Conceptual Spaces: The Geometry of Thought
Conceptual Spaces: The Geometry of Thought
| Hi-index | 0.00 |
The vision of the Semantic Web is to provide machine-processable meaning for intelligent applications. Whilst knowledge representation structures like ontologies now have well-developed formalisms, the issue of determining or specifying exactly what it is that they represent is still not well-understood. However, it is crucial for validation, merging and alignment, as we cannot possibly hope to judge the accuracy or applicability of a representation structure without a clear specification of what it is intended to represent. This being the case, we must either accept that our representations will have a limited applicability and lifespan, or develop methods by which we can define our terms in a robust and standardized way. Building on philosopher Richard Robinson's analysis, it is argued that 'definition' is in fact the isolation of territories within conceptual landscapes, using the four mechanisms: example, semantic relation, analysis, and rule. These mechanisms are related to cognitive processes like abstraction and categorization. We speculate that there is a common semantic ground which forms the initial basis for symbol grounding, and is then extended through cognitive mechanisms. Some starting points for identifying common semantic ground and points of divergence from it are suggested.