- From: Ian Horrocks <horrocks@cs.man.ac.uk>
- Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 14:31:37 +0000
- To: Guus Schreiber <schreiber@swi.psy.uva.nl>
- Cc: Jeff Heflin <heflin@cse.lehigh.edu>, www-webont-wg@w3.org
On February 28, Guus Schreiber writes: > Jef Heflin wrote: > > Ian Horrocks wrote: > > > > > > Here are some comments on the revised text. > > > > > > 0. The term "definition" is often used to refer to statements in an > > > ontology, e.g., in 3.1 "to provide additional definitions", in > > > 5.Commitment to ontologies "which set of definitions", 5. Class > > > definition primitives, etc. Are we suggesting that all statements in > > > an ontology are "definitions". What about statements of the form > > > sameClassAs C1 C2, where neither C1 nor C2 is a class name? I think > > > that each use of "definition" should be examined and, in most cases, > > > changed to something more neutral such as "axiom" or "statement". > > > > I can understand your objection to word "definition." I think > > "statement" would be too vague. "Axiom" is a possibility, but I fear > > that there might be a number of readers who don't have the background in > > logic to understand what we mean here. Can someone suggest a better > > term? > > I have struggled with this before. "Definition" seems to be natural term > for people to use, but in KR/DL it has a specific meaning, which covers > only a subset. The only solution I have come up with is to use the term > "definition" in the introduction, but including a note that states > explictly the intended sloppy meaning of the term. The trouble with that is that there can also be axioms in the ontology that don't correspond in any way to a "definition", e.g., disjointness axioms, complex class inclusions. How about some form of words like "asserted fact"? Ian > > Guus > > -- > A. Th. Schreiber, SWI, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 15 > NL-1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Tel: +31 20 525 6793 > Fax: +31 20 525 6896; E-mail: schreiber@swi.psy.uva.nl > WWW: http://www.swi.psy.uva.nl/usr/Schreiber/home.html
Received on Thursday, 28 February 2002 09:32:47 UTC