Hi Ed,

Sounds like we agree (well, you make sense to me, even if I don't to you),
it's just my understanding of "ontology" and "semantics" differs from yours.

My "ontology" is my model of the world, and I don't care how it's
represented so long as I know how the symbols in the representation map onto
the things in my ontology (those are things whose extent is identified).

It
is essential that the representation is computer interpretable, as
interoperability is the goal of IDEAS - still doesn't rule out barcoded body
parts, you'll note.

I still can't see RDFS and RDF as anything other than syntax (sorry, we
might have to disagree on this)

. However, as long as I document how that
syntax maps to the concepts in the ontology, it's OK with me.

Also, you wrote:

"I think Barry's point is that your IDEAS RDF language is so massively
extended and possibly so weakly defined with respect to interpretation
semantics that no one, including you, has any idea what kind of reasoning
engine could actually process it in a non-trivial way."

I don't think Barry Smith has looked at IDEAS. My point was about his
critique of ISO15926 (http://ontology.buffalo.edu/bfo/west.pdf). If you can
use something as arcane as EXPRESS (and Part 21/28) to model your ontology,
then bending RDFS to represent an extensional ontology really ought to be
kosher ! I agree though, that you have to be crystal clear about how the
RDFS elements map to the ontology.

Another clarification is probably needed. I only mentioned reasoning because
projecting to a 1st order representation is one useful work-around for
making a higher order ontology tractable.

The world is higher order, so we
decided to make the IDEAS ontology higher order. If the level five wizards
want to roll their 36-sided dice of inference, then I see no reason (groan)
to spoil their fun.