Michele Pasin / Quotes

Ontological pluralism

Ludwig Wittgenstein's notion of language-games argues that there is no over-arching, single, fundamental ontology, but only a patchwork of overlapping interconnected ontologies ineluctably leading from one to another. For example, Wittgenstein discusses 'number' as technical vocabulary and in more general usage:

"“All right: the concept of 'number' is defined for you as the logical sum of these individual interrelated concepts: cardinal numbers, rational numbers, real numbers etc.;” ... — it need not be so. For I can give the concept 'number' rigid limits in this way, that is, use the word 'number' for a rigidly limited concept, but I can also use it so that the extension of the concept is not closed by a frontier. ...Can you give the boundary? No. You can draw one..."

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, excerpt from §68 in Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein suggests that it is not possible to identify a single concept underlying all versions of 'number', but that there are many interconnected meanings that transition one to another; vocabulary need not be restricted to technical meanings to be useful, and indeed technical meanings are 'exact' only within some proscribed context.

Saved 10 September 2013 / en.wikipedia.org ↗

#ontology #concept #number #notion #wittgenstein

Custard cannot be nailed to a wall

‘But is a blurred concept a concept at all?’ he imagined them objecting. ‘Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all?’ he answered. ‘Is it even…

The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) #vagueness #concept #wittgenstein

Description logic vs other formalisms

A Description Logic (DL) models concepts, roles and individuals, and their relationships.The fundamental modeling concept of a DL is the axiom - a logical…

Description Logic - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia #concept #terminology #community #notion

Wittgenstein on the concept of game

Ludwig Wittgenstein is another thinker who can help explain why exactitude is not always possible. He saw that many words and concepts do not have precise…

The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) #wittgenstein #game #definition #concept

Tf–idf with citations

The idea behind tf–idf also applies to entities other than terms. In 1998, the concept of idf was applied to citations.[9] The authors argued that "if a very…

Tf–idf - Wikipedia #terms #idea #number #concept #authors

Computational ontologies and knowledge bases

We take a computational ontology to be a directed acyclic graph where nodes represent concepts and the links between concepts represent the taxonomic “isa”…

From Encyclopedia To Ontology: Toward Dynamic Representation Of The Discipline Of Philosophy #computational-ontology #ontology #graph #nodes #concept

Contextual knowledge in the humanities

Humanities ontologies require dynamic concept formalizations instead of static ones, especially for contested, open-textured or ambiguous concepts. The…

Semantic Web For The Humanities #context #concept #ontology #definition