Understanding Ontology: Clarifying Its Meaning for Conceptual Models

·May 25, 2021 09:53 PM

Ontology not a bad word, just unfamiliar. Its not like cybernetics, it just doesnt mean anything to a lot of people, even those who build conceptual models of all kinds.

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Book Club Ontology

Understanding Ontology: Clarifying Its Meaning for Conceptual Models

Robert M.

·May 25, 2021 09:53 PM

Ontology not a bad word, just unfamiliar. Its not like cybernetics, it just doesnt mean anything to a lot of people, even those who build conceptual models of all kinds.

1 comment

· Sorted by Oldest

Robert R.
·
Right. We can take that lack of familiarity and introduce some meaning: if we're producing some document, course, etc, then we simply state our intended sense of the word, or assert a more precisely qualified phrase that matches our intended meaning. Without explicitly defining terms in a formal context (e.g., a document), we will face the fact that the more generic the word, the more open to interpretation and variability of senses it will engender by readers. That is not only common to language, but to highly generic words (e.g. broad category terms). Likewise for 'conceptual model'.

Robert R.
·
Right. We can take that lack of familiarity and introduce some meaning: if we're producing some document, course, etc, then we simply state our intended sense of the word, or assert a more precisely qualified phrase that matches our intended meaning. Without explicitly defining terms in a formal context (e.g., a document), we will face the fact that the more generic the word, the more open to interpretation and variability of senses it will engender by readers. That is not only common to language, but to highly generic words (e.g. broad category terms). Likewise for 'conceptual model'.