Phew! Thanks Matthew - very nicely explained ! I was beginning to hope
someone would come in and save me before I mired myself ever deeper in this
debate. I would go a bit further though. I would argue you can have the same
(e.g. higher-order) ontology and represent it in two different RDFS
projections. The first would only use first-order constructs, and the second
would use higher-order constructs. It's still the same ontology, I've just
chosen not to use some bits of RDFS that would make the ontology scare the
level five wizards. In ISO15926, the classes, and indeedtype-instance
relationships, happens to be represented in EXPRESS, and instantiated as a
line in a P21 file (or a as muddle of XML in a P28 file). (01)
Pat made a good point though - yes it would be downright silly to
deliberately confuse the use of RDFS - e.g. using rdf:Type to represent
motherOf would be daft. However, I would like to be able to use something
other than rdf:type to relate types and instances if I want to present a
higher-order ontology to the flat-worlders. (02)
PS - I'm not sure about where this idea of a mental model of an ontology
came from. I never mentioned it, and I certainly don't have an ontology in
my head. Of course the ontology has to be represented in some way - CL,
RDFS, OWL, UML, EXPRESS, arse-barcodes, who cares ? It is the content of
the ontology that is important - it should define its own ontic categories
and its own criteria for identification. In 15926, BORO and IDEAS, the
criteria for identity is extent. (03)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Matthew West
Sent: 05 February 2009 08:19
To: edbark@xxxxxxxx; '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] RDF & RDFS (was... Is there something I
missed?) (04)
Dear Ed, (05)
I just want to push a bit and see what you really mean here. (06)
> > I will say this
> > though - it's really easy to confuse the representation of the
> ontology with
> > the ontology itself.
>
> We need to be careful about the term "ontology" here. I understand the
> term "ontology" to refer to a representation of knowledge in a form
> suitable for automated reasoning (i.e., using some well-defined grammar
> and base semantics).
>
> With that definition, it is not easy to confuse them -- the ontology IS
> the representation. The ontology is not the knowledge, or the
> knowledge
> model that is in your head; it is that knowledge (model) as captured
> in
> the language. It is that part of the knowledge that is actually being
> communicated to the automata. (07)
[MW] Right, so it is not what is in your head. But I have a file with my OWL
ontology in it. I make 5 copies. How many ontologies do I have? (08)
[MW] I take my OWL file and convert it to Common Logic so that I can make
exactly the same inferences from it. How many ontologies do I have? (09)
[MW] For me it is the same ontology if it is the same underlying theory. OK,
if we are talking computer science, then it must be a computer interpretable
representation, but otherwise I would not think of it as different if it was
the same theory. So we have ISO 15926 in OWL and EXPRESS, but we do not see
these as different ontologies, just different representations of the same
ontology. (010)
Regards (011)
Matthew West
Information Junction
Tel: +44 560 302 3685
Mobile: +44 750 3385279
matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/ (012)
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