Dear folks, (01)
To me, concepts are defined in terms of their attributes and values, and
their relationships. There is no dictionary definition needed. Concept
typing (object, agent/entity, abstraction, event) means that each concept
type possesses prototypical properties -- for example, agents possess
purpose, behaviors, motivations, values, and if electronic, are man-made.
Stereotypical/class concepts such as liquids display their normality through
a select set of generic attributes and values. So, a stereotypical liquid
can be defined in terms of attributes such as viscosity, behavior -- flows
according to gravity, boiling pt., freezing pt., etc; and specific types of
liquid likely possess differing values. For relations, containers hold
liquids and keep them from dispersing, etc. Contexts can be defined in
terms of relationships and attributes such as purpose/use, natural/man-made,
time, location, temperature, etc. With the <concept attribute value>
primitive, concepts can be readily compared according to attribute
presence/absence, and attributes can be compared according to semantic
distance of values, and relations can be compared by the concept classes
involved and the relation type. (02)
Best, Tom (03)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pat Hayes" <phayes@xxxxxxx>
To: "Duane Nickull" <dnickull@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2007 7:00 PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Role of definitions (Remember the poor human) (04)
>Pat:
>
>This is great stuff. Now I am going to think out loud even more and play
>devil's advocate. How do you define liquid? (05)
I don't. I don't DEFINE anything :-) (06)
>Glass is also a liquid. If you
>watch a sheet of glass over 1000 years it will appear to flow like it is a
>gel. (07)
Ive often seen this claimed, but I doubt it.
There are glass objects over a thousand years old
which still have their original shape, in some
cases (Egyptian glass burial vases) quite elegant
and made of very thin glass. If glass acts as a
slow gel, why aren't they puddles by now? I know
some old vertical window panes which exhibit
bottom thickening, but again these seem to be the
exception; there are also some extremely old
stained glass windows in European cathedrals
which seem unchanged since they were constructed. (08)
> Would sand not model the same characteristics of a liquid, albeit the
>particles on a much larger scale? (09)
Yes, indeed, liquids can be mixtures. Some
mixtures of gas and solid act like liquids, so I
would count them as being liquids for this
ontology. (010)
>If flows, it is subject to the same laws
>of physics and offers many of the same properties except maybe having a
>higher viscosity index value. (011)
It has a nontrivial slump angle, however, and it
can't form thin films, so it wouldn't really
satisfy all of my ontology (much of which was
concerned with what it means to be wet and how
liquids flow over surfaces) (012)
>
>Wordnet struggled with the following definitions:
>
># existing as or having characteristics of a liquid; especially tending to
>flow; "water and milk and blood are liquid substances" (013)
This is also what I took as central: that liquids
take on the shapes of their containers, without
leaving any 'gaps'. (014)
># filled or brimming with tears; "swimming eyes"; "sorrow made the eyes of
>many grow liquid" (015)
Not this (016)
># clear and bright; "the liquid air of a spring morning"; "eyes shining
>with
>a liquid luster"; "limpid blue eyes" (017)
not this (018)
># a substance that is liquid at room temperature and pressure (019)
Yes. This is a liquid object (actually, it is a *piece* of such a
substance). (020)
># melted: changed from a solid to a liquid state; "rivers filled to
>overflowing by melted snow" (021)
Yes, it can describe that. (022)
># smooth and flowing in quality; entirely free of harshness; "the liquid
>song of a robin" (023)
Not this (other than metaphorically) (024)
># the state in which a substance exhibits a characteristic readiness to
>flow
>with little or no tendency to disperse and relatively high
>incompressibility (025)
Yes, put into simpler language (026)
># a substance in the fluid state of matter having no fixed shape but a
>fixed
>volume (027)
Yes (028)
># fluent: smooth and unconstrained in movement; "a long, smooth stride";
>"the fluid motion of a cat"; "the liquid grace of a ballerina" (029)
No (030)
># fluid: in cash or easily convertible to cash; "liquid (or fluid) assets" (031)
No (032)
># a frictionless continuant that is not a nasal consonant (especially `l'
>and `r') (033)
No. (034)
>
>Duane
>
>
>On 2/15/07 1:40 PM, "Pat Hayes" <phayes@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>> *mild digression from discourse*
>>>
>>> Water is a good example of natural reality, so real yet so versatile
>>> yet so elusive
>>
>> Indeed. I made an attempt at this a while back
>> (Ontology of liquids, 1985). I found I had to
>> distinguish between a 'piece of liquid' (roughly
>> a particular set of molecules) and a 'liquid
>> object' which is defined essentially by its
>> spatial boundaries. Like a river, for example,
>> which is the same liquid object but a different
>> piece of liquid every moment. (I was living in
>> Geneva at the time, so my example was Lac Leman,
>> which has the Rhone flowing in one end and out
>> other, and in spring changes color completely in
>> two days or so, so evidently is a very different
>> piece of liquid.) The fact the geographic volumes
>> of water apparently are individuated in the
>> second way, spatially, may account for why it
> > seems natural to refer to a river even when it
>> has no water in it, like a Wadi or wash.
