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Re: [ontolog-forum] Visual Complexity

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Patrick Durusau <patrick@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2007 12:15:26 -0500
Message-id: <45CA092E.1050008@xxxxxxxxxxx>
John,    (01)

John F. Sowa wrote:    (02)

>Paola,
>
>I very strongly agree that abstraction is extremely important
>and that it should be recognized as a valuable technique
>that is applicable to subject matter of any kind.
>
>My only criticism is to note the statement in one of the
>papers you cited:  "knowledge representation and abstraction
>are not independent."
>
>People have been using abstraction techniques together
>with knowledge representation since the time of Aristotle.
>To avoid multiplying different fields, I suggest that one
>term be used as the overall umbrella word that covers all
>the others.
>
>  
>
I take it your criticism isn't that knowledge representation and 
abstraction go hand in hand but that you think we need a social 
convention for how to speak of both of them at the same time?    (03)

That is, within this community we agree upon a standard usage (cf. the 
terms you propose below)?    (04)

>I really don't care whether the overall term is called
>"knowledge representation", "conceptual analysis", or
>whatever.  But it's important to have an umbrella term
>for all the cases.  Then you can have parallel terminology:
>
>    knowledge representation -- the task of analyzing the
>       concepts in any body of knowledge, defining appropriate
>       abstractions, and mapping the results to a logic-based
>       notation.
>
>    knowledge engineer -- one who does knowledge representation.
>
>If you have too many terms at the top level, you get a
>combinatorial explosion:
>
>    knowledge engineer -- one who does KR
>
>    abstraction engineer -- one who abstracts
>
>    ontological engineer -- one who develops ontologies
>
>    conceptual engineer -- one who analyzes concepts
>
>And all the possible combinations:
>
>    knowledge & abstraction engineer
>
>    ontology & abstraction & conceptual engineer
>
>    knowledge & ontology & abstraction engineer
>
>    etc.
>
>If the same person is expected to do all these things, we need
>a single term for the subject and the person who works on it.
>
>  
>
I don't have an axe to grind on behalf of any of the suggested choices. 
Realizing that other communities may choose to honor other usages.    (05)

Hope you are having a great day!    (06)

Patrick    (07)

>John Sowa
> 
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>  
>    (08)

-- 
Patrick Durusau
Patrick@xxxxxxxxxxx
Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface
Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model
Member, Text Encoding Initiative Board of Directors, 2003-2005    (09)

Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work!     (010)



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