Re: Roles and types (yet again)

Hello Steve,

On 4 Nov 2010, at 17:48, "Steve Pepper" <[email protected]> wrote:

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> * Lars Heuer
> |
> | Hi Steve,
> | 
> | > | Is Joe Cocker an instance of "plumber", "composer", or "musician"? In
> | > | a better model these instance of statements would be modelled as
> | > | associations where the mentioned topics would i.e. play the role
> | > | "occupation".
> | 
> | > And just what would the associations be in this case, as a matter of
> | > interest?
> | 
> | I.e.
> |     has-occupation(person: joe-cocker, occupation: plumper)
> |     has-occupation(person: joe-cocker, occupation: composer)
> |     has-occupation(person: joe-cocker, day-job: musician)
> 
> OK. I could accept that. Other proposals I've seen would have me specify one or more
> "composed by" associations in order to express that someone was a "composer". I
> don't accept that.

Yes, that was more-or-less our initial approach (as we considered that's what being a "composer" meant), but we now use the more pragmatic blend of approaches outlined in an earlier post that may not have reached the mailing-list:
<<
... in the musicDNA ontology we differentiate between "is a" and "as a" [informal English usage] but use the same topics both as topic types and role types, e.g. composer, John Cage is a composer, John Cage notates 4'33"* as a composer.  These topics are part of a thesaurus which - the plan is - the community will build and moderate.  We think you can then talk about both kinds of instances, as well as the overlap between them (compare J.S.Bach with Anthony Burgess, for instance).
...
*4'33" is the name of a musical work of some notoriety.  It would also be the value of its "composer-specified duration" occurrence. 
>>

Antony
http://www.musicdna.info


> 
> But even though your solution is acceptable, I think it's wrong to always insist on
> drawing a sharp distinction between role type and topic type. The categories of
> human knowledge are better expressed using a prototype model than a
> criterial-attribute (or "Aristotelian") model. In such a model, roles and types are
> not sharply differentiated, but rather exist on a continuum. Thus, to categorize Joe
> Cocker as a plumber makes less sense than categorizing him as a singer; categorizing
> him only as a person is not very interesting at all.
> 
> Steve
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