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Re: [ontolog-forum] to concept or not to concept, is this a question?

To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Smith, Barry" <phismith@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 10:25:48 -0400
Message-id: <20070616143032.ITCT28813.mta9.adelphia.net@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
At 10:08 AM 6/16/2007, paola.dimaio@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>Hi Azamat
>
>this argument began by defending the proper and 
>legitimate usage of the expression 'concepts' 
>and related terms to the discourse, and why some 
>of us (glad I am not alone) would be very 
>uncomfortable without it. and why some of us have a problem with it etc
>
>Just reading this nice article  that centers on conceptualization, see par 2
>
><http://www.loa-cnr.it/Guizzardi/FAIA.pdf>http://www.loa-cnr.it/Guizzardi/FAIA.pdf
>    (01)

Seems to involve just the systematic conmerging 
which I am complaining about. Thus in the 
beginning we have (fairly systematically) views 
according to which conceptualizations exist in the minds of users of language:    (02)

>We name the latter
>domain abstractions. Take as an example the 
>domain of genealogical relations in reality. A certain
>conceptualization of this domain can be 
>constructed by considering concepts such as Person, Man, Woman,
>Father, Mother, Offspring, being the father of, 
>being the mother of, among others. By using these concepts,
>we can articulate a domain abstraction (i.e., a 
>mental model) of certain facts in reality such as, for instance,
>that a man named John is the father of another man named Paul.
>Conceptualizations and Abstractions are 
>immaterial entities that only exist in the mind of the user or a
>community of users of a language.    (03)

Later, however, when the definitional rubber hits 
the road, we have passages such as the following:    (04)

>Definition 1 (conceptualization): a 
>conceptualization C is an intensional structure .W,D,Â. such that W is
>a (non-empty) set of possible worlds, D is the 
>domain of individuals and  is the set of n-ary relations
>(concepts) that are considered in C. The 
>elements r Î Â are intensional (or conceptual) relations with
>signatures such as rn:W ® Ã(Dn), so that each 
>n-ary relation is a function from possible worlds to n-tuples
>of individuals in the domain.    (05)

I am assuming, here, that the actual world is one 
of the possible worlds, and that individuals in 
the actual world such as Arnold Schwarzenegger 
belong to the relevant domains and ranges of 
these n-ary relations. This move, with its talk 
of 'intensional (or conceptual) relations' 
addresses a completely different notion of what a 
conceptualization might be, I'm afraid.    (06)

BS      (07)



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