[tcs-lc] You don't need embedded names to do concepts

[Gregor Hagedorn]

I certainly agree with Names-as-objects. That does not mean that TCS really has 
to do it, but in a wider general object schema with other use cases than TCS I 
think it is a necessity. Names are useful for many purposes, in which taxon 
concepts (although ALWAYS used in an implied way) simply are not 
practical/operational. And please, operational does not mean only to have 
algebra to calculate on them, I refer to operational in the practice of 
biological work.

A very important thing Roger said is about expanding taxon concepts. Sometimes 
there seems to be a notion of character circumscriptions concepts that they are 
definitional and definite. Nothing could be further from the thruth in my 
experience. When I have a reasonable character circumscription in terms of 
morphology, but study chemical or molecular characters, I emend that without 
intending to create a new concept. I have no issue with the old one. I know 
that the TCS concept types are intended to model that, but they don't work in 
that I would not know when identifying the next time a fungus, which of the 
emended concepts I would have used. I may use a mixture of characters from 
different publications, and I guess by doing so, in the TCS perspective I would 
create again another concept. I believe that then would need extensive 
relationship assertions relative to dozens of previous such concepts to make 
any conclusion at all. I have no time to do this - unless is is a real special 
case, in which I am thankful for clearer concept relationship language (not 
sensu stricto...) and ways to unambiguously express concept knowledge. However, 
I can not remember any case in my work, where I would have been able to do this 
in a meaningful way (I mean saying something else than "probalby some 
overlap"). The only case that I would occasionally have been able to say is 
"probably no overlap at all).

Gregor----------------------------------------------------------
Gregor Hagedorn (G.Hagedorn at bba.de)
Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology, and Biosafety
Federal Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA)
Königin-Luise-Str. 19           Tel: +49-30-8304-2220
14195 Berlin, Germany           Fax: +49-30-8304-2203