Chris Partridge wrote:
> Hi Pat,
>
> Would you mind giving us (me?) a couple of clarifications?
>
"Us" is correct. I was going to ask Pat about this, and hopefully for
some references.
> PH>when some basic advances in logic showed that the traditional
> 'layering' of descriptions into individuals/classes/properties/
> metaclasses/etc. was (a) not necessary and (b) expressively very
> restrictive. One can keep the categories but abandon the strict
> layering - in effect, allowing a given thing to be in many 'layers' at
> once - and no disasters arise, if one cleaves to a certain simple,
> natural syntactic discipline (which is built into both Common Logic
> and RDF). The result is greatly increased expressivity and a formalism
> which 'naive' users invariably find quite natural, and which makes
> perfect semantic sense.
>
> Is there somewhere we can find more details on this 'basic advance'?
>
+1 (especially references that first introduced these changes)
> Agree about the advantages of de-layering, but think that in a wider
> community we need to be careful about the senses of the terms we are using.
> For example, can you clarify what is meant by 'individual' here? I know
> there are a range of possible senses. I assume that here it not individual
> in the Aristotelian sense of primary substance - something that, by
> definition, cannot have members (as "one thing can be both an individual and
> a class (and a property) in the very same ontology").
>
>
And it seems fitting that Chris Partridge is asking this, having just
heard of the BORO method, which I find fascinating. (01)
I love the sound of this paragraph by Ian Bailey:
IB>Facing a lack of modelling progress in IDEAS, we went back to the
drawing board and decided we'd try a formal method for analysis. We
chose Chris Partridge's BORO method, as a few of us had read his book
and wanted to give it a try. It has the advantage of ignoring ideas such
as "concepts" and "terms". It's ruthlessly extensional - individuals are
identified by their physical extent, classes by their members, and
relationships by their ends. Once you've figured out something's extent,
you can then apply whatever names you want to it. The process can be
achingly slow, but at least it gets results, and the results can't be
refuted.<IB (02)
And I sympathize with Ian Bailey here:
IB>I like that IDEAS (and BORO and ISO15926) are extensional and higher
order, because as a pragmatic, hairy-a**ed mechanical engineer I am
comfortable that I know what I'm dealing with.<IB (03)
And like Chris, I'm wondering what effect "allowing a given thing to be
in many 'layers' at once" would have on these methods (BORO, IDEAS,
ISO15926) of development? (04)
Opps, even as I type this I see this post from Mathew West that helps
clarify this:
MW> Ian's surprise at something being both an individual and a class is
probably my fault, because in ISO 15926 we used this term for something
that exists in space-time, i.e. a spatio-temporal extent. You would
probably be less concerned to know that Ian is surprised when it seems
that a spatio-temporal extent can also be a class. Of course this is not
what OWL means by an individual. ISO 15926 is of course quite happy
about classes or individuals being members of classes (as indeed is the
IDEAS ontology that Ian mentions). <MW (05)
> Regards,
> Chris
>
>
by the way, Chris, I just ordered a used copy of the first edition of
your book But I couldn't find a copy of the 2cnd edition anywhere. Is it
still available? (06)
John Black
www.kashori.com (07)
>
>
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> (08)
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