The point being that people habitually use a particular vocabulary, and this is
the vocabulary they are likely to use when describing things, not that they
couldn't recognise another vocabulary if they could be bothered to read the
manual. It seems a necessary precondition that to accurately understand a
vocabulary, you need to understand that the vocabulary has been carefully
constructed. The question is not "What could people understand", but what will
they actually understand. The death rate on US railways went down very
considerably when the too-long-to-read warning signs were replaced with ones
simply saying "Stop - look - listen". (01)
Sean Barker
Bristol, UK (02)
This mail is publicly posted to a distribution list as part of a process of
public discussion, any automatically generated statements to the contrary
non-withstanding. It is the opinion of the author, and does not represent an
official company view. (03)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pat Hayes [mailto:phayes@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: 02 July 2007 15:49
> To: Barker, Sean (UK)
> Cc: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] notes and rumours
>
> >1) A footnote to John Sowa's 'Fads and Fallacies about Logic', the
> >Greek term Logos, from which the work logic derives, referred to
> >something written and was contrasted to Mythos, something
> spoken, from
> >which. I can't track down the reference, but around the 5th
> century the
> >traditional Mythos lost status as compared to Logos, and hence the
> >negative connotations to the truth value of myths.
> >
> >2) Re previous discussion on creating a "the upper
> ontology", see the
> >interview "Shades of Meaning" in this week's New Scientist (30 June
> >2007). Among several points relevant to the discussion of
> ontologies,
> >"In Benin in West Africa, for example, men and women have different
> >colour vocabularies".
>
> The linguist Robin Lakoff noted some time ago that American
> men and women have different color vocabularies. Women for
> example reliably distinguish scarlet from crimson, both of
> which are described as 'red' by 90% or more of males, and
> women use color terms such as 'puce', 'teal'
> and 'ecru' whose meanings are completely opaque to men who do
> not work in the clothing industry.
>
> > It seems unlikely that we could agree a single universal "colour
> >ontology", except possibly as an academic exercise of little
> relevance
> >to real engineers...
>
> Naaah, be careful. The lack of a common NL vocabulary does
> not mean that there is a similar spread of *concepts*. In
> fact there is considerable evidence that all human beings
> share a basic set of color perceptions organized around
> prototypical colors. Different linguistic cultures have built
> different vocabularies on top of this biological skeleton,
> but its value is a common organizing framework should not be
> obscured by mere linguistics.
>
> Pat Hayes
>
> >
> >
> >Sean Barker
> >Bristol, UK
> >
> >This mail is publicly posted to a distribution list as part of a
> >process of public discussion, any automatically generated
> statements to
> >the contrary non-withstanding. It is the opinion of the author, and
> >does not represent an official company view.
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
> Of John
> >> F. Sowa
> >> Sent: 29 June 2007 15:58
> >> To: [ontolog-forum]
> >> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] quick question re OKBc
> >>
> >>
> >> *** WARNING ***
> >>
> >> This mail has originated outside your organization,
> either from an
> >> external partner or the Global Internet.
> >> Keep this in mind if you answer this message.
> >>
> >> Debbie,
> >>
> >> > ... can you please point to a few valuables in the road kill
> >> that > should be spotlighted or saved ...
> >>
> >> The term was jocular, but the point behind it is that the
> enormous
> >> attention and funding that has been poured into the
> Semantic Web has
> >> changed the direction of a great deal of R & D. The
> issues are much
> >> more complex than just a list of "road kill".
> >>
> >> I presented a talk in August 2006, which addressed many of the
> >> historical trends and the areas that need more attention.
> >> Following are the slides:
> >>
> >> http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/extend.pdf
> >> Extending Semantic Interoperability
> >> To Legacy Systems and an Unpredictable Future
> >>
> >> Following is an article that addresses some related topics:
> >>
> >> http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/fflogic.pdf
> >> Fads and Fallacies about Logic
> >>
> >> This talk and this article do not discuss the semantic
> web in any
> >> detail, but they address some historical trends, some future
> >> possibilities, and some questions about how to get from
> where we are
> >> to where we would like to be.
> >>
> >> One of my recommendations is summarized in the following
> diagram,
> >> which illustrates various languages and diagrams for the human
> >> interfaces, various languages for the machine interfaces,
> and Common
> >> Logic as the common intermediate language.
> >>
> >> http://www.jfsowa.com/figs/comlog.gif
> >>
> >> In the middle, Common Logic could be replaced by IKL,
> which is an
> >> extension to the draft CL standard that could become
> > > the basis for a future update to the standard.
> >>
> >> John
> >>
> >>
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> >>
> >>
> >
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> (04)
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