Re: On the definition of "ontology"
vet@cs.utwente.nl (Paul van der Vet)
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 14:30:16 +0100
From: vet@cs.utwente.nl (Paul van der Vet)
Message-id: <199510041330.OAA07670@ethanol.cs.utwente.nl>
To: guarino@ladseb.pd.cnr.it, srkb@cs.umbc.edu
Subject: Re: On the definition of "ontology"
Cc: piet-hein.speel@2488taux.urlnl.sprint.com
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Nicola Guarino writes:
> I would now propose YET ANOTHER definition of an ontology, slightly
> different (in the form, but not in the content) from that discussed in the
> paper "Ontologies and Knowledge Bases: Towards a Terminological
> Clarification", accessible on the web site reported below:
>
> "An ontology is a specification of the indended models of a logical language".
I'm somewhat surprised by the plural - when you develop a
knowledge-based system you'll have one intended model in mind.
As for an elaboration of the point of view proposed by Nicola, see the
recent Ph.D. thesis by Piet-Hein Speel, "Selecting knowledge
representation systems". Piet-Hein compares a number of systems based
on description logic on a couple of criteria, using a particular
ontology as specification of what these knowledge representation
systems had to represent.
The thesis (gzipped PostScript-version, 444 KB) can be obtained at URL:
http://wwwis.cs.utwente.nl:8080/kbs/pubpage.html
Paul.
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