- From: John Graybeal <jbgraybeal@mindspring.com>
- Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2009 12:19:31 -0800
- To: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Cc: Leonard Will <L.Will@willpowerinfo.co.uk>, Alexandre Passant <alexandre.passant@deri.org>, Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>, SKOS <public-esw-thes@w3.org>
On Nov 5, 2009, at 1152, Pat Hayes wrote: > There seems to be a problem in the very heart of the SKOS design. Is > it talking about things, or about concepts of things? Y'all really > need to get this straight before proceeding. Let me use this as a way to propose an answer to the question, and get a bigger answer to a related point that's been bothering me. Let's say SKOS is talking about names for things. This is once removed from the things, obviously -- "Mrs Obama" is a name for the person, not the person herself -- but not the concept. And "person" is a name for the type of thing of which "Mrs Obama" is a name for an instance. (There is a metaphysical discussion about the correspondence between a 'name' and a 'concept', but I'd like to avoid it, as I don't think it's central to your question.) So now I have said I have a name of a type of thing, and the name is "person". Can I say anything semantically that connects this name, in a constructive and semantically-friendly and Pat Hayes-agreeable way, to the semantic web resource that represents the concept of a human being? (Pick your favorite semantic web resource for representing that concept, OK?) In other words, what is the correct way to connect the semantic web to all of these thesaurus and dictionary entities? (Which I am here calling 'names', but elsewhere are called 'terms' and other things, to the resource in the semantic web that you've picked above (which for many people is associated with a 'concept', but I am avoiding that term, hoping that 'resource in the semantic web' is clearer).) I infer that you would like to say they are not concepts, which is fine, but then can we all agree on a paradigm for making the connection? John John Graybeal <mailto:jgraybeal@ucsd.edu> Ocean Observatories Initiative Cyberinfrastructure Project: http://ci.oceanobservatories.org Marine Metadata Interoperability Project: http://marinemetadata.org
Received on Friday, 6 November 2009 01:49:10 UTC