>>
>>> Maybe, a river is always a river if thats what you call that kind of
>>> thing,(define) but it has different states.(river can be rivololet,
>>> or stream, eventually even steam - probably the reverse is true).
>>>
>>> The states depend on different conditions of the air.atmosphere,
>>> temperature.earth, and the natural cycles.
>>>
>>> Then again, if we want to define river and all its
>>> properties/transformations/states, we should really not forget to take
>>> a step back. River is water, water is Ho2,. So the river is just a
>>> state of some gas combination.
>>
>> You have to distinguish chemical composition from
>> massing together in a body from physical mixing,
>> they are all kinds of combination.
>>
>>>
>>> Model that?
>>>
>>> Depends, if it's the ontology for a mapping system, then it's a
>>> particular state that we
>>> are interested in modelling, although any representation is likely to
> >> be an approximation
>>> of what ther river in any given time/space coordinate
>>
>> Indeed. Again, we have developed a semantics for
>> maps which makes this very clear, because if you
>> 'back-project' eg a river line on the map to the
>> terrain using the inverse of the projection
>> function, it is often very much wider than the
>> actual river. So you have to say that the
>> semantics of the map is not that the line shows
>> the actual position of the river, but that it
>> *constrains* the actual position (ie the real
>> position is 'inside' the back-projection). And
>> then for example a road shown going to a town on
>> the map could actually miss that town (there is
>> enough 'room' for this to be possible) , unless
>> we add a special map-interpretation convention
>> which says that some kinds of coincidence on the
>> map really do mean coincidence in the world.
>>
>>> If the ontology is to map geophysical resources from the region, then
>>> maybe the representation can be more granular -
>>>
>>> depending what one is interested in modelling obviously, waht
>>> definition and representation
>>> one choses, however, we should keepin mind that
>>> nothing is in a permanent state,
>>> and the state of everything is correlated by its dependencies, and
>>> dependencies are bound by some cycles.and laws, even they appear
>>> chaotic at times, I guess
>>>
>>> Model that in the ontology.
>>
>> Hmm, that sounds like a philosophical position in
>> metaphysics. Im not sure if we should try to
>> model those in ontologies.
>>
>> Pat
>>
>>>
>>> just thinking lound
>>
>> Great, we should all do more of it.
>>
>>>
>>> *digression ends*
>>>
>>>
>>> Paola DM
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2/15/07, Kathryn Blackmond Laskey <klaskey@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>> ...
>>>>> As a matter of fact, a river IS always a river:
>>>>> this is a necessary truth.
>>>>
>>>> Except when it's a stream, or a brook, or a rivulet.
>>>>
>>>> There is flowing water (well, today it may be frozen; last week, it
>>>> was flowing) that passes under a bridge I drive over on the way from
>>>> my home to GMU. Whether that something is a river or a stream or a
>>>> creek, is open to endless debate. I agree that it is what it is, but
>>>> is it always a river? Always not a river? I don't think that
>>>> question has a definite answer.
>>>>
>>>> Kathy
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> ************************************
>>> Paola Di Maio
>>> Senior Lecturer
>>> School of IT, MFU.ac.th
>>> *************************************
>>>
>>> "For as long as space and time endures
>>> may I too abide to dispel misery and ignorance"
>>>
>>> _________________________________________________________________
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>>
>
>--
>**********************************************************
>Sr. Technical Evangelist - Adobe Systems, Inc. *
>Chair - OASIS SOA Reference Model Technical Committee *
>Blog: http://technoracle.blogspot.com *
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>**********************************************************
>
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