Edu:Identity

Identity

Commentary

• In description logics, conceptual models usually focus on the sufficient and necessary criteria for class membership, that is, recognizing instances of certain classes. This is not identity, however, as it does not describe how instances of the same class are to be told apart. This is a common confusion that is important to keep clear: membership conditions determine when an entity is an instance of a class, i.e. they can be used to answer the question, “Is that a dog?” but not, “Is that my dog?” [ Guarino & Welty, 2000 ]