RE: An intuition pump

I really liked the "Strict Tim" approach for its simplicity, but have slowly
been changing to a more social approach. Let me throw out a few ideas and
wait for comments. I think I see parts of what I am thinking in both sides
of the debate, but let's see.


It seems that it would be useful to embrace the concept of vocabulary
(ontology) as "definition by usage". Nothing very revolutionary here, just
following what we do in everyday life. In everyday assertions, disputes will
often be settled by referring to a dictionary, generally any commonly
recognized dictionary such as Webster's or Oxford (assuming all
conversations are in English here). The point is, the publisher of the
dictionary doesn't "own" the words and definitions, but rather reports on
commonly accepted usage. Wouldn't it would be beneficial to allow
definitions of names (URIs) to evolve in a similar manner? Sort of a genetic
approach? I realize this brings up issues  such as "who is the keeper of the
URI http://www.common-usage-dictionary.org" (there doesn't have to be just
one) and the versioning issue as usage evolves, but let's save that for
another thread.

Secondly, it is very useful to have special meanings in various disciplines.
I think that this is much more easily solved, and to some extent is already
being done - Dublin Core. Perhaps in some areas there could exist
specialized ontologies a la "technical dictionaries"
http://www.math-logic.org , but even in their absence one could reference
definitions from another ontology. This is what is done in technical
writings all the time, as in the LBase doc which references Enderton's book
on logic regarding a definition of first-order logic. Nothing prevents me
from writing a paper on logic stating that first-order logic is really
second-order logic, while citing Enderton's definition, but why would anyone
do this. What use would there be to have a spec which prevents this?

Eagerly awaiting rebuttal,

James Lynn

Received on Tuesday, 23 September 2003 20:08:29 UTC