Re: [biont] Nice wikipedia page on ontology

>>>>> "Alan" == Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com> writes:

  Phil> Yeah, Robert has my main beef which is the distinction
  >> between the representation language and the representation
  >> itself.

  Alan> Yup. Though there is too often a confusion between the
  Alan> ontology and the representation. In some ways I think that it
  Alan> is unfortunate that OWL has "Ontology" in it's name. 

OWL is just following on from common practise. The use of "ontology"
by computer science has added to it's original philosophical
meaning, which has also resulted in confusion. I tend to use
ontologies as computational artifacts, which is by bias. 

I don't think that there is much that can be done about this now. The
(many) uses of the term have got a bit fixed. 


  Phil> The use of "algorithms" is clearly wrong and I don't think
  >> that an upper ontology provides consistency checks, nor that an
  >> ontology needs one to be formal.

  Alan> Algorithm's not a good word.

Algorithm has a reasonably tightly defined meaning -- actually
wikipedia covers it well. I think that the article just uses it
wrong. 

Still, it's been replaced with "axioms" now. The article struggles
towards generating a common understanding. 

Phil

Received on Thursday, 25 January 2007 10:26:08 UTC