Hello, (01)
what exactly do you mean by aspects of an entity? I think that this is
the source of the following misunderstandings in this thread. (02)
The meaning of an entity is captured in an ontology by position of the
respective concept in the hierarchy of concepts (=the Description Logic
classes of things) and by any other restrictions you pose on the "new"
concept, isn't it? So what is it the aspect? For a while I thought you
might mean the aristotelian differentia - the features that distinguish
different categories (aristotelian category, you can put there the word
concepts instead). Or maybe in your case pairs of features and its
values, for example the feature could be size and the value "15m to 20m". (03)
If you take a look at the word concept in wikipedia right at the
beginning you'll see: (04)
"A concept is an abstract idea or a mental symbol, typically associated
with a corresponding representation in language or symbology, that
denotes all of the objects in a given category or class of entities,
interactions, phenomena, or relationships between them. Concepts are
abstract in that they omit the differences of the things in their
extension, treating them as if they were identical. They are universal
in that they apply equally to every thing in their extension. Concepts
are also the basic elements of propositions, much the same way a word is
the basic semantic element of a sentence." (05)
Which is exactly what I imagine when someone says "concept" and I
haven't really come around any really different use of that word yet.
Also this definition nicely corresponds with the Description Logic
classes of things that denote concepts and that are the core of formal
ontologies. Moreover the meaning of a concept is then exactly the
extension of that concept = all the things that you can denote by that
concept. (06)
Jakub (07)
Charles D Turnitsa wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I realize that this is not necessarily the most salient topic for this
> forum, but all of the field experts whose opinion I would trust are here,
> so I'll take advantage.
>
> I have been working for a couple of years now in the area of ontological
> representation and ontological modeling, and I have a component based
> theory that I use for my work. It is one of the pieces of my PhD work, and
> serves a couple of useful purposes for projects I work on. The model takes
> the approach of having a taxonomy, with entities and relationships, to
> model the knowledge and process of a domain - and to show semantic
> relations between entities (other than subsumption relationships) where
> appropriate. The two added components that I have been working on are
> rules formalizing the application of those semantic relations, and a way to
> model the meaning of an entity by trying to capture its aspects, which I
> have referred to as concepts.
>
> By concepts, here I mean a universal, non-divisible idea. This "concept"
> when combined with others forms the definition of an entity.
>
> The problem I have is that the word Concept is much too overloaded in our
> community, so I am frequently at a loss to get past assumptions about its
> definition. One of my possible solutions is to use the word Aspect
> instead, but I don't want to clear up one problem by starting another.
>
> Any suggestions or observations?
>
> Chuck
>
>
> Charles Turnitsa
> Project Scientist
> Virginia Modeling, Analysis & Simulation Center
> Old Dominion University Research Foundation
> 7000 College Drive
> Suffolk, Virginia 23435
> (757) 638-6315 (voice)
> (757) 686-6214 (fax)
> cturnits@xxxxxxx
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
> Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
> Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
> To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> (08)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (09)
|