 февр. 2025 г. в 16:50, Gary Berg-Cross <gberg...@gmail.com>:

--

[Gary Berg-Cross]

How do we avoid infinite regress in an attempt to "standardize" a vocabulary in a complex field?

Are there, say, different criteria for a meso-level physical concept like "force", a quantum level concept like "entanglement", an ecological concept like "habitat" and a social concept like "equity"?

Gary Berg-Cross 

Potomac, MD

240-426-0770

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ontolog-forum/CAFxxROQNMdei%2BFaoiGHbzXcPyUTwZt_Zwkww0ny_szTcHhSYbg%40mail.gmail.com.

[gregsharp73]

I like this question Gary.  The approach that I would advocate is to focus on first, leveraging standardized relations and only then, standardized terms.

Take your example of force as a "meso-level physical concept".  Standardizing it as a term is okay but standardizing it as a relation is potentially of much greater general use.  The equation "F = MA" serves as  a definition based expressed in relations.  Focus on standardizing relations like equality and multiplication not so much on concepts like force, mass or acceleration.  Then you have a standardized approach that can reach across the "complex fields".  For me, the next step is to abstract both relations and concepts even deeper than logical operations into patterns.

Greg

[Gregory Sharp]

I guess your question still stands but in another way. If we have a domain of relations linked by concepts, Are infinite regresses still a problem or just the nature of that reality?

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[Nadin, Mihai]

just the nature of that reality

Cf. also G-complexity defined in https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-43957-5)

Mihai Nadin

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[John F Sowa]

Gary,

Answers to your question have been developed many times, often in an ad hoc way.  Short answer:  no single precise detailed definition could be adequate for the kinds of examples you cited below. 

GBC:   How do we avoid infinite regress in an attempt to "standardize" a vocabulary in a complex field?

My recommendation is the solution that Doug Lenat adopted for Cyc, which is similar to the methods we adopted for our VivoMind and Permion companies:

1. Start with a minimally specified top-level ontology.

2. Extend it with broad definitions at the level of WordNet and other lexical resources.

3. For various applications, define detailed ontology modules for the special cases that require high precision.

4. Provide methods for communicating among independently developed modules.  It's possible that some details in some modules cannot be translated with full precision to and from other modules.  The existence of items in those modules may be made known to other modules, but some details might not be exportable outside of the module in which they were defined.

At the Ontology Summit session on Wednesday, Arun and I will show how these methods are used to solve complex problems and to develop long-term solutions.  For an overview of how ontologies were developed and extended for VivoMind applications (from 2000 to 2010), see https://jfsowa.com/talks/cogmem.pdf .

We'll add more info about how Permion Inc.has developed a hybrid system that combines the best of the VivoMind symbolic approach with LLM-based methods for translating languages of any kind -- natural, logical, diagrammatic, multidimensional, and perceptual (as mapped to and from sensory input and physical manifestations).

As an example, one VivoMind customer required the ability to analyze and translate Chinese documents.  An unemployed Chinese linguist (who was raising her children) was very happy to get a job in which she could work at home to develop a Chinese grammar for the VivoMind system.  It worked so well that VivoMind was better able to detect and relate Chinese proper names than the software developed by the Chinese themselves.  (That was in 2010.)

There is no way that a single formal ontology with rigidly defined terms could relate both Chinese and English.  But it is possible to develop an ontology specialized for a particular document (or a limited set of documents) that relates the English terms to and from the Chinese terms in those documents and their English translations.

That was done to the satisfaction of the customer that paid for the development.  Arun and I will discuss these topics on Wednesday.  Ken will announce the talk and the ZOOM address tomorrow.

John

 

---

From: "Gary Berg-Cross" <gberg...@gmail.com>

How do we avoid infinite regress in an attempt to "standardize" a vocabulary in a complex field?

Are there, say, different criteria for a meso-level physical concept like "force", a quantum level concept like "entanglement", an ecological concept like "habitat" and a social concept like "equity"?

Gary Berg-Cross 

Potomac, MD

240-426-0770=

[Alex Shkotin]

Gary,

One way to answer your question is to take from the bookshelf a book with a theory where we have terms mentioned, used and explained.

Let me take Theoretical Physics in 10 Volumes. Volume 1. Mechanics Landau, Lifshitz, where we have this kind of forces:

-[simply] force - acting on particle

-generalized force

-friction force

-reaction force

-Coriolis force

-centrifugal force

Each has a nice definition.

For example, [simply] force is defined in this passage:

Knowing the Lagrange function, we can formulate the equations

Substituting (5.1) here, we obtain

The equations of motion in this form are called Newton's equations and are the basis of the mechanics of a system of interacting particles. The vector

standing on the right side of equations (5.3) is called the force acting on the a-th particle. Together with U, it depends on the coordinates of all particles, but not on their velocities. Equations (5.3) therefore show that the acceleration vectors of the particles are functions only of the coordinates.

◻️

So here we have what is a force in the mechanics of a system of interacting particles.

Ontologically speaking, in the mechanics of interacting particles, force is a vector characteristic of interaction.

Within the framework of a specific theory there is no problem of "infinite regress in an attempt to "standardize" a vocabulary".

If we need to apply different theories to the same subject area, we may have not a problem but a task of "harmonization" if I remember your terminology well😁

Alex

пн, 24 февр. 2025 г. в 20:46, Gary Berg-Cross <gberg...@gmail.com>:

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[Gary Berg-Cross]

A question might be to further define the terms in the Lagrange function

What is L, a derivative which involves change, r etc....

Gary Berg-Cross 

Potomac, MD

240-426-0770

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[Alex Shkotin]

Gary,

What is important: there is a specific theory that presents Mechanics, there is a term "force" and we have just found out what this term means.

To move on, it is even more important to have the same presentation of the theory in this case Mechanics, since in another theory the definition may be different.

I translated the previous passage from Russian into English using Google.

If we are going deeper into the theory, then I would not undertake to translate further. Fortunately, there is an English translation of the entire course of theoretical physics by Landau and Lifshitz. Here is the first volume [1].

So, this is the importance of theory, i.e. a systematic presentation of theoretical knowledge, that it contains answers to your questions.

Am I right?

Here is a theory, in it there is no "infinite regress in an attempt to "standardize" a vocabulary" and we have "a complex field".

There is a task to formalize this theory (aka D.Hilbert the VI). 

Let's do it. 👑

For me this means to create theory concentration in a framework like one for ugraphs [2].

And for you?

Alex

[1]https://eclass.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/PHYS181/%CE%92%CE%B9%CE%B2%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%B1/L%20D%20Landau%2C%20E.M.%20Lifshitz%20-%20Mechanics%2C%20Third%20Edition_%20Volume%201%20%28Course%20of%20Theoretical%20Physics%29-Butterworth-Heinemann%20%281976%29.pdf

[2] (PDF) Theory framework - knowledge hub message #1 

ср, 26 февр. 2025 г. в 19:14, Gary Berg-Cross <gberg...@gmail.com>:

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