Definitions In Semantics
Time 2021-10-18 06:05:49Web Name: Definitions In Semantics
WebSite: http://definitionsinsemantics.blogspot.com
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keywords: description:Definitions are a key component of semantics, and a constant need in data and information management. This blog aims to add to the knowledge of definitions, promote their understanding, and advance the practice of definition management.
Just a brief note on something that has been bothering mefor a while.
In reading Prof. Campbell Harvey's Hypertextual FinanceGlossary (http://www.duke.edu/~charvey/Classes/wpg/glossary.htm)I noticed that it contains the ISO 4217 Currency Codes, e.g. there is an entryfor "USD" with the definition "The ISO 4217 currency code forthe USA Dollar". However, the ISO4217 Currency Codes are sprinkled though the glossary, because all terms are arrangedin alphabetical order (actually, lexicographical order since numbers andsymbols have to be taken into account).
This means that there is no single list of ISO 4217 CurrencyCodes in the Glossary. To extract themwould require searching on a piece of text, such as "4217" which ishopefully in every definition.
Figure 1: Concept System of Customer Type
It also requires the searcher to know in advance that thereis such a concept system as Currency Code.But how is this always possible?Consider what is shown in Figure 1.Here there are three concepts: Customer Type, Individual Customer, andCorporate Customer. Suppose these areput into a business glossary containing a few hundred entries, and that areader comes across "Customer Type".How will the reader be aware that there are two other very closelyrelated concepts - Individual Customer and Corporate Customer? Or if someone finds "CorporateCustomer", how will they be aware of Customer Type and IndividualCustomer?
This shows that a large business glossary merges all conceptsystems and loses relationships between concepts. It might be argued that I can put informationinto definitions to mitigate this. Forinstance, I could define Individual Customer as "a Customer Type where thecustomer is an individual person".However, it would be very unwise to list out all the Customer Typeswithin every entry of the three types.This is not defining a concept, but repeatedly describing the conceptsystem.However, I do wonder if the understanding that definitionsare to be included in a glossary affects the way they are written, so that thereare attempts to document the concept system and the relations within it. This risks creating confusion.
A better attempt might be to have self containedvocabularies. So we could form amini-vocabulary for the three concepts shown in Figure 1. At least they will all be together. But it would seem logical to start off withthe concept system itself, or at least the highest genus - Customer Type. However, "Corporate Customer" willsort lexicographically ahead of that. Sothis is another problem.Producing a diagram and explanation of the concept system inwhich all the concepts are defined, and their relationships explained (is arelationship a concept I wonder) is probably the best way. So this leads us to conceptual models.
In reality, a glossary, vocabulary, and concept system arethree views of the same semantic space and we probably need all three. However, we have to recognize theirlimitations and advantages.3 comments: Sunday, July 29, 2012 Definition Reference
In the previous posts I had the idea of a person or groupthat creates a definition. This was arough draft of a part of another concept system that I am calling DefinitionReference. Figure 1 shows this conceptsystem. The unquoted terms are theofficial terms in this concept system.The quoted terms are shortened versions of the official terms, which areunivocal (have only one meaning) within the concept system, but are generallyequivocal (have more than one meaning) if you increase scope to beyond thesystem shown here, and must be used with care.
Figure 1: Definition Reference Concept System
The Concepts in The System
The concepts in this system are as follows:
Definition Reference: a source of a definition
Informal Definition Source: a Definition Reference that cannot be relied upon. There is no guarantee that it is correct.
Definition Authority: a Definition Reference that can be relied on. There is some kind of guarantee that it is correct.
Definition Authoritative Reference: a Definition Authority that has recorded a definition, but did not create it.
Definition Creator: a Definition Authority that created a definition
Definition Analyst: a Definition Creator who creates a definition in the absence of one, but does not claim to have originally created the definition.
Definition Stipulator: a Definition Creator who claims to have originally created a definition
Legislative Definition Authority: a Definition Stipulator who has legitimacy sufficient to make a definition they create binding upon one or more Legislative Definition Users.
Recognized Expert: a Definition Stipulator whose prestige or reputation is sufficient to make a definition they create acceptable to one or more people.
Informal Stipulator: a Definition Stipulator who has no basis for obtaining acceptance of a definition they create.
Thoughts
I am happy with this so far. Here are some random thoughts:
(1) The concept system is a purely generic one (like a Tree of Porphyry). Everything in it is a genus or species of something else (or supertype and subtype if you prefer). This makes it easy to deal with - every relationship if of the same type ("is genus of").
