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RE: [ontac-dev] Type vs. Class -- Please vote

To: ONTAC Taxonomy-Ontology Development Discussion <ontac-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Smith, Barry" <phismith@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 17:02:50 +0100
Message-id: <7.0.1.0.2.20060122165907.046ccb18@xxxxxxxxxxx>
At 04:51 PM 1/22/2006, you wrote:
>Barry,
>
>I guess you are thinking of natural kinds and natural kind terms
>(perhaps called rigid designators), i.e., entities with somehow fixed
>reference or at least with reference more fixed than other entities, a
>notion of referential transparence, or perhaps having distinct essences
>(or a set of essential properties). I agree that natural kind notions
>are useful, but they are not unproblematic.
>
>Even in science (shifting from biology to chemistry/physics), one might
>want to say that terms like "atom" or "molecule" or "electron" or
>"ether" seem to be candidates for natural kind terms, but what really
>do they refer to, and doesn't it seem likely that that changes over
>time, so that an "atom" to Democritus is not the same "atom" to
>Feynman, that each notion has quite different distinguishing properties
>and different extensions?    (01)

The history of science suggests that while the meanings of terms like 
'atom', 'moon', 'planet', 'cell', and so forth change quite radically 
over time, the referents of these terms are much more stable (and the 
notion of 'rigid designation' was introduced into philosophy 
precisely to account for this stability of reference even in the face 
of meaning change).    (02)

I agree that the notion of type (or whatever we call the referents of 
the terms in ontologies) is not unproblematic. However, when I look 
at the most sophisticated, large ontologies we have so far, which are 
still largely in biomedicine, for example the Foundational Model of Anatomy    (03)

http://sig.biostr.washington.edu/projects/fm/    (04)

then we see that they are conceived precisely as representations of a 
domain of types, and of the relations between such types. Biology 
deals, after all, with natural kinds; not with kidnoses.
BS    (05)


>Thanks,
>Leo
>_____________________________________________
>Dr. Leo Obrst       The MITRE Corporation, Information Semantics
>lobrst@xxxxxxxxx    Center for Innovative Computing & Informatics
>Voice: 703-983-6770 7515 Colshire Drive, M/S H305
>Fax: 703-983-1379   McLean, VA 22102-7508, USA
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: ontac-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>[mailto:ontac-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Smith, Barry
>Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2006 3:23 AM
>To: ONTAC Taxonomy-Ontology Development Discussion
>Subject: RE: [ontac-dev] Type vs. Class -- Please vote
>
>
> >
> >Leo:> In NL formal semantics, there is formally distinctions made
>between
> >plurals (with distributed or collective interpretations: three
>bananas,
> >John and is friends, many girls; and sometimes so-called cumulative
> >readings, which I won't go into), singular group-denoting nouns
>usually
> >called collectives (team, family, committee, nation, etc.), and groups
> >(entities more than the sum of their parts), and sometimes
>higher-order
> >groups (groups of groups). Also included in these analyses is the
> >distinction between mass and count nouns.
> >
> >So it seems that your distinction between class and type is perhaps
>not
> >quite right. If you mean by this the necessity for both intension and
> >extension, then of course I agree. However, can't you talk about the
> >description and the things that satisfy the description?
> >
> >In OWL FULL the distinction is made between class, instance, and class
> >as an instance (so class as both characterizing a description, an
> >extensional "class", and a class which is an instance maybe comparable
> >to the plural individual mentioned above -- which might satisfy the
> >species rabbit example, no?
>
>I am familiar with the literature Leo cites, and of course I
>appreciate that the analogy between football team and animal species
>(rabbit) is loose, and that a theory of collections would be needed
>to deal with the former. Moreover, I am aware that we need, at some
>stage, to incorporate a proper theory of those entities commonly
>referred to by means of mass terms like 'water'.
>
>However, it seems that Leo is ignoring the main question, which is:
>what do the terms in ontologies denote? (terms like 'rabbit',
>'kidney', 'organisation', 'contract', 'ship', 'oil-well', etc.)
>
>What are we talking about when we say, e.g., that 'kidney is_a organ'?
>
>Leo would say that we are talking about individual instances
>comprehended by 'kidney and individual instances comprehended by
>'organ', namely that every one of the first is also one of the second.
>
>Then, however, we could equally well include in our ontology a term
>like 'kidnose' (comprehending both kidneys and noses), and write:
>
>                          kidnose is_a organ
>
>Or a term like kidWose (comprehending both kidneys and Michael West's
>nsoe), and write
>
>                          kidWose is_a organ
>
>But there is something about terms like 'kidney', 'ship', 'cell',
>'person', etc. which makes them suitable for inclusion in an
>ontology, where 'kidnose' and 'kidWose' are (I hope everyone agrees)
>less suitable.
>What is this extra something? I propose that it is that all instances
>comprehended under 'kidney' instantiate the same type (pattern,
>invariant, kind, sort, commonality, universal). I think scientific
>research would make no sense without these types -- see e.g. the
>writings of David Armstrong on Scientific Universals. I think natural
>language is pervasively making reference to such types (there are
>common nouns like 'rabbit' everywhere). And the philosophy of
>language, since Kripke and Putnam, has discovered them too.
>BS
>
>
>
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