Re: SUO: On the supreme supertype -- RE: RE: RE: RE: On the relevance of EXPRESS, EPISTLE, etc. to SUO
At 20-02-01 06:40 -0500, Philip Jackson wrote:
>Dear Matthew,
>
> > > > > > MW: In EPISTLE we modestly claim that the EPISTLE Core Model can
> > > > > > represent "life the universe and everything" (well almost).
> > > > >
> > > > > PJ: OK, how about the phrase "life, the universe and everything"
> > > > > as another
> > > > > "challenge concept"? How would you represent this in EPISTLE?
> > > >
> > > > MW: Well I guess the simple answer is "thing" our supreme
> > > > supertype. That of
> > > > course is the set of all things, which includes classes and
> > > > relations and so
> > > > on.
> > >
> > > PJ: OK, I'll accept this answer for "everything" :-)
>
>On further thought, I'd like to suggest a different possible name for the
>supreme supertype, other than "thing" or "entity" which seem to be
>traditional...
>
>Perhaps a better word for the supreme supertype could be "referent", meaning
>that which can be referenced.
>
>I'm thinking along the following lines: Whatever cannot be referenced cannot
>be described and hence cannot be categorized or placed in an ontology. Of
>that which cannot be referenced, we must be silent...
>
>This is just a thought-- I am not dogmatic about it, and don't see it as a
>major issue if people continue using "thing" or "entity" as the supreme
>supertype. I'd be interested in people's responses pro or con.
### For what it's worth: a problem in our quest for meaning, is that all
terms from "normal" English unfortunately :-) come burdened with meaning.
Any experienced methodologist must have come across this problem, and at
the risk of stating the trivial to many of you, the most productive
solution in my opinion always was to invent a new term and to load one's
own meaning onto it (by defining formal properties, usage, constraints,
...). Isn't that what we as ontologists, foremost and almost by definition,
are supposed to do?
### For ORM/NIAM (remember, LOTs and NOLOTs a while back?) we coined the
term "pater familias", often abbreviated to "PAF" for that little extra
distance to spurious interpretation --some people think in Latin it
seems--, for the Object/Thing/Entity/
Referent/Supreme_supertype/Whatever... It is of course the same as what
e.g. John Sowa denotes with a "T"-like symbol in his book, but PAF is less
ascii-challenged. As a matter of fact, a simple "T" would *also* do fine as
long as nobody thinks it stands for universal
truth or so :-)
--Robert Meersman
>Regards,
>
>Phil
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----------
Prof Dr Robert A Meersman VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Department of Computer Science STARlab --Building F-G/10
Pleinlaan 2 B-1050 Brussels Belgium
phn (+32)(0)2 629 3308 fax (+32)(0)2 629 3525