Glossary: Definitions

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Composite Representation
is a representation built out of constituent sub-representations as their parts, in the way in which paragraphs are built out of sentences and sentences out of words.
Conceptualization
A cognitive representation of a portion of reality in a cognitive agent’s mind.
Domain
A portion of reality that forms the subject-matter of a single science or technology or mode of study; for example the domain of proteomics, of radiology, of viral infections in mouse.
Epistemology level
The level that deals with the knowledge structuring primitives (e.g., concept types, structuring relations, etc.).
Ontology reusability
The ability of using an ontology (or part of it) for several kinds of (autonomously specified) tasks.
Ontology usability
The ability of using an ontology among applications that perform the same kind of task.
Representation
Is for example an idea, image, record, or description which refers to (is of or about), or is intended to refer to, some entity or entities external to the representation. Note that a representation (e.g. a description such as ‘the cat over there on the mat’) can be of or about a given entity even though it leaves out many aspects of its target.
Representational Units
The smallest constituent sub-representations, examples are: icons, names, simple word forms, or the sorts of alphanumeric identifiers we might find in patient records. Note that many images are not composite representations since they are not built out of smallest representational units in the way in which molecules are built out of atoms. (Pixels are not representational units in the sense defined.)
Taxonomy
A tree-form graph-theoretic representational artifact with nodes representing universals or classes and edges representing is_a or subset relations.
Terminology
A representational artifact consisting of representational units which are the general terms of some natural language used to refer to entities in some specific domain.
Universals
Something that is shared in common by all those particulars, which are its INSTANCES.