Michael,
Thanks for your further
clarification.
The whole concept of URIs replacing words is to allow
unambiguous description.
For example, given a Department of Defense URI for a Tank like
www.vkb.org/Army/Equipment/#Tank
I can unambigously state that I am
referring to a weapon system and not a water storage device.
Perhaps ambiguity is in the
eyes of the beholder, and hence a self-descriptive word.
I agree if point is that
using a URI to say what you mean by “tank” makes it clear that you are talking
about the tank that is defined by that URI, and not another tank which might be
defined by say: www.physics/hydraulics-glossary/#Tank.
This removes any ambiguity, say if
someone knew about both of these URIs, because you declare which one you are
talking about.
My point is merely that no
matter how hard you try, it will nearly always be possible for someone to
misunderstand the intended meaning of a concept. If you have URIs for inherently ambiguosus notions such as www.emotions/#Love
or www.theuniverse/#God, that does not suddenly give everyone a clear idea of
exactly what you mean by these things.
A URI is just a name, a
string of characters.
- that might or might not correspond to a URL
- that URL might or might not contain further descriptive
information about what a “tank” really is;
- that descriptive information may be:
- a picture
- a powerpoint presentation
- in a sloppily put together text
description
- in a carefuly crafted text definition,
relating explicitly to other defined terms say from a glossary
- in formal axioms in a logic-based
KR/ontology language.
- Any/All of the above
I hope we can all agree
on this.
The reason for yattering
on, is to stress the importance of knowing that there will be ambiguities in
any attempt to capture the meaning of something—and one must be careful to know
which ones are tolerable, and which ones are removed.
Mike
-----Original
Message-----
From:
owner-ontology_site22@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-ontology_site22@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of MDaconta@xxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002
5:32 PM
To: ontolog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog] Welcome to
new members
In a
message dated 10/29/2002 4:57:56 PM US Mountain Standard Time,
michael.f.uschold@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
You are creating an IC ontology. What is IC?
Sorry
about the acronym without explanation. IC stands for
Intelligence Community.
Can you
give an example of some descriptions from your ontology that “that unambigously
describe[s] the subjects of resources in the knowledge base“.
The
ontology will have concepts from each of the Intelligence domains.
Some examples are Facility, Person, WeaponSystem, etc.
Data sources will be explicitly mapped to these classes via a registration
process.
Most of
the time, there is no such thing as an unambiguous description, exceptions
arise for mathematical creations. The idea of an ontology is to reduce
ambiguity as much as is necessary for a given application. NB, I did not
say as much as POSSIBLE. That will often be a waste of time.
The whole concept of URIs replacing words is to allow unambiguous description.
For example, given a Department of Defense URI for a Tank like
www.vkb.org/Army/Equipment/#Tank
I can unambigously state that I am
referring to a weapon system and not a water storage device.
Best wishes,
- Mike
----------------------------------------------------
Michael C. Daconta
Director, Web & Technology Services
www.mcbrad.com