Dear Adrian, William,
Well, in general, circular definitions are undesireable
Indeed, even though every dictionary of English uses them. [MW>] Well actually, more importantly, if you say “The term THING means the same as the word thing.” This is not actually circular. The terms in your ontology are in principle labels without any inherent meaning at all. So my sentence above means the same as: “The term XYZ means the same as the word thing.” Try telling a computer otherwise. Regards Matthew West Information Junction Mobile: +44 750 3385279 Skype: dr.matthew.west matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/ https://www.matthew-west.org.uk/ This email originates from Information Junction Ltd. Registered in England and Wales No. 6632177. Registered office: 8 Ennismore Close, Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, SG6 2SU. There's an approach to assigning useful meanings to English sentences that escapes circularity by grounding to further sentences that are headings of extensional data tables. Paradoxically this works even if the meaning of a sentence depends on itself recursively -- eventually it is grounded. This approach is used in a running online system [1]. Here's an example [2]. This is not yet proposed as a standard, so it hopefully conforms to your prescription of use before standard writing. (There are many other examples in the same directory) On Sun, Dec 14, 2014 at 3:56 PM, William Frank <williamf.frank@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: I wish words failed me, too. But my outrage needs some words to go with it. I am **most** concerned not with how egregiously AWFUL this is, but what it means about the engineering culture in which this could occur. There are two disfunctional characteristics that seem to me to be at play here. 1.Standardize everything first, then use it later, if at all. No more try before you buy. Back in pre-history, things like SQL and C were introduced, adopted, then finally turned into standards. Now, every time somebody has a new idea (or even, as in this case, seems to wish they were having an idea), the FIRST thing they do is to define a 'standard'. 2. Talk (or code) first, learn (or reuse) never. This subject, as we here all love to yammer on about, has a history more than 2000 years old, about which lots has been learned. So, the modern day experts on how to effectively stipulate what an ontology will mean by the term 'thing', as well as how to effectively construct defintions, have a great deal of help from the shoulders on which they stand. This so-called standard, on the other hand, is like a nightmare of jumbled words that might have popped up in the 2000 years of incremental improvement in our understanding of what is useful to cast as a 'thing', and when. I am sure the roots of these patterns are economic, as are the roots of most things, but in the past few millenia of science and engineering, there have been many celebrated endeavors motivated by the desire to increase our understanding of things. (or maybe, our understanding of "sets of individuals which are defined according the facts (properties) given for that kind of thing. ")
Although unnecessary, I can't help but repeat Pat's quote from the standard and attack a few of its more obvious failings. Here is what these people sponsored by the OMG and propose as a standard for the Financial Industry:
"A Thing is defined as the set of individuals which are defined according the facts (properties) given for that kind of thing. " Well, in general, circular definitions are undesireable.
So, they have the concept of individual, as a primitive from which Thing is constructed. So, presumably, individuals are NOT things.
Second, they do not distinquish between facts and properties, suggesting that they will have a really hard time when it comes to dealing with the different meta types in the ontology.
The capstone of the absurdity, though, is that in defining thing, they rely on, as part of the definition of thing, the concept of 'KIND of thing.' How are we to know what a kind of thing is, before we know what a thing is?
Looking at this some more though, alot of the nonsense in the official semantics for the Unified Modelling Language seems to be embedded here, in that they seem to be making the same fallacy, that individuals and types are so entirely different in nature that we can't even talk about them in the same language. Of course, the so-called 'semantics' of UML itself has the same disfunctional roots as this stuff does. Lets make some money for our companies that make tools for O-O languages. No wonder ontology is not more widely respected, if this is the kind of stuff that happens.
Wm
On Sun, Dec 14, 2014 at 2:17 PM, Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx> wrote: This is hopelessly confused. The technical part of it is nonsense. Just as a sample:
"6.3.3.1 Thing
A Thing is a set theory construct. This is shown on the diagrams as a box with a name. On some diagrams, additional
textual entries in the box show the Simple Properties about that thing.
A Thing is defined as the set of individuals which are defined according the facts (properties) given for that kind of thing. "
Words fail me at this point. How is it possible for educated adult human beings to get themselves so unbelievably muddled over what should be one of the simplest ideas ever stated?
Pat ------------------------------------------------------------
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