To fully confront the ontological crisis that we face, we would have to upgrade our world model to be based on actual physics, and simultaneously translate our utility functions so that their domain is the set of possible states of the new model. We currently have little idea how to accomplish this, and instead what we do in practice is, as far as I can tell, keep our ontologies intact and utility functions unchanged, but just add some new heuristics that in certain limited circumstances call out to new physics formulas to better update/extrapolate our models. This is actually rather clever, because it lets us make use of updated understandings of physics without ever having to, for instance, decide exactly what patterns of particle movements constitute pain or pleasure, or what patterns constitute oneself.
Is there a technical term for this way of dealing with different-but-related ontologies? I’ve grappled with similar problems, but never gotten as far as making them precise like that.
This seems true and important.
Is there a technical term for this way of dealing with different-but-related ontologies? I’ve grappled with similar problems, but never gotten as far as making them precise like that.
I’m not aware of any, but you may call it “hybrid ontologies” or “ontological interfacing”.