From Encyclopedia To Ontology: Toward Dynamic Representation Of The Discipline Of Philosophy / quote 17 of 30
Criticism: is the sep ontology a representation of meta-philosophy?
Some readers may be skeptical of our statistical approach, supposing that we are engaged in a very dubious metaphilosophical methodology: to be arguing that because two terms frequently co-occur in the SEP , they ought to be seen as mutually relevant. We want to make clear that we do not take the InPhO to show how philosophy ought to be organized. Such an ideal conceptualization is neither recoverable by currently- available automated means nor required for our purposes. Even human experts in metaphilosophy would be hard-pressed to produce a comprehensive decomposition of the conceptual space of philosophical ideas, and no doubt any such scheme would be the subject of controversy. However, we have real and pressing information management needs, and, for the purpose of meeting those needs, having an imperfect formal representation of the structure of the field is better than having none at all.