Sincerely,

Rich Cooper

EnglishLogicKernel.com

Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com

John Bottoms wrote:

JB> My understanding of categories consists of the following:

(domain == professional discipline or context across time

or across a number of contributors)

RC> If this is a continuation of the Semantic Systems thread (?), then some of the emails we have been seeing about "Measures" might be relevant to distinguishing individuals from groups. If we need a Property (Measure), we need to collect specimen individuals using that Measure before we can categorize the individuals or the group in any way.

But it still seems necessary to have a "window function" ("membership predicate?") that will distinguish A from Not A specimens based on the Value of the measured Property, thus creating the first Category - A.

Every Category requires a Predicate, so that must be next.

After that, I concede that Conjunction be canonized into the ontogeny.

JB>

1. Quantification of an environment can be accomplished

using categories.

2. The domain is determined by a boundary and the ideal

quantification process divides the domain efficiently.

3. The metric for the effectiveness quantification is the

coverage of the domain. However, this may also

include metrics that include more functionally useful

components such as means.

My question is related to the effective coverage and is, in

part, derived from the criticism of the DIKW (or any other

pyramid) of the abstractions of knowledge.

Q: "Should it be possible to replace the existing approach to

categories with an approach that extracts measured concepts

from meanings and then performs cluster analysis on those

concepts"?

RC> Yes. For one example, see:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7209923.PN.&OS=PN/7209923&RS=PN/7209923

JB> Rational:

a.) One of the weakness of the category concept is that they

are designed for coverage fo a domain for which the boundary

may be poorly ascribed or poorly understood. e.g. we have

seen redefinition of "I.Q" to include spatial and musical

components.

b.) Next, domain boundaries change across time and new categories

may need to be added; for those changes the new entities must

be vetted. This could be done using cluster analysis.

c.) Finally, the redefinition of the process for determining

categories could be automated and because the process relies

on a set of meanings rather than a set of categories, it is

easier to perform vetting on the meanings.

RC> John that last point isn't clear to me at all, but all the preceding sounds like a great start on reviewing identification and categorization processes.

-John Bottoms

FirstStar

Concord, MA

T: 978-505-9878