Re: REQDOC: ontologies as resources

From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
Subject: Re: REQDOC: ontologies as resources
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 01:46:32 -0500

> >From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
> >Subject: Re: REQDOC: ontologies as resources
> >Date: 14 Feb 2002 15:20:32 -0600
> >
> >>  On Thu, 2002-02-14 at 12:43, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
> >>  > In a message expressing my concerns with the requirements document, I
> >>  > argued that it is premature to require that ontologies be resources, at
> >>  > least if by resource, we mean an RDF resource, i.e., elements of 
> >>the domain
> >>  > of discourse that can be used just like any other element of the domain of
> >>  > discourse.
> >>
> >>  Hmm... it seems to me:
> >>
> >>    1. Ontologies are documents
> >>    2. documents are in the domain of discourse
> >>	e.g. we can use the dublin core title
> >>	property ala
> >>	<http://www.w3.org/> dc:title "W3C".
> >>  hence
> >>
> >>    3. Ontologies are in the domain of discourse
> >>
> >>  I'm interested to know which part of that argument you'd disagree with.
> >
> >I would, instead say that
> >
> >    1. Ontologies can be encoded as documents (or collections of documents).
> >    2. Documents are in the domain of discourse.
> 
> OK, the way to resolve this is to define 'ontology'. Like Dan, I was 
> assuming that the use of 'ontology' in this thread was intended to 
> mean that an ontology was a document. So let's say that ontology 
> *documents* can be in the domain of discourse, would that be OK with 
> you?
> 
> Pat

Sure, but what does that mean?  If documents are in the domain of
discourse, then ontology documents are also in the domain of discourse, but
as documents, not ontologies.  A document is a sequence of Unicode
characters, an ontology is something quite different.

peter

Received on Friday, 15 February 2002 10:40:35 UTC