- From: Jonathan Borden <jonathan@openhealth.org>
- Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 14:22:53 -0500
- To: Jim Hendler <hendler@cs.umd.edu>
- Cc: Drew McDermott <drew.mcdermott@yale.edu>, www-rdf-logic@w3.org
Jim Hendler wrote: > > Ontology 1: > beginTime(human) = conception. > necessarilybefore(conception, birth). > > Ontology 2: > beginTime(human) = birth. > necessarilybefore(conception, birth). Aren't these simply two different definitions of something? You *could* try to equate them, but wouldn't that simply be a contradiction? > or, perhaps > > KidsOntology > IsReal(Santa). > > AdultOntology > IsConceptual(Santa) > IsReal disjoint IsConceptual. I guess that real people (as opposed to conceptual people) are just terrific at dealing with all sorts of incosistencies in the world (real+conceptual). Most real people don't know how to deal with mathematical logic, so, for them, this is no problem :-) > > Or, go back to the one I use in many of my talks -- there exists (or > used to exist) a web page claiming the number of cows in texas was > zero because they had been replaced with alien entities. There are > other pages which claim the number is in the 100s of millions. Both > agree with some partial axiomization of what a cow is, but surely any > naive merging of these would be inconsistent > Again, isn't this simply a contradiction? I say the cows in texas are real, and you say they are aliens -- we are using the term "cows in texas" to speak about entirely different "things", so to get this back to the "business entity" and "transactions discussion", suppose you purchase a (live) texas cow, to be delivered by Fedex, and it arrives -- are you pissed that it isn't an alien? Can you sue? Do ontologies have anything to help us here ... most courts would be perfectly amused by such a suit without any need for formal logic to assist :-) Jonathan
Received on Friday, 2 January 2004 14:26:35 UTC