Online Ontological Operations

[swestrup]

Just making a few notes to myself (in relation to my earlier post) where I can find them again later (and the examples are illustrative only).

Within an Ontology isn't too bad:

• Distinguishing: Virus (computer) vs Virus (biology)
• Unification: Flapjacks are Pancakes.
• Classification: Crepes and Pancakes are Griddlecakes.
• Reclassification: Bats are not bugs!
• New Relationship: Smells like.

Its when there are competing ontological systems hosted on the same site and sharing entries that my brain starts to hurt. Clearly this is a bad day for me to think about this stuff.

Comments

[sps.livejournal.com]

Distinction: Ducks are a kind of TreacleProduct.

Disagreement: No they aren't.
That's different from reclassification, which is 'Bats are Lizards, rather than Bugs'.

Subclassifies like: places where Bats are found subclassifies like places where Flapjacks are made. Or (if less task-focussed), Bats are found in Places (see Places).

Commutation: anything(?) at a Time and Place is that same thing at a Place and Time.

Politicisation (taxonomy): user group 'fundies' want Whales to be Fish.

Politicisation (vocabulary): user group 'KKK' want PersonsOfAfricanDescent to be called - well, you get the idea.

The user groups get stored in a taxonomy, of course ;).

Actually, maybe the user group concept is not quite right; maybe there's a question of the purpose of the taxonomy, and taxonomy-for-purposes-of-molecular-biology is a bit different frmo taxonomy-for-purposes-of-racial-hatred.