Talk:Reification (knowledge representation)

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How but not What

The second paragraph doesn't explain what "reification" is taking place, or indeed, how the concept of "reification" is related at all to the "reported knowledge" example given. This article needs to be longer and much clearer. Any experts available? Kwertii (talk) 00:09, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not only that, the article doesn't even define what reification is, only how it may be used. - dcljr (talk) 20:32, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Suggest merging this article into Reification (computer science)

There was an upgrade to the Reification (computer science) article. The new article added uses of Reification in conceptual modeling and semantic web and has an additional category Knowledge Representation. I suggest merging Reification (knowledge representation) into it.

-- Equilibrioception (talk) 05:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's an interesting idea (and a field I happen to work in), but I would oppose this.

In a narrow scope, the articles could merge. The SemWeb (and paticularly the RDF use) of reification within CompSci is indeed the use described in Reification (knowledge representation). It would be a valid merge to merge the SemWeb use into it as a section on current applications and practical relevance. This probably ought to be added as a note anyway.

I have to oppose it though on two grounds. Firstly (and obviously) merging KR into CompSci would be an inversion of the relative importance of the two fields. It would be embedding the theoretical basis within just one of its applications. Secondly, the CompSci uses are broad and varied, even if some of them are somewhat elastic or tenuous. I can't see a way to move SemWeb use from one to another without leaving a worse hole in the Reification (computer science) article than existing situation the merge might be smoothing over. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:28, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Moreover, I can see moving Epistemology under Reification -- although Phenomenology might subsume Reification in the sense that Reification is conceptually identical with the "transcendental attitude" in Phenomenology. However, when you get into the social sciences, Reification has the opposite meaning: going from the transcendental attitude to the natural attitude (ie, adopting, as a "true" statement, the object of attribution as in going from "John said, 'The sky is blue today.'" to "The sky is blue today."). This oppositional sense of "reification" between fields really needs to be called out somehow. Jim Bowery (talk) 14:40, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Performative

I recall reading somehwere once about the implied performative. When ever someone makes a declaration X, there is always an implied "I say to you that X".

We are having troubles with this now at work. You can't just import facts into your database willy-nilly without reifying it and attaching info about who asserted it (*ad where, and when, and how much you trust it, etc). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paul Murray (talk • contribs) 01:26, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Additional Source

Definition from the Pioneer John McCarthy: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/generality/node6.html

Reasoning about knowledge, belief or goals requires extensions of the domain of objects reasoned about. For example, a program that does backward chaining on goals used them directly as sentences, e.g. on(Block1,Block2), i.e. the symbol on is used as a predicate constant of the language. However, a program that wants to say directly that on(Block1,Block2) should be postponed until on(Block2,Block3) has been achieved, needs a sentence like precedes(on(Block2,Block3),on(Block1,Block2)), and if this is to be a sentence of first-order logic, then the symbol on must be taken as a function symbol, and on(Block1,Block2) regarded as an object in the first order language.

This process of making objects out of sentences and other entities is called reification. It is necessary for expressive power but again leads to complications in reasoning. It is discussed in (McCarthy 1979). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.133.207.110 (talk) 13:24, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]