On 2/17/2015 11:17 PM, John F Sowa wrote:
> Folks,
> ...I agree. All you need to represent full first-order logic is
> three logical operators (and, not, some) plus an open-ended set
> of relations. If you have that, you can redefine (or discard)
> a huge number of smelly words: attribute, property, role,
> characteristic, feature, slot, facet, trope, subject, object,
> verb, class, type, category...
>
> Whenever people argue about the meaning of those words, I tell
> them, "Either define them in logic or throw them out."
JohnS, (01)
I have two concerns here: (02)
First, that you may be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. When
you throw out the "smelly words" you are also discarding their data
structures. That leaves a void that needs to be filled. (03)
Second, this is not an onomastic problem, the issue is not with the word
itself, it is with the lexical load that the word brings with it in its
use. This cannot be remedied with logic, it is a CS issue with how data
structures are used, labeled and linked. (04)
My preference is for a definition and usage of terms that move us from
<entity> to something closer to a Natural Language. We have a choice
along a linguistic spectrum that relates from <entity> to NL. We can
select from the following in, hopefully, increasing level of linguistic
ability. (05)
A. Use programming language data structures. The utility here is that
the compiler defines what is legal and well-known. It is then up to the
user to implement the best uses. This results in knowledge islands that
are not frequently visited because the knowledge is coded in an obscure
language. (06)
B. Use a "container" view. Containers can be defined that hold
"entities" and have types, labels and links. This is about where we are
right now and a "slot" is pretty much just a container that additionally
has a parent and perhaps a child. The weakness in this approach is that
we have no standard definition of types for links or contained data so
those must either be assumed to be held within the container or within a
lexicon for a specified container type. (07)
C. We could select from among a number of industry, national or
international standards for nomenclatures for data types and structures.
As we know, "The nice thing about standards is that we have so many to
choose from". But for them to be of use we would have to select one.
This is the base committee task that often fails, resulting in the
design of a camel. The benefit of this approach is that it would provide
a migration path from one of the FIPS standards as the basis for an
ontologic grammar. (This is also why my personal preference is for SGML:
it is an ISO standard, it is linguistically based, includes a base
grammar that is more powerful than EBNF, it is extensible and free
parsers exist for the meta-grammar.) (08)
D. We could roll our own. If it is determined that no existing rubric
meets the ontologic requirements then a new one can be created once
those requirements are documented. This would be slow-going for the
forum and I fear that industry specifications will result in another
horrorshow as we have now with the web. (09)
So, that's it, pick where you want to be on the spectrum or, if I have
missed something along the spectrum then please let me know. I have been
working with a large organization to define a basic lexicon for
ontologies that has reached about 60 words. We are months away from even
a 0.1 draft. (010)
We also have SUMO if that is of use, but I have not surveyed it to see
how it would apply. I support a task of creating an ontology lexicon. I
doubt we will make any progress until we do. Further, I don't see how we
can make progress on the IoT without a workable approach to a lexicon.
And if this group cannot create do that, I doubt we will see one outside
of a pure industry or association fiat. W3C seems to be the only group
that could accomplish this and they may not have the expertise to
accomplish this, beyond using just a simple grammar. Then, the forum
would still not have a construct for a lexicon. (011)
-John Bottoms
FirstStar Systems
Concord, MA USA (012)
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