- From: Peter Crowther <Peter.Crowther@melandra.com>
- Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2001 15:19:13 -0000
- To: "'pat hayes'" <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
- Cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org, www-rdf-logic@w3.org
[New member alert! I've tried to catch up via the archives, but please tell me (privately) if I cover old ground] > From: pat hayes [mailto:phayes@ai.uwf.edu] > Sent: 02 February 2001 20:05 [...] > For the SUO there is a deeper reason, however. "Signs", in your > terminology, refers to a topic in semiology. But - and please forgive > me for emphasising this point, but it deserves a little emphasis - > ONTOLOGY IS NOT A SEMIOLOGICAL TOPIC. That is, 'ontology' refers to > what there IS, not to how people talk about it. It is, right at its > very heart, fundamentally, about the world, not about signs; and > still less about human *use* of signs. Quite. Some systems using ontologies (for example, the GALEN project at University of Manchester*) make this distinction explicit. In such systems, one component reasons about the ontology and a different component translates queries and results between the internal representation and one or many systems of signs**. This allows eg. multilingual querying and results. I'd argue that a system is incomplete if it does not provide a many-to-one mapping between signs and objects within the ontology, but that's a contentious view :-). To me, a language for exchanging ontologies is just another system of signs. - Peter *I've no doubt there are better examples, but I used to work on GALEN so that's the one I know. ** I'm a programmer who's interested in using ontologies in practical systems. I have comparatively little logical or philosophical background; is this the correct term? If not, what is? -- Peter Crowther, Melandra Limited
Received on Saturday, 3 February 2001 10:19:16 UTC