Reference Ontologies and Application Ontologies Pre-workshop Notes Table of Contents Combining a Lexical Taxonomy with Domain Ontologies in the Erlangen Dialogue System……………………………………………………...11-21 Light Ontologies for Heavy Criminals? Ontological Modelling and Fraud Investigation in the Eu…………………………

Responsibility for their text and copyright of these papers remains with the authors. The edition and publication of this volume was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation under the auspices of its Wolfgang Paul Program. Thanks go to Christopher Menzel (Texas A&M University and IFOMIS) and Katherine Munn (IFOMIS) for their help in preparing the formatting guidelines. 1 Only Fictions are Fictions. Once upon a time there was a knowledge engineer called KE. He was given two tasks: 1. to construct a taxonomy of all the existing mammals on earth, and 2. to construct another taxonomy of all the humanoids in Star Wars. How did he proceed? In the case of the earthly mammals, KE started to read relevant zoological literature as well as to interview taxonomically interested zoologists, i.e., the domain experts at hand. Since KE was a very good knowledge engineer, he very quickly understood the contemporary scientific mammal classification and turned it into a good computer system. In the other case, KE started immediately to see the Star War movies, read about them, and to check on internet what the domain experts now at hand, the real Star War fans, had to say. Immediately, he found on internet a list of the humanoids that occur in Star Wars. The Abyssian species was said to be " a swarthy-faced humanoid with a single slit-pupilled eye, a thirsty representative of the cyclopean species " ; the Aqualish species was " a bellicose humanoid species with some superficial properties both aquatic and arachnid; they have hair-lined faces with large, glassy eyes and mouths dominated with inwardly-pointing tusks " ; and so on. After some work, as expected, KE had classified the humanoids into classes and families and put his taxonomy on internet. So far, so good. And no essential difference between the two cases. However, after a while KE found one indeterminacy in each taxonomy. In both cases, he went through all his material once again, but both the indeterminacies remained. What to do? His reputation as a good knowledge engineer seemed to be at stake. With respect to the fictional humanoids of Star Wars, KE's problem came to end when he happened to read Roman Ingarden's The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973). He then realized that fictional entities necessarily have some " loci of indeterminacy ". What is not described …