Tom and David, (01)
TJ
> And I don't want to use "knowledge base" in that "union" sense
> of the term if there is already a well-established accepted use
> which differs from that.
>
> Perhaps John can enlighten us. (02)
Thanks for your trust in my opinion on this point. (03)
But I agree with Wittgenstein about the open-ended variety
of language games that can be played with any vocabulary
-- even in fields as seemingly precise as mathematics
and computer science. (04)
For examples, look at the slides about knowledge soup
(which is my term for the human "knowledge base"):
http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/soup_llr.pdf (05)
Slides 3 and 4 show the wide range of uses for the word 'chair'.
That's one of the most common words in English. (06)
But look at slide 3 for 'number', which is the most fundamental
word in mathematics. That slide adds the following observations: (07)
> Concepts in science and mathematics grow and change.
>
> Consider the evolution in the basic terms of physics during
> the past century: mass, energy, force, momentum, space, time,
> gravity, light, heat.
>
> Engineers often use different definitions of those terms for
> different components of the same system. (08)
Slides 8 and 9 generalize those observations and apply them to
other areas, including computer science. Slide 18 cites related
readings for more detail. (09)
DP
> MD may be... (010)
Your lists of "language games" with 'MD' and 'MDM' are similar
to my examples for the words 'chair', 'number', etc. (011)
Re Wikipedia: Since it can be edited by anybody and everybody,
I use it for quick information. But for anything important, I
always do more digging. For the word 'ontology', as used in
DBs and KBs, their definition is not bad: (012)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_%28information_science%29
> In computer science and information science, an ontology is
> a formal naming and definition of the types, properties, and
> interrelationships of the entities that really or fundamentally
> exist for a particular domain of discourse. It is thus a
> practical application of philosophical ontology, with a taxonomy. (013)
But the phrase "really or fundamentally exist for a particular
domain of discourse" is confusing and inaccurate. I would replace
it with "are assumed to exist in a particular domain". (014)
I'd raise similar issues about many of the other points in it. (015)
John (016)
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