On Dec 15, 2014, at 7:54 AM, John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: (01)
> Dear Matthew, William, and Adrian,
>
> MW
>> “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. Try telling
>> a computer otherwise.
>
> I agree. But that is a primary reason why we should *STOP* using
> the label 'Thing' for the top of an ontology. The quoted comment
> means nothing to a computer, but people who know nothing about
> logic get the hopelessly misleading idea that it means something.
>
> As Pat Hayes noted, there's huge amount of confusion about ontology
> in nearly every published ontology. FIBO is an example, but nearly
> all the others are just as bad or worse.
>
> People who should know better have been using the label 'Thing' for
> the top of an ontology because it gives a "comfy feeling" to those
> who know nothing about logic. (02)
I have recommended its use (to TimBL and others) instead of the outlandish term
"resource" which has become the accepted terminology in W3C circles. (03)
> But that is an open invitation to *DISASTER*. Don't ever give
> people a comfy feeling about something they don't understand.
>
> That is why I recommend the label 'Entity'. It alerts the readers
> that they're stepping outside the realm of comfy words into highly
> technical terminology. (04)
Unfortunately, XML has already co-opted that word for an entirely different
technical usage, one that is known to so many people in the Web world that its
use here would be hopelessly confusing. (05)
In spite of the comfiness danger you note, it is hard to do better than "Thing"
for the top node name, IMO. But one should emphasise that this really does mean
ANY thing, including things that you, the reader, have never thought of (but
other people have thought, or will think, of.) The Horatio principle becomes
relevant at this point. (06)
> It's not hard to tell people that the word 'entity' means
> "anything that exists or may exist". But as William and Adrian
> noted, that is *not* how the word 'thing' is used in English:
>
> WF
>> Well, in general, circular definitions are undesireable.
>
> That's true in an ontology.
>
> AW
>> Indeed, even though every dictionary of English uses them.
>
> But a dictionary is *not* an ontology. It's a *lexical resource*. (07)
Amen to that :-) (08)
Pat H (09)
>
> It's a *descriptive* record of the way words are used. It should
> never be considered a *prescriptive* statement about how the meanings
> of formal terms should be related to one another in an ontology.
>
> The reason why dictionaries have circular definitions is that they
> are designed to cover all the ways words are used. It is, in effect,
> the union of an open-ended number of theories, most of which are
> inconsistent with one another.
>
> Therefore, circular definitions are normal and expected. Any
> dictionary without contradictions would be incomplete. It would
> therefore be *unreliable* as a description of the language.
>
> Fundamental principle: The first step in learning anything is
> to unlearn what ain't so.
>
> Before we can teach people ontology, we have to *STOP* giving
> them a comfy feeling that they already know ontology.
>
> John
>
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