SUO: Re: Starter KB V2 Question #8
David Whitten wrote:
>
> Adam Pease suggested:
> > One style comment I might make is that I'd prefer an
> > InterCaps style for names but that's purely personal
> > preference. We should get the consensus of the group.
> >
> John A. Thompson stated:
> > By the way, I prefer hyphens between the words of our terms,
> > instead of these internal capitals that Cyc uses, so that
> > spell checkers can deal with them, and word wrapping
> > would go more smoothly.
>
> John Sowa said
> > It is important to adopt some standard convention
> > and enforce it consistently.
>
> Mike Uschold suggested:
> > 1. Use capital letters to highlight terms proposed
> > as technical terms being for the SUO.
> >
> > 4. Err on the side of using long descriptive names
>
> I've sent this message to the group to allow for a thread of discussion.
> I'm willing to modify my document to any naming convention we agree to.
>
> Since we have the NAME-OF relation, we could just use non descriptive names
> like RELATION-015 and have the NAME-OF relation provide both an InterCaps
> style and a hyphen style name for the terms. Or we could have an "approved"
> name in each style.
>
> My preference is that whatever names we use DO NOT have text name as any
> other readily available ontology. I suspect that if we use the same names
> as is used elsewhere that there will be an assumption that the semantics
> is the same. Unless we have a complete logical definition in our system
> that matches that of the other ontology, we are asking for confusion.
>
> David (whitten@lynx.eaze.net) (713) 791-1414 ext 6116
¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤
David et al.,
I believe that there are deep theoretical reasons
why an irreducible level of ambiguity must remain
in any non-trivial language and that all attempts
to stamp it out by eliminating the connotative or
semiotic dimension and reducing the denotative or
semantic relation to an injective (1-1) function
are bound to end in triviality. I almost despair
of getting this across without an extended study
of pragmatic semiotics. I can only point to the
analogy with another domain where it was thought
that all uncertainty could be reduced to zero,
and how they came to discover that it cannot.
Other than that I can only try to tell people that
they are restricting their grasp of sign relations
to those that fall within Aristotle's Approximation.
I know that it always seems like if we just focus on
the objects and the concepts themselves then it will
turn out that everybody will be able to agree, but no
sooner do we actually begin to do this than we start to
discover just how different people's thinking really is,
an unpleasant fact from which the mind naturally recoils,
and so we resort to the next best thing, or so it seems,
of trying to force everybody to speak and write the same.
There's this funny thing about the unbalanced way that we try to
carry on our inquiries into natural phenomena versus human conduct:
In our dialogue with Nature we usually recognize, most of the time,
that if we propose an approximate law that happens to be inadequate
that Nature will have no compulsion to obey it, nor have any kind
of compunction against disposing of those who follow it, but when
our simplistic descriptions of a complex and subtle human reality
begin to fail, we often resort to the tactic of trying to impose
them on the subject matter, ourselves and others, all without
stopping to ask why things may be as they are or how much we
will impoverish our existence by failing to account for its
actual richness.
My own work and experience have taught me that there is
no alternative to depending on intelligent interpreters
to resolve -- fallibly, inexactly, non-deterministically --
the ambiguities that they need to resolve in order to act,
and that all of these attempts to reduce pragmatics, that is,
semantics plus semiotics, to syntax, which is what this sort
of project is really all about, the desire to arrange some
purely syntactic scheme of epicycles on the referent that
will suffice to determine, and thus render redundant, for
all practical purposee, the other dimensions of meaning.
Jon Awbrey
¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