- From: Stella Dextre Clarke <sdclarke@lukehouse.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 10:23:11 +0100
- To: "'Leonard Will'" <L.Will@willpowerinfo.co.uk>, <public-esw-thes@w3.org>
- Cc: "'Dan Brickley'" <danbri@w3.org>
I am grateful for the helpful notes from Dan, Chaals and Leonard on this matter. I think what triggered an alarm bell in my head was the original explanation, "skos:definition 'The real world thing that this concept is an abstraction of.' " It is the effort to convey the "real thing" that worries me. We can do it many different ways - using a term to represent it; using a code or alias; providing a definition or a scope note; showing relationships to other things/terms/concepts; pointing to examples of the thing. In the end they are all limited by the constraints of the electronic medium and our own mental capabilities. In the case of things, it is an illusion to imagine that we have it if it is not in the same physical space as ourselves. In the case of concepts, it is an illusion to imagine a concept exists anywhere except in our individual heads. "Shared concepts" can often turn out to be based on misunderstanding or on wishful thinking, or just subtle variations on what we imagine we are communicating about. As a pragmatist, I am the first to admit that it is often useful to maintain the illusion. ( Newton may not have got it as right as Einstein, but we can still build things that work with Newtonian mechanics.) But I still have this nagging worry that we need to build in an allowance for matters not being as precisely defined as we might wish - the systems built on these constructs will work most of the time, but they can be fallible. The expectations of what ontologies will deliver for the Semantic Web often worry me where they assume the network of machine/systems will get it right without any checking of assumptions made along the way. As I've said before, the thesaurus model does assume that a human being will be keeping an eye on things and applying common sense where necessary, and I suppose that is what I have grown accustomed to. But don't let me stop you building those things that work! Stella ***************************************************** Stella Dextre Clarke Information Consultant Luke House, West Hendred, Wantage, Oxon, OX12 8RR, UK Tel: 01235-833-298 Fax: 01235-863-298 SDClarke@LukeHouse.demon.co.uk ***************************************************** --
Received on Thursday, 30 September 2004 09:23:26 UTC