BUCHANAN@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA (07/17/84)
From: Bruce Buchanan <BUCHANAN@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
[Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
David,
[...] Let me try to give you a straight
answer on terminology. I spent five years in hard-core philosophy
and never felt that the terms were well-defined there, so it is no
wonder that AIers who have adopted the terms from philosophy also
have no consistent definitions. Dictionary defns are probably not
very illuminating on these things, so I haven't looked at what you
might have found there.
ONTOLOGY -- a conceptual map, a systematic description of the
objects in the world, a study of "what is"
[or the discipline of creating an ontology]
EPISTEMOLOGY -- a study of what we know & how we know it, usually
broken into a priori and a posteriori (or empirical) knowledge
TELEOLOGY -- a study of purposeful behavior (often, though not always,
defined wrt God's purpose).
This is oversimplified, of course. I would recommend Plato's
Timaeus and Theaetetus on the first two, and Aristotle's Metaphysics
on the last. By the time St.Thomas began writing about these things,
their definitions are not so clear as in Plato & Aristotle.
Epistemology is the most relevant to AI in its emphasis on
knowledge -- what it is, where it comes from, etc.
[...]
bgb