Re: [OT] Live, the Universe and Fish

R Dan Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: 

> On Sun, 16 Nov 2003 07:32:00 GMT, in a fit of madness Arien Malec
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> declared:
> 
>>Oh. I don't want an ontologist in the family (I've known too many 
>>ontologists in my time). If she were an ontologist, she'd be reifying
>>the class of things that make themselves manifest to other sentient
>>beings, and suchlike. Shudder.

[snip]

> Ontology is simply the question of what exists.

Ontology is the study of what is, not what exists. I'm all for studying 
what exists. It's studying what is that gets to me (there are certain 
approaches to what could be called ontology that I don't think are 
muddled and misguided, but anything going around waving a flag called 
"ontology" probably isn't it).

Besides ontology, there is AI knowledge engineering, also called 
ontology. I'm against both, for different reasons.

Arien