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Re: [ontolog-forum] Confusion about 'model'

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 08:26:18 -0400
Message-id: <469A126A.6040806@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Barry and Wacek,    (01)

I agree with Barry about the normal use of natural languages:    (02)

 > When I say 'the cat is on the mat' I, for one, am not intending
 > to create a model of reality. Rather, I am attempting to say
 > something about reality itself (this very cat).    (03)

But I believe that making an explicit distinction between the model
and reality is important for any application of formal languages,
especially those that are processed by any computer system.    (04)

A Tarski-style model of a formal language (in fact, the title of
his famous paper explicitly limited it formal languages) is stated
as a set D of the entities in some domain of discourse and a set R
of relations over D.  The mapping of D and R to reality is often
unstated, and for any important application, it's usually far
from obvious.    (05)

John    (06)


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