Communicating Meaning
[American Philisophical Association] viaSeb’s Open Research: “Should (can?) philosophers, as a discipline, build a formal ontology of philosophical concepts to enhance searching, linking, and cross-referencing of philosophical content on the World Wide Web?”
Seems like a rather contrived question for such a symposium. Did anyone actually answer “no”?
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[Sjoerd Visscher] RDF is the only standard format that conveys meaning. That’s what is great about it, and the only thing that’s great about it. And your RDF is useless if it does not convey your meaning.
I like Sjoerd’s reasoning; and it’s interesting how he draws the distinction between “information management” and “knowledge management”. Information management (including relational modeling) is difficult for most people, which explains why DBAs are so entrenched in IT organizations’ power structures. I doubt that “knowledge engineers” will overthrow DBAs,but it’s easy to see that the role of DBA is evolving to place more emphasis on knowledge/meaning and not just information.
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Using the right words is important. When an Iraqi (or Al Qaeda) fighter dresses as a civilian and blows himself up to kill uniformed American soldiers, does that constitute “terrorism”? Only by the most liberal stretch of the language. When a former soldier starts shooting civilians with a sniper rifle, do we call that “military action”? Blech!
By the same token, is it acceptable to use “grasp enough” when “enough grasp” will do? In this case, the answer is yes. Especially when, as in my previous blog post, using “he doesn’t have grasp enough” with the same connotation as “he doesn’t have sense enough”. As one reader pointed out, my usage occurs only one time in all of the documents indexed by Google. Considering the innovative way that it subconsciously ties the connotations of “sense enough” with “enough grasp”, I’m surprised that nobody else uses such language. I really ought to file for a patent.