(2) It is easy to see how terms will be shortened and how confusion can occur even within this concept system. For instance, if someone uses the term "Authority" they might mean Definition Authority, Definition Authoritative Reference, or Legislative Definition Authority.
(3) The species (subtypes) of Definition Stipulator are worrying. They only exist in reference to how people accept the definitions. A law with a particular definition that is passed in Canada will not affect me in the USA. I might not recognize an individual as an expert because I am unfamiliar with their work. This area needs further investigation, and it is missing relationships to users of definitions (see Legislative Definition User in prior posts). Also, this is where we depart from the Tree of Porphyry structure.
(4) I think the concept system provides good input to a governance framework for definition management.
(5) I need to expand the definitions provided above - they are preliminary and abbreviated.
(6) I think I can make some of the differentia contradictory. For instance Definition Authority descends into two contradictory species, depending on whether the definition was created or not. This means that I will not have missed any other class at this level. However, I do not think I can reliably do this everywhere.
(7) By creating a visual concept system, it becomes much easier to formulate definitions. I know this is not the point of this post, but it struck me how easy it was to write the definitions with the diagram in front of me. If I was doing a glossary, all the terms would be distributed throughout it and would need much more robust definitions. For example in a prior post I had Legislative Definition Authority (then simply termed "Authority") defined as "an individual person or organization who has legitimacy sufficient to make any Legislative Definition they create binding on one or more Legislative Definition Users".
2 comments: Thursday, July 26, 2012 On to Stipulative and Legislative Definitions - Visually
Having taken care - for the moment - of the core conceptualmodel for concepts, terms, and definitions, I returned to where I began, whichwas to try to show how Stipulative Definitions and Legislative Definitionsdiffer, and to do so visually as shown in Figure 1
Basic Definitions
The concepts shown in Figure 1 are defined as follows:
StipulativeDefinition: a definition that a Definition Creator creates to describe aconcept and which the Definition Creator assigns to a term. In performing the latter, the DefinitionCreator acts as a Terminologist.
LegislativeDefinition: a Stipulative Definition whose Definition Creator is anAuthority, and whose acceptance is obligatory for Legislative Definition Users.
Authority: anindividual person or organization who has legitimacy sufficient to make anyLegislative Definition they create binding upon one or more LegislativeDefinition Users
Definition User: an individual who can potentially use a definition
LegislativeDefinition User: an individual person or organization that is obliged toaccept the Legislative Definition assigned to a given Term by the Authoritywithin a given context. The context maybe a contract, regulation, agreement, etc.
Be warned that these definitions are preliminary, and Ithink I see quite a bit of circularity in them.However, they will have to do for now.
Preliminary Thoughts
What is shown in Figure 1 triggers the following immediaterough thoughts:
1. LegislativeDefinition is a species (a subtype) of Stipulative Definition
2. A StipulativeDefinition is always created by an identifiedindividual or organization (the Definition Creator). Here we have an issue as every Definitionmust have had a Definition Creator at the outset. The connection with the Definition Creatormay be lost over time, at which point the Definition ceases to be a StipulativeDefinition. This requires much furtherexploration.
3. A Definition isnot a Stipulative Definition unless the Definition Creator is also known byusers of the Definition. It is not aStipulative Definition merely by having been created by a Definition User. This relationship is essential for aDefinition to be a Stipulative Definition.
4. The essentialdifference between a Stipulative Definition and a Legislative Definition isthat a Legislative Definition is created by an individual or organization thatis an Authority.
5. A Definition Usercan freely accept or reject a Stipulative Definition.
6. The Authority mustbe legitimate with respect to the Legislative Definition User. The Legislative Definition User must be awarethat they have an obligation that they have directly or indirectly taken upon themselvesto use the Legislative Definition. Ifthe Authority is not legitimate with respect to the Legislative DefinitionUser, then we are dealing with a case of unlawful power being used to enforcethe acceptance of a Definition on a person or organization. Such a case is not a Legislative Definition.
7. A DefinitionCreator has obligations to a Definition User.This might include making a Stipulative Definition intelligible. If the Definition Creator fails to meet theseobligations, then the Definition User has one or more reasons to reject theStipulative Definition. This would seemto be a warning for those individuals and institutions who decide to becomeDefinition Creators.
8. The burden of obligationof an Authority to a Legislative Definition User for a Legislative Definitionis higher than that of a Definition Creator to a Definition User for aStipulative Definition.
Further Thoughts
There is a lot in this.A big part of how we operate in our culture and society includes whatconcepts we accept or reject.Furthermore, any Authority who creates Legislative Definitions hadbetter do a good job or they might cause problems. I am thinking of the unintelligibledefinition of "Swap" in the Dodd-Frank Act here.
