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Re: [ontac-forum] Re: The world may fundamentally be inexplicable

To: ONTAC-WG General Discussion <ontac-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: John Cabral <jcabral@xxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 16:02:07 -0600 (CST)
Message-id: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0601111509020.3394-100000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


> 
> >   Murray Altheim, who has had a great deal
> >of practical experience in these matters, listed the following
> >five requirements for the core:
> >
> > >  1. a means of establishing [subject] identity
>
> can you formulate this in English?
> 
> 
> > >  2. a facet, or property relation
> 
> this seems to me to be entirely too general; do you mean:
> we distinguish between independent entities (such as people) and 
> dependent entities (such as color, weight, ...)?
> 
> > >  3. the class-instance relation
> 
> I propose that we distinguish classes and types (universals, kinds -- 
> choose your favorite synonym); a class would then be the extension of a type
> 
> > >  4. the superclass-subclass relation (which I later redefined
> > >     to be based on a mereological or collection basis, ala Cyc)
> 
> the mereological (part-of) relation should be distinguished from the 
> supertype-subtype relation, which should be distinguished in turn 
> from the superclass-subclass relatin
> 
> there is no type <things weighing greater than 10 grams on John Sowa's desk>
> but there is a class
>     (01)

Here, here on keeping mereology and type-subtype distinct.    (02)

Also, Cyc's treatment of (4) isn't mereological.  I think that there is 
a close relationship between our term #$Collection and concept denoted by 
"type" in  Barry Smith's comment.  However, the key feature to Cyc  
collections is that they are intensionally defined.  On that basis, we 
would allow for there to be a collection for <things weighing greater 
than 10 grams on John Sowa's desk>.     (03)

But, that's a design choice people can disagree about.    (04)

I think that Murray Altheim's list is a very interesting opportunity for 
people to talk about some of the most basic, nuts-and-bolts aspects of 
candidate ontologies.  That is, we could step through his list and 
different parties could introduce their schemes for how to handle basic 
relationships such as:    (05)

How do you express: 
                     "Fido is a dog."
                     "All dogs are animals."
                     "Dog is a ..."  (if that's even allowed)    (06)

In particular, it would be interesting to see how many competing 
ontologies are actually out there, how different they are, and to actually 
see them put through the motions.      (07)

Just a thought,    (08)

John C.    (09)










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