Hi Eric, The idea is to separate in those edge cases the perceptual model (what is recognized) from the name given to it. As such you can consider "ethanol" and "chemical compound" metaclasses (names) pointing to a label-less class that represents the model.
In practical terms what it would entail is: - remove the labels from Q153 - create one item for the label "ethanol" and one item for the label "chemical compound" - link Q153 with those names using "has name" - "ethanol" is no longer an instance, but a class that can take different names, "ethanol" being more specific Do you realize that after this "scrap everything and start again from the beginning" the resulting structure is more comprehensive and encompasses previous efforts? "Entity" stays as it is, but now it can be examined by its qualities and they can be taken apart if needed. The term "cognizable" is 1:1 compatible with the subclass/instance model, but it emphasizes the necessity of having an observer for it to be meaningful. Classes do not exist in isolation, it is in fact very naive to keep the notion of objectivity when dealing with observation. Even logic needs a system to be executed, and based on which reality models? How were they produced? And how are those models and the models based on them verified? The problem with logicians is that they think themselves isolated from the world, however even they were born from a womb. And have you seen who introduced the term "negentropy"? If you check the names behind it you will see that those ideas are in fact standing on the shoulders of giants. It is hard to model life without understanding first that life itself is survival-oriented. Those papers are interesting but fail to address basic questions like: who decides identity? How does the observer interact with it? Where does information come from? And without tackling those questions, and by extension, emergent processes, logic seems like a deux ex machina that appears from nothingness and acts in nothingness. Best, Micru On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 6:49 PM, Emw <emw.w...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi David, > > How does your treatise relate to the fact that > https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q153 has statements that entail the > following? [1] > > ethanol > *instance of* chemical compound > *subclass of* chemical compound > > How would it resolve that specific problem? > > Such statements make Wikidata incompatible with ChEBI and other major > ontologies, like Gene Ontology and Disease Ontology, which use *instance > of* (i.e. rdf:type, P31) and *subclass of* (i.e. rdfs:subClassOf, P279, > is_a) as recommended in the Relation Ontology (RO) [2] and the Basic Formal > Ontology (BFO). > > For Wikidata to be interoperable with other major ontologies in the > Semantic Web, we cannot "scrap everything and start again from the > beginning". We must stand on the shoulders of giants. Doing away with > "entity" [3] as a the top of the *subclass of* hierarchy and introducing > a raft of idiosyncratic ontological constructs like "identifiables", > "cognizables", "negentropy" and "system survival-oriented direction" to > Wikidata is probably not the way to go. > > Regarding your concerns about the ability of existing approaches to > represent emergent properties and natural language, I recommend perusing > [4], an influential paper that informs DOLCE and BFO -- particularly the > section on "The Role of Identity Criteria". I also highly recommend > lectures 3 and 1 in > http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/IntroOntology_Course.html for gaining a > perspective on how BFO maintainers think about things like distinguishing > objects and representations, and that upper ontology's philosophical > roots. Given your interest in phenomenology and Husserl, you may also be > interested in what BFO maintainers have written on those subjects in e.g. > [5] with regard to ontology. > > Best, > Eric > > [1] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q153 currently states "ethanol *subclass > of* alcohol", but given "alcohol *subclass of* organic compound" and > "organic compound *subclass of* chemical compound", it is entailed that > "ethanol *subclass of* chemical compound". > [2] Barry Smith et al. (2005). *Relations in Biomedical Ontologies*. > http://genomebiology.com/2005/6/5/r46 > [3] "Entity" item on Wikidata. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q35120. > Mapped to owl:Thing. > [4] Nicola Guarino (1998). *Some Ontological Principles for Designing > Upper Level Lexical Resources*. http://arxiv.org/pdf/cmp-lg/9809002v1 > [5] Barry Smith (1989). *Husserl: Logic and Formal Ontology*. > http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/lfo.html > -- Etiamsi omnes, ego non
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