On the notation front, I do not like the fact that general relationshipssuch as Definition User rejects Stipulative Definition cannot be related tomore specific relationships that override them, such as Legislative DefinitionUser is obliged to accept Legislative Definition. Yet something more to be tackled.No comments: Saturday, July 21, 2012
Well, I had another day or so of thinking about the conceptualmodel I was developing - originally for stipulative and legislative definitions. Actually, a few minutes rather than a wholeday was what I had, but such is life when you have a job. But even in that limited time I realized thatI had not got the idea of communities in the model.
So I went back to the conceptual model and put in communitiesas shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Relations of Concept and Term
Speech Community: a group of individuals who share a vocabularythat describes a concept system. [SeeWikipedia for more - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_community- although it seems you have to belong to the Speech Community Speech Communityto understand this entry.]
Semantic Community: a group of individuals who share acommon understanding of a set of concepts and relationships (a concept system),irrespective of the terms used to describe them.I understand that both of these definitions are preliminaryand need more work.
The Interpretant must belong to a Speech Community in orderto use the term in communication. If theInterpretant is a member of such a community, they will be able (or will have away to be able)to recognize the sign as signifying a concept. Recognition is the important elementhere. It is, of course, possible thatthe Interpretant may not recognize a particular term that is used within the SpeechCommunity (e.g. if the interpretant is new to the community and still learning itsvocabulary). However, the Interpretantis in communication with at least some other members of the Speech Community,and has the opportunity to find out from them what the term means to them - how they recognize it.
Recognition seems to be very little discussed in thesemantics literature (which I am not well versed in, so I can easily be wrong). However, my background is biology - and recognition is perhaps the mostfundamental concept in biology. Thestandard analogy here is that of a lock and a key. One biologically active molecule, e.g. anantigen, is recognized by another biologically active molecule, e.g. anantibody. The antibody meets the antigenand neutralizes it. This is recapitulatedin various ways across the entire science.
Back in our diagram.The key is the term and the lock is the recognition process (part of signification)that identifies the concept to the interpretant. What is important is that recognition can belearned among the members of a Speech Community.
New Types of ExistingTerm
I have also done some more work on Existing Term. An Existing Term can be differentiated intothe following subordinate genera:
Known Term: a term that is in use in a particular SpeechCommunity
Unknown Term: a term that is not in use in a particular SpeechCommunity
What is interesting here is that a New Term is not in use inany Speech Community. But how would youknow if a given term, T, is not in use in any Speech Community? You could not unless you knew about allspeech communities. Obviously, this isimpossible, or at least unimaginably difficult.It would seem therefore that a given interpretant could not distinguisha New Term from an Unknown Term (an Unknown Term relative to the Speech Communitiesthat the interpretant belongs to). Thishas important practical implications.
New Types ofPreviously Existing Concept
I have also differentiated Previously Existing Concept intoKnown Concept and Unknown Concept.
Known Concept: a Previously Existing Concept that is knownto a Semantic Community
Unknown Concept: a Previously Existing Concept that isunknown to a Semantic Community
An example here might be "quasar" (derived from"quasi-stellar object").Quasars existed long before astronomers identified them. So atone time they were an Unknown Concept, that then became a Known Concept withinthe Semantic Community of astronomers.
Contrast this with Mortgage-Backed Security (MBS). No MBS existed at all prior to the 1960's [Ithink this date is accurate, but I am not a historian of financial theory, somaybe the 1930's is a safer decade to use].Neither instances of MBS, not the theoretical (uninstantiated) conceptexisted prior to this time. Then theconcept came into being, and shortly thereafter came instances of the concept. Prior to this MBS was a Not Previously Existing Concept.
So New Concept, Known Concept, andNot Previously Existing Conceptare allrelative (involve a relation with) at least one Semantic Community.
PracticalImplications
The above still needs a good deal of work, but it ispossible to see the outlines of practical implications. I am very interested in the work of aBusiness Analyst (BA) and a Data Analyst (DA - which I will subsume within BAfor the moment). Here are some briefthoughts.
On a global project, say a Customer Reference Data project,a BA needs to know if the Speech Communities he is dealing with are actually oneSemantic Community. The presumption islikely to be that Customer Reference Data is covered by one Semantic Community,but this is not necessarily the case.There may be differences in concepts and relations associated with someof the Speech Communities. I think thebest way to figure this out is to construct a conceptual model for each SpeechCommunity using their terms for concepts, definitions, and relations - and thento compare the conceptual models.A BA would be unwise to think they are a member of a SpeechCommunity in the area they are analyzing, if they are new to the area. Even if the BA has dealt with the same peoplebefore, or the BA thinks they are a member of the related Semantic Community,there is no guarantee they are a member of the Speech Community. Each concept system has its own vocabularyfor the Speech Community, and strict terminological analysis is required. I think too many BA's make presuppositionsabout this kind of thing and get into trouble.
