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A. LOCKER
the necessity of founding cognition on the grounds of the doctrine of being
(i.e. ontology) we may gladly accept the proposal made by BENSE [2] to the
effect that we have to distinguish between several kinds of ontology: (a)
a processual ontology based on the constructive (operational) capability of
the human mind, (b) an intensional ontology concerned with the essentials
of being (e.g. the "being of the being", etc.) identical with metaphysics in
the classical sense and (c) an extensional ontology, considering the being
as an extensional manifold to which, therefore, all formal or formalized
descriptions of the being (or of its representations such as systems, models,
etc.) belong. The main concepts inherent in the above-mentioned ontology
are quantitative (metric) as well as qualitative (relational) although the
latter already indicate the existing links between extensional and intensional
ontology. No matter how highly speculative such a triadic scheme of cognition and ontology might be, it seems to have a fundamental significance
and in the topics of some of the foregoing papers apparently there is an
implicitly or even explicitly conceivable line of thought which might be
accepted as a hint to consider this as significant rather than purely accidental.
References
1. ARLEY, N.: Comment on the paper by BARTHOLOMAY, A. F., this symposium.
2. BENSE, M.: Grundlagenstudien Kybern. Geisteswiss. 4, 12 (1963).
3. LANGE, 0.: Ganzheit und Entwicklung in kybernetischer Sicht. Berlin:
Akademie-Verlag 1967.
4. ROSEN, R.: this symposium.