Re: Interoperability and Vagueness
On Thursday 13 January 2005 09:38, John F. Sowa wrote:
> We will never have a one-size fits all ontology for
> anything having to do with computer systems. Case closed.
Great to see such a strong statement of this taking central place in a
discussion on SUO. We must understand this or all the mistakes of the past
are wasted.
> After analyzing many examples of the way word senses vary according to
> context, Cruse (2000) concludes "there is no such thing as 'the meaning
> of a word' in isolation from particular contexts: decontextualization
> of meaning is variable, and in principle, always incomplete. In other
> words, lexical meanings are irreducibly complex.
Like this too. Language is the most compact representation for language.
Here's another guy saying the same thing:
http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/fulltext?format=application/pdf&identifier=oai%3AarXiv.org%3Acmp-lg%2F9712006
> I am similarly
> pessimistic about the possibility of representing meaning by prototypes:
> what would seem to be called for is an indefinitely large set of
> prototypes-within-prototypes."
What would prototypes-within-prototypes look like?
Of course I believe syntax points the way. We specify meaning more precisely
using syntax (by filtering and substituting its irreducible representation in
words according to associations, essentially.)
-Rob Freeman