Motivation
I was discussing SUO-KIF ontology with a friend of mine and he said you are using words to complicate issues (words like ontology ,upper ontology domain ontology etc). I responded by saying that 'when you formalize a body of knowledge you do introduce special terms to simplify discussion of that domain'.
I was reading an article in TOI entitled 'Can India afford an ethical foreign policy?' (Oct 14) by SHASHI THAROOR. In my opinion he has used the words 'ethics' and 'morality' interchangeably. My answer was first you need a 'Formal Ethics' before can raise that question. I am aware that I am adding the implicit assumption that one way of distinguishing ethics from morality is to use it's normative sense. Should there be a distinction? . Is the distinction 'academic' and 'pedantic'?. I felt that in a multicultural ,multi religious society you do need an agreement - A Formal one against which we can say ethical or unethical. Besides it avoids the question 'whose morality?'.
I have also observed that any abstraction has a tendency to remove content from reality. e.g Newton's laws are an abstraction of the way real world bodies move.Of course it can be considered merely a modelling compromise (trade off of coverage vs simplicity&elegance).Let me remind you that you cannot use the laws to predict the motion of an insect.
So I said let me take a look at the search engine and see what shows up as Philosophy of formal systems. There were some 150 results and I was using a new search engine (AltKplus?) clubbing the google yahoo etc. All the entries implied Formal system = Formal Logic.
What are the problems? (my view)
- While Formal Logic is a useful tool for modelling mathematics and computers is that all?
- One way to define a Formal system is as a model(abstraction) one which is capable of being manipulated by humans for various purposes including verifiability in appropriate domains.
- General characheristics of all formal systems-semantics,domain,purpose,limitations for example
- What are Modelling losses or trade offs?
- How many conceivable models? Recall that there are three geometries though they may not all model the real world
- Some sort of a Meta Formal system?
