Meaning Holism and Indeterminacy of Reference in Ontologies (Extended Abstract)
Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Sister Conferences Best Papers. Pages 10864-10868.
https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2025/1206
Keywords
- Sister Conferences Best Papers: Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
- Sister Conferences Best Papers: Multidisciplinary Topics and Applications
Abstract
According to meaning holism, the meanings of all the words in a language are interdependent. If this was true, then the very practice of building largely interconnected set of ontologies would be threatened. We examine here the extent of the severity of meaning holism for ontology engineering, based on a definition of the meaning of a class term in an ontology, with regard to the classical analytic/synthetic distinction. We show that meaning holism is not as pervasive in ontologies as traditionally assumed in philosophy of language when interpreting the meaning of a class term as a collection of statements expressing necessary conditions on this term. Still, meaning holism presents substantial challenges for ontology engineering and requires mitigation strategies. We also investigate the related phenomenon of indeterminacy of reference and show how anchoring formal ontologies in natural language can mitigate this problem, even if not fully control it.
@inproceedings{ijcai2025p1206,
title = {Meaning Holism and Indeterminacy of Reference in Ontologies (Extended Abstract)},
author = {Barton, Adrien and Fabry, Paul and Ethier, Jean-François},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on
Artificial Intelligence, {IJCAI-25}},
publisher = {International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization},
editor = {James Kwok},
pages = {10864--10868},
year = {2025},
month = {8},
note = {Sister Conferences Best Papers},
doi = {10.24963/ijcai.2025/1206},
url = {https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2025/1206},
}
TY - CPAPER TI - Meaning Holism and Indeterminacy of Reference in Ontologies (Extended Abstract) AU - Barton, Adrien AU - Fabry, Paul AU - Ethier, Jean-François T2 - Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-25 PB - International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization PY - 2025 SP - 10864 EP - 10868 DO - 10.24963/ijcai.2025/1206 UR - https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2025/1206 ER -Copied
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