See?
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
From:
ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Obrst, Leo J.
Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2012
2:21 PM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] What goes into a Lexicon?
My theory does
differ, I’m afraid.
Thanks,
Leo
From:
ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rich Cooper
Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2012
5:04 PM
To: '[ontolog-forum]
'
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] What goes into a Lexicon?
Dear Leo,
You wrote:
How
can we possibly understand what you are saying here, if we don’t greatly
share common semantics and a common ontology?
Through the psychological
process called “projection”. That is, we have each trained
all our lives to read and understand other people’s words in our own
terms. Notice that when one person talks to another, the listener rarely
understands the utterance in exactly the same way as the speaker does.
That is because the listener has different experiences which she cobbles
together to make her subjective interpretation of the utterance.
To be plainer about it,
we construct reality in our individual minds to match what we sense, and what
we anticipate. We correlate that construction from components we have
previously learned and stored. Once we have learned a new construction,
we can use that as a component in future projections.
Scene analysis, as you
probably remember, was found in part to be an activity of detecting corners in
three dimensions, and then joining those up to match the observed scene in a
familiar way. Escher’s many drawings of impossible figures demonstrate
that phenomenon, as he meant to do by design. Each corner makes sense to
us as a corner, but we individually integrate the corners into a more complex
complete scene. Escher’s drawings show that the integrated scene
might make no sense in reality, but our perception of the corners fits very
nicely for each individual corner.
I think the same
projective method is used for language. If you have read the web page
title “evidence based linguistics” (I have lost the link, sorry),
he paints a compelling case for conversations being an iterative reduction of
ambiguity through passing linguistic hints from speaker to listener. He
thinks syntax is a useful method for representing concepts in language, but
that syntax is only useful in certain restricted constructions, not as a
general method of human language analysis. Many other components are
needed to let speaker and listener project their individual understanding of
the concepts being discussed.
But that does NOT make
their concepts equivalent. Each participant comes away from the
conversation with a unique understanding, most likely a different understanding
from the other speaker. How many times have you convinced someone of your
point of view in a single conversation? I suggest it is a relatively rare
event compared to the number of conversations about similar subjects you may
have had with the same person.
That’s my theory,
anyway, until more evidence is made available to me. Your theory may
differ.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT
EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5
- 5 7 1 2
Rich,
How
can we possibly understand what you are saying here, if we don’t greatly
share common semantics and a common ontology?
Thanks,
Leo
Dear
Matthew, David and John,
Matthew
wrote:
It is really rather easy to create an ontology of names, what
they represent, and who uses them in what context.
The
problem isn’t in ease of creation, but in consistent use by multiple
people. On this list, we have consistently found that people vehemently
disagree on the “proper” way to model concepts with
ontologies. Our history of finding agreement indicates that it is very
difficult to construct ontologies that many people agree on. Only very,
very simple things such as Dublin Core have found widespread usage.
By
contrast, David’s example of the policy number, which one would expect to
be well understood within the insurance business, by his stated experience,
isn’t so well understood. The problem is with the observers of any
ontology; we don’t all see the same meaning in a given rendering of
concepts.
After a
lot of thought, and from years of discussion with well qualified people on this
list, I have come to the conclusion that ontology is simply one way of
rendering reality. Ontologies have not in general satisfied large groups
of observers because every observer has a unique, distinct, and very complex
model of those simple concepts which we throw around with variant
lexicons.
The
problem is that we don’t all have the same experience. It is our
individual differences in experience that leads us to think in different
sequences with different observations of the same phenomenon. I
don’t see how that problem can be solved by monolithic ontological
terms.
Instead,
problem reduction methods such as top down structured programming, and
packaging methods such as object oriented programming and client server
architectures have made dramatically effective inroads toward constructing
large software systems that mostly work as intended.
I
suggest that ontologists should take the same viewpoint because it has worked
so well there. Instead of insisting on a singular meaning, a singular
ontology, a singular way of doing things, we should be more open to pluralities
of ontology as just another art form that is juggled differently by each
observer. In Chairman Mao Zedong’s terms, let a million ontologies
flourish.
Singular
ontology just hasn’t worked out and it looks like it never will.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT
EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5
- 5 7 1 2
Dear David,
Of course.
As always I revert to my favorite,
oft-repeated example... a life insurance company that found 70 different names
for the core business concept (term?) "policy number." In a
business environment where product lines are bought & sold, systems are
custom built by different teams & packages are bought, the reality is there
will be many (illogical) names for the same thingy.
MW: it all depends what you build you ontology to do. If
what you want it to do is allow you to bring together lots of different names for
the same thing, then there is no particular difficulty in that. It’s just
that ontologists don’t tend to call those different names terms, but the
common meaning they share. You just have to get over that, and adopt the local
usage and carry on. It is really rather easy to create an ontology of names,
what they represent, and who uses them in what context.
Regards
Matthew
West
Information Junction
Tel: +44 1489 880185
Mobile: +44 750 3385279
Skype: dr.matthew.west
matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/
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This email originates from Information Junction Ltd. Registered
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Registered office: 2 Brookside, Meadow Way, Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, SG6
3JE.
At one point I entertained delusions that
ontologies would help with this issue (one conceptual label = many physical
labels). Obviously I no longer hope in that direction.