I agree with Barry. (01)
Typically we differentiate between names for things and the things
themselves that names incompletely label. (02)
Names are really very incomplete object identifiers (identifiers for
the things themselves). As human beings we really want names to be
those indicators of object identity, but given false and incomplete
information (for example), they cannot be. I may be Leo Obrst, but I'm
lying, perhaps. A name is a way to refer to an object, but is not the
object itself. (03)
Names are descriptions, with not quite the lattitude as so-called
"definite descriptions", e.g., "the man in the corner wearing the hat"
or "the woman in the red dress over there" or "the current President of
the United States", all of which pick out specific individuals in some
contexts, but not all. (04)
We have to make sure that we make distinctions precise in the
ontologies we hope our systems, databases, and services will use. A
real thing represented in an ontology will be 1) a real thing, or as we
say, a symbol that represents the real thing, since we deal with
information objects that stand in for the real objects, and then 2)
have various ways of referring to that thing, including its multiple
names and its very many descriptions. (05)
The ultimate points are: 1) a specific location (the thing) can be
described by various names and various descriptions; 2) the names and
descriptions are NOT the thing, but labels or indicators for the thing. (06)
I know this sounds a bit philosophical, but really it's not: when we
deal with ontologies, we need to make these distinctions BECAUSE making
them gives us better ontologies. (07)
Thanks,
Leo (08)
_____________________________________________
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 (09)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Barry Smith
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 10:17 PM
To: ONTAC-WG General Discussion
Subject: RE: [ontac-forum] Surveyed Ontology "Library" Systems (010)
Responding to Roy (011)
>I would submit that a specific name of a place is a location. (012)
This cannot be right. "Oxford" is a name. Oxford is a place. The
former is a name of a location; it is not itself a location. (013)
>Examples of such
>places, relevant to the users of the place name (i.e., part of their
>relative vocabulary and their individual and related group contexts)
>this would be: home, the office, the school, Mary's, grandma's, the
>store, the target). These conceptual locations would have no
>global/larger/absolute meaning unless the vocabulary and contextual
>meaning of the user was known. (014)
By 'conceptual location' I think you mean locations specified via
phrases which have contextually dependent meanings. If so, then these
are of course not special kinds of locations -- any more than a
person whose name referred to by a nickname is a special kind of
person. (015)
BS (016)
>\ (017)
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