Sean, (01)
That's a great analogy. A similar but less one-dimensional way of saying
the same thing is to think in terms of a sort of meaningful
multi-dimensional "space" with words as attractors within that space.
This is Saussure essentially, but the mental picture I get is something
like a probability landscape, with words in a particular language acting
like minima within that landscape, so a particular person with a
particular vocabulary would experience a meaning and express that in
terms of the meaningful symbol (word) that is closest to that meaning.
We have all experienced what happens when something we want to say is
"on the tip of my tongue", and translators for example would hold
meanings in mind while translating from a word in one language to the
nearest word in that landscape from another language. That's why you
only really learn to speak a language when you think in that language
rather than translating constantly from your own. (02)
An interesting thing happens when we learn a new word, or a word in
another language that doesn't have a direct equivalent in our own - see
for example Milan Kundera's explanation of the Czech word "litost",
which once described over a couple of pages, makes sense of something we
all experience but few of us have a word for (I won't attempt to repeat
the explanation, but it comes down to a specific kind of feeling of
failure). (03)
We have intriguing glimpses and models of how the mechanism might work,
from cognitive psychology. The main mechanism for all laying down of
meaning, and therefore presumably of the laying down of meanings of
words, is of course Hebbian learning, where pathways that are activated
in a brain become more able to carry a signal in future. De Bono
interprets this into a really nice working model of a brain in which we
can see the beginnings of mind phenomena like the above. He uses the
Hebbian mechanism to create a working model which he calls a "Special
Memory Surface" which is capable of creating attractors for meanings. (04)
I think it's useful to try and form a working model for meaning, if only
to discourage ourselves from trying to replicate it in a practical
ontology that is capable of industrial application. (05)
So there is meaning in human minds that has words, and meaning that does
not have words. However, human words themselves, especially in a large
and diverse language like English, goes way beyond what it is needed for
a useful industrial application. Meanings in human (and other
biological) minds are a result of the constantly changing experiences of
the individual. Much progress has been made possible by nailing these
down, starting with dictionaries and moving on into the world of standards. (06)
In understanding the shifting human experience of meaning, I don't think
we should try to replicate it for practical industrial applications. I
would go one stage further and suggest that the organisim which is a
business has a far simpler set of sensory organs than a human, and also
benefits from a level of standardisation of the symbols it uses and the
meanings that are attached to those symbols. Indeed most legal perils
that face an organisation result from ambiguous meanings of terms in
contracts. So not only should we not try to replicate the
multi-dimensional sea of meanings in a human, I suggest we should also
not try to replicate the increasingly diverse sea of words that we find
in human languages. (07)
Maybe once we've got computers to talk to each other in an unambiguous
way, then there is some mileage in this other cool stuff. (08)
Mike (09)
Sean Barker wrote:
> I get very uncomfortable when I see discussions of words having "senses"
> and "semantic primitives". While the idea of a word "having a meaning"
> is a useful metaphor, it is only a metaphor.
>
> To use a different analogy, I would represent semantics as a continuum,
> like a power cable, and that words are the pylons holding up the cable.
> The sense of a word is then the section of power line either side of the
> word, just as far as the low point of the cable.
>
> An intended implication of this analogy is that I can put in extra
> pylons, which, as words, then take a bit of the sense from the words on
> either side - rather like turquoise being somewhere between green and
> blue. In fact, I could change the number and position of all the pylons,
> to get a different collection of words with the continuum of senses
> distributed differently between them.
>
> One trivial interpretation of this analogy is that different languages
> have different collections of words covering the same general concept -
> colour terms being an obvious example. Where there is consistency
> between human languages, this probably arises because we are the same
> species - Wittgenstein's remark (approximately) "If lions could talk, we
> would have nothing to say to them" is germane at this point. As societies
> elaborate beyong the purely physical forms of life, the choices explode.
> This is very evident in the differences in vocabularies between businesses
> (and also why it is <b>in principle</b> impossible to fill in a tax form).
>
> This leads to my view that, while the paradigmatic algorithm for sight
> is pattern recognition, that for language is classification (starting with
> binary chop). And
> therefore choosing the terms of an ontology involves an a priori
> categorization of the forms of life that the ontology users need to
> distinguish. Interoperability between businesses is tricky, because they
> have evolved local forms of life, and therefore each use a vocabulary
> with a different set of boundaries between terms to those of any other
> business.
>
> This is why the future of the semantic web will be limited to low risk
> interactions such as buying pizza, while high risk interactions, such as
> buying aircraft parts, will take place only in closed, trusted
> communities, where due diligence on the meaning of terms has taken
> place.
>
> PS The analogy address only one aspect of language. The role of
> knowledge and the different levels of awareness (perception,
> comprehension, etc) is another, and I suspect that is where discussions
> of context should sit.
>
> Sean Barker
>
> Bristol, UK
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Patrick
> Cassidy
> Sent: 28 May 2009 17:51
> To: '[ontolog-forum] '
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Past, Present, and Future of Ontology
>
>
> *** WARNING ***
>
> This message has originated outside your organisation,
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> Keep this in mind if you answer this message.
>
>
> John Sowa has done us all a service by presenting a good summary of the
> issues that should be dealt with in designing ontologies in general and
> foundation ontologies in particular:
> http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2009-05/msg00133.html
>
> . . . for which I am grateful.
>
> I would like to point out that the suggestion I have made for a large
> collaborative development of a foundation ontology is designed precisely
> to avoid the pitfalls that John has enumerated via quotes from previous
> discussions. I find little to argue with in those quotes, with one
> exception: the question of semantic primitives. JS quotes Lenat:
>
>
>> In note #62, Doug Lenat and R. V. Guha made the following comments
>> about
>>
> the search for a set of "primitives":
> DL&RVG >> The problems... are (a) there is no small set, and (b) it's >
> almost impossible to nail down the meaning of most interesting terms, >
> because of the inherent ambiguity in whatever set of terms are
> "primitive."
> <SNIP for volume's sake>
>
>
>
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> (010)
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