What is a concept?

:)

Defined in SKOS-Core 1.0 Guide as 'any unit of thought that may be defined
or described.'  Might better be described as a 'unit of meaning' or
something like that.  

In contrast to e.g. traditional thesauri, where the fundamental unit is
usually a 'term', and hence where the intended meaning of the unit and the
labels used to refer to it are confounded.

NB. I never use the word 'term' any more, because when somebody in this line
of work refers to a 'term' I've realised they usually have some idea of
meaning attached to it (which may be a specially redefined meaning known
only within a limited scope).  I.e. the meaning and the label have not been
separated.  Hence I deliberately avoid using the word 'term' anywhere in the
SKOS-Core 1.0 guide, but always use 'label' as a name for the character
strings or symbols that are used by people to refer to concepts.  

In my mind, 'term' = 'concept' + 'label'.

Al. 

P.s. if you think about this too much, you end up spiralling into
non-existence.

---
Alistair Miles
Research Associate
CCLRC - Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Building R1 Room 1.60
Fermi Avenue
Chilton
Didcot
Oxfordshire OX11 0QX
United Kingdom
Email:        a.j.miles@rl.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1235 445440



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Brickley [mailto:danbri@w3.org]
> Sent: 16 March 2004 12:57
> To: Miles, AJ (Alistair) 
> Cc: 'public-esw-thes@w3.org'
> Subject: Re: Coverage of SKOS-Core 1.0
> 
> 
> 
> * Miles, AJ (Alistair)  <A.J.Miles@rl.ac.uk> [2004-03-16 12:41-0000]
> > 
> > I believe SKOS-Core is suitable for encoding any type of KOS whose
> > fundamental unit may be modelled as a concept.
> 
> What is a concept?
> 
> Sorry, had to ask...
> 
> (might also ask what a fundamental unit is... what's the fundamental
> unit of RDF? terms? URIs? resources? classes? hard to tell...)
> 
> Dan
>

Received on Tuesday, 16 March 2004 08:26:59 UTC