- From: Ryan Shaw <ryanshaw@ischool.berkeley.edu>
- Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:07:25 -0700
- To: Ansgar Scherp <scherp@uni-koblenz.de>
- Cc: public-lod@w3.org
Hello Ansgar, On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 1:19 AM, Ansgar Scherp<scherp@uni-koblenz.de> wrote: > It is quite interesting to see this very long thread on events. In the past time > we have studied many event models (see, e.g., the list Raphael Troncy sent around). > When studying them, I was very surprised that for many of them no foundational > literature was studied (philosophy, linguistics, cognitive sciences, etc.). > Rather, the models seem to be developed add hoc and remain in fact quite simple > for the always argued reason of "being generic". > > Libby Miller says, "events are difficult and complex things to model". And we > would like to stress that fact. Indeed, getting a fully comprehensive understanding > of what events are is very difficult and challenging. As such, a simple model > will hardly work. In particular, when interoperability between different systems > is needed. > > Thus, I am happy to announce that at this year's Knowledge Capturing conference > we will present the Event-Model-F that aims filling the gap of a comprehensive and > at the same time semantically precise event model. First, let me say that I like your F model very much, and in fact in our tech report we praise its use of the DnS pattern for supporting the modeling of higher-level interpretations of events. That said, I do not believe that it is the case that "a simple model will hardly work". Using a simple model does not mean that one has failed to recognize the complexity of how events are conceptualized. Rather it reflects a choice not to formally model that full complexity. Depending on what you are doing, the additional formalization may or may not be desirable. I also want to caution against the idea that we can extract from philosophy, linguistics, cog sci, etc. a single "comprehensive" model of events (or anything else, for that matter). The F model reflects one strand of thought from these fields, but there are many alternatives, as there is no consensus on the nature of events. In particular, F seems to have a scientistic bent that may not be appropriate for modeling, e.g. historical reasoning. Cheers, Ryan
Received on Friday, 31 July 2009 23:08:05 UTC