RE: SUO: RE: RE: Re: Missing Ingredients
Murray wrote:
> My understanding of individuals, based on reading Sowa's books, a
> number of KR-related papers, etc., and upon the Cyc and ISO 15926
> ontologies (IOW, there is no definitive answer, just ontological
> commitments -- you choose among the field), is that an "individual"
> can be thought of either as a class to which all individuals are
> members, or as a specific individual, i.e., an instance. The
> definitions in ISO 15926 are quite complex as regards this particular
> aspect of representation, way more complex than I myself need. I'd
> recommend browsing the links I provided for ISO 15926 and Cyc in
> this regard, as all I'd do is probably quote from them. [Oops!
> I just realized my response was on the CG list:
I believe that the distinction between "individual" and "instance" in ISO
15926 is that an individual is an individuated thing that has existence as
opposed to a class or relation whereas an instance is something that is a
member of a class. An individual may also be an instance (indeed in the
general case an instance of a number of classes), an instance need not be an
individual - it may be a class.
Regards
Chris Angus