Shared conceptualization and semantic knowledge: A fuzzy model for real-world applications

Semantic knowledge is a human construct whose analysis is relevant for a large plethora of real-world applications, from robotics to clinical contexts. While every human builds their own individual semantic knowledge-base, this is largely a matter of time- and community-specific tacit consensus built on shared conceptualizations. These, however, are dynamic and largely unconscious, continuously undergoing revisions of which individual cognitive agents are only partly, or not at all, aware. This makes it very difficult to analyze it both quantitatively and qualitatively. In this paper, we propose two novel approaches to conceptualization and semantic knowledge: (1) We see shared conceptualization as operating under two combined forces, the Zeit- and Volksgeist, and (2) we propose a fuzzy model for extracting quantitative data from localized—in time and culture—semantic knowledge via digitalized corpora.