The intentional relationship of representation between the constructs of a language and reality

摘要

Specifications of conceptualisations (ontologies) are often employed for representing reality, both in knowledge representation and software engineering. While languages offer sophisticated constructs and rigorous semantics for building conceptual entities, no attention is paid to the relationship between such entities and the world they intend to represent. This paper studies such a relationship and provides empirical evidences in favour of two main hypotheses: (1) conceptualisations are insufficient to fully represent the specifics of reality; (2) languages (both representation and design-oriented) are general representations of (classes of) systems in the world, and they can be characterised as scientific theories. The first hypothesis establishes a problem for which we propose a solution based on the explicit elaboration of statements claiming the similarity (in some respects and to certain degrees of accuracy) between conceptual entities and real-world systems of interest. The second hypothesis constitutes a new perspective for understanding languages, whose advantages to representation and design are discussed in detail.