Communications on a
National Project
Paul:
I cannot imagine that there is anyone involved with ontology efforts, let alone any attempt to integrate theory representation without legislating (standardizing) concept meanings.
The only question is what
discrimination features will be used initially to bracket category
granularity. Thereafter concept definitions will be defined much as Webster
defined words, but without allowing 10-25 different meanings. Hereafter we will
go to the ontology reference much as we went before to Webster.
Go to your technical bookstore and
buy a copy of the medical coding books. No one in medicine is likely to get
paid unless his or her codes are right. Same is true of selling merchandise to
Nordstrom. Medical coding (e.g. ICD and CPT) announces code changes from time
to time. I do not know how many changes are from redefinition or from changes
in outcome studies.
Paul you talked of these codes
appearing soon within new laws, in the Senate, I think. All our work on the
Gulf war illness was built around the Army Science Board studies employing
medical codes.
Every legal document I have starts
with DEFINITIONS assumed within the document and assigns an unambiguous
identifier to be used thereafter.
Who in this group assumes there
will be any progress in ontology development for purposes of search or
integration without one or more standards. And why else do we have bars of
metal stored at fixed temperature in Paris, or physicists counting maxima and
minima for sodium yellow interference patterns -- there are good reasons we do
not use human cubits anymore, even though everyone is walking around owning
their own personal version.
Did we give up our sensitivity for
things human by switching to sodium or other elemental wave lengths. Oh, the
humanity!
Mills cites our estimates of how
many ontological categories will be needed in the next few years, does anyone
imagine these numbers will make the reference problem impossible.
I agree with John there is nothing
here that has anything to do with syntax?
Dick