I think there are more practical implications, but bloggingdemands brevity, and this post is already too long.1 comment: Thursday, July 19, 2012 Thinking About Concepts and Terms
I was noodling aroundwith stipulative and legislative definitions, and started to diagram out what Iwas finding.It occurred to me that I have not really had a rethink about diagramming the relationships between the concepts involved in definition work for a while.Pretty soon I found that Ilacked some of the fundamentals, and had to get them sorted out before I could deal with stipulative and legislative definitions.
The result of that effort is the cartoon shown in Figure1. I am calling it a "cartoon" because Ihave not had time yet to work it up in some formal notation, such as conceptualgraph. I also realize it isincomplete. For instance, I have not hadtime to figure out where to put Nominal Definition.
Figure 1: Relations ofConcept and Term
In Figure 1 all supertype-subtype relations are indicated bysolid lines, with the label "is genus of", indicating how thesuperordinate genus is related to the subordinate genus. This is to distinguish them from other kinds of relationships.
So let us look at what we have (in no particular order):
Term: a linguisticsymbol that signifies a concept.
Common Term: aterm that signifies a concept that is understood by the general population.
Technical Term: aterm that signifies a concept that is understood by a restricted community, andexists within a specialized context.
Existing Term: a termthat has been in use prior to a specific point in time.
New Term: a termthat is created at a particular point in time, and did not exist prior to thispoint in time.
Interpretant: amind or machine that understands a particular term to signify a particular concept.
Terminologist: a personor group of people that assigns a term to concept. The term may be an Existing Term or New Term.
Concept: cognition of auniversal as distinguished from the particulars which it unifies [fromBaldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy, under "Conception"].
Previously Existing Concept: a concept that exists prior to a particular time,irrespective of whether it is known to exist or not.
Not Previously Existing Concept: a concept that does not exist prior to a particular time. [It was this that I was interested in withrespect to stipulative and legislative definitions.]
Previously Known Concept: a Previously Existing Concept that is known to exist. It is known by at least someone. However, there is no guarantee it is known byeveryone.
Real Definition: anexplanation of a concept.
Critique
Well, this is interesting, but withinmy preliminary definitions some terms remain undefined.
They are: linguistic symbol;general population; community; context [ugh! I hate that one]; time [moredifficult than "context"]; mind; machine; signify; person; group ofpeople; universal; particular; exist.
I think I am also missing a taxonomy(or other concept set) under Previously Known Concept, Not Previously KnownConcept to indicate "known / not known by whom".
I will have to figure out all of this inthe future - too late today.
Other Notes It is interesting tosee how Term has two taxonomies: Common Term, Technical Term; and Existing Term,New Term. These seem to be fullyexternal to each other ("orthogonal"), which introduces complexity.
I wanted to showthat the question "what does T mean?" where "T" is someterm is a very suspect question. I donot think the diagram shows it. I thinkthis is a false assumption of univocity, which is something else. Oh well.
This is very much a work inprogress. I will push on from here tostipulative and legislative definitions.
1 comment: Monday, July 9, 2012 "How Do You Define Yourself?" - Answer: You Can't
A few days ago my son was getting same day surgery and I wasforced to sit in a waiting room for longer than I wanted. The usual trash TV was being shown to keepthe nervous relatives quiet, and there was a typical "self-help" showon which featured some bizarre members of the general public, each of whom hadissues that apparently had some entertainment value.
A phrase that kept coming up was various variations of"define yourself", as in "How do you define yourself?", or"Don't let your [whatever problemthe person had] define you". Itoccurred to me that the purveyors of these phrases must have had only a fuzzyidea of what they were saying. They wereprobably repeating a cliché they had heard before, to save themselves the difficultyof thinking and finding a way to express their thoughts.
Definitions forConcepts, Identities for Individuals
So what was wrong with asking "How Do You DefineYourself?"
The answer is that definitions apply to concepts, not toindividuals. As it says in the entry for "Definition" in Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy
"Individual objects andsumma generaare logically indefinable."
Soyou cannot define yourself, or any individual person, or any individual object. Individual objects have identities, anddescriptions, but not definitions.
Ifthe people on the trash TV show were using "definition" in an attemptto express a thought they had, what could that thought have been?
