On Dec 18, 2010, at 5:57 PM, David Eddy wrote:
Chris -
On 2010-12-18, at 6:28 PM, Christopher Menzel wrote:
Well, I was talking to Leo, who's really smart and not prone to confusion. :-) Granted, I was speaking informally about those objects in a model whose relation extensions contain objects in the domain only, no n-tuples. That said, I'm not sure it is possible, when discussing any technical subject matter informally, to avoid saying things that might be confusing for people who don't bother to study and learn the subject matter in question.
Leo may be a smart guy... but I'm a reader too & am most decidedly NOT in his class.
Isn't this description one of the primary hidden functional agendas of tilting at this ontology windmill?
Uh, well, er, ..., what was the question? :-)
For instance... I have no idea what "tuples" (much less "n-tuples") are, nor "classes." [How many dictionaries do I have to check?... no definition for tuple in OAD/Oxford American Dictionary. Nothing in WordNet. I'm rapidly loosing interest. Definitions for "classes" just leave me more confused.]
Well, of course, no one knows what those things are absent either definitions or reasonably complete axiomatizations.
So how can ontologies help communicate effectively to folks—like myself—who bring a different vocabulary set/life experience to the table?
Note that Common Logic isn't an ontology; it's a framework for (among other things) communicating and reasoning upon ontologies. A lot of folks who write ontologies might never see or use a CL dialect; they'd more likely use a tool like Protege. That said, there is probably a need for some "gentler" introductions to CL that could be very useful to practitioners.