On the epistemological status of semantic networks

This paper examines in detail the history of a set of network-structured formalisms for knowledge representation - the so-called semantic networks. While these nets have for the most part retained their basic associative nature, their primitive representational elements have differed significantly from one project to the next. These differences in underlying primitives are symptomatic of deeper philosophical disparities, and a set of five significantly different levels at which networks can be understood are discussed. One of these levels, the epistemological, or knowledge-structuring, level, has played an important implicit part in all previous notations, and is here made explicit in a way that allows a new type of network formalism to be specified. This new type of formalism accounts precisely for operations like individuation of description, internal concept structure in terms of roles and interrelations between them, and structured inheritance.