Well,concepts can be implemented as individuals.These individuals possess the attributes of the concept. More properly, the attributes of the conceptare expressed in the individual. That isthe terminology I first learned in genetics, and I think it is appropriate(although geneticists talk of characteristics, not attributes). So an individual has a character, which isthe sum of how all the attributes they possess are expressed.
Moralcharacter, which is what we are probably talking about here, is not the same asdefinition. You cannot define a person,but you can describe their moral character.
It is a well-known fact that the financial services industry- and their regulators - often use bizarre language. For instance, Alan Greenspan, during his tenureas Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, was famous for achieving a level of incomprehensionthat spawned a generation of "Fed Watchers" needed to interpret him. However, the problem goes far beyond Mr.Greenspan, and one of the worst offenses committed by financial services isscientism.
Scientism is the application of the language and methods ofthe natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) to problem domainsthat are completely outside of the realm of natural science. For instance, the term "financialengineering" has been used to describe a large set of practices whichcontributed significantly to the great financial crisis we are still livingin. Having worked in assetsecuritization myself, I can assure anyone that whatever these practices were,they were certainly no form of "engineering".
Which brings us to the term "Negative FeedbackLoop". This is a term that originatedwith real engineers, but which has since been appropriated by the financialregulators, and has then trickled down to the rest of the industry. Here is an example of its use (admittedly ina quote) by the otherwise erudite Ambrose Evans-Prichard of the DailyTelegraph.
"MrRoberts said the collapse in Spanish tax revenues is replicating the pattern inGreece. Fiscal revenues have fallen 4.8pc over the last year, and VAT returnshave slumped 14.6pc. Debt service costs have risen by 18pc.
The term "Negative Feedback Loop" in itsengineering sense means that the output of a process becomes an input to thatprocess, and acts to stabilize the activity of the process. For instance, the governor of a steam engineis a device at the top of a pipe that is rotated by the engine. The governor includes two or more weightymetal balls hinged to close a hole through which steam would otherwiseescape. As the pipe rotates faster, dueto engine activity, the centrifugal force lifts the balls off the hole andsteam escapes, reducing the power delivered by the engine. This puts an upper limit on the power theengine can provide to whatever it is driving, thus preventing"runaway" effects such as running a pump so fast that it breaks.
This example shows that a "Negative Feedback Loop"can be a very good thing in engineering - and actually it is typically so. However, the great minds of the financialservices industry have little acquaintance with real science and engineering. I presume they saw the word"negative" and equated it with "bad" and simplyappropriated the whole thing. So if acountry owes $1 Trillion, and has a falling GDP (say due to governmentausterity), the debt-to-GDP ratio increases and the debt is even more difficult to service. This is more closely resembles a"Positive Feedback Loop", where the output of the system is amplifiedby the output becoming an input, often contributing to equipment damage in realengineering. Take a look a Wikipedia ifyou want a fuller explanation.
So "Negative Feedback Loop" in financial services iseither:
(a) Misuse of terminology to signify real positive feedbackloops that do occur in financial services; or
(b) A scientisticanalogy that is conning us into thinking there is a real concept beingsignified, whereas in fact there is no intelligible concept. And the analogy has gone wrong because of thedesire for the term "negative" to mean "bad", rather than"dampening" as it does in engineering.
The example I gave above of the debt-to-GDP ratio has pointsin common with a true positive feedback loop, but that is what I would expectof any analogy. It does not prove thatwe are dealing with an actual positive feedback loop (that happens to bemis-termed as a "Negative Feedback Loop"). A definition is not a few selectedattributes that are in common with some other generalization. In financial services strange things canhappen because the domain is governed by human laws, not natural laws. Debt can be repudiated in financial services,but matter and energy must be conserved in the natural world.
My conclusion is that the class of phenomena to which theterm "Negative Feedback Loop" is applied in financial services breaksdown into concepts that have never been given adequate definitions. Therefore we are dealing with unintelligibleconcepts. The fakery of using scientistic analogies(because scientific language is always so plausible) has been poorly applied inthis case, and the terminology has pointed up the problem.6 comments: Older PostsHomeSubscribe to:Posts (Atom)Search This BlogFollowersBlog Archive 2012(22) August(1)Glossary versus Vocabulary versus Concept System July(7) June(4) March(4) February(3) January(3) 2011(33) December(21) November(12)About MeMalcolm ChisholmMalcolm Chisholm Ph.D. is an internationally recognized thought leader, speaker, and strategic consultant in data and information management. He has an M.A. from Oxford University, England, and a Ph.D. from Bristol University, England.View my complete profileBook - Definitions in Information Management
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