The way UN/CEFACT CCTS approached the subject was to try and define a
formal, yet unexclusive set of context drivers. The approach had merits
and serious flaws, specifically in terms of the magnitude of
possibilities that exist within an 8 dimensional interwoven matrix where
each aspect has upwards of 3000 unique values. The layer of logic
provided by the context composition was tasked with constraining a
higher level entity called a core component to a specialized entity
called a Business Information entity. (01)
As noted by others who have attempted ot model context ontologies, the
exponential datra explosion issue will likely prevent them from being
implemented
http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/657536.html (02)
An example was to go from a generic "date" to "invoice date". The work
is still under intense review but I feel the general concepts are pretty
cool. (03)
Another aspect of context which may be easily quantifiable is th
econtext of "role" within the context of "process". A role can probably
be independently verified (04)
Let's discuss a simple example: (05)
A theatre of operations exists. A military operation is underway within
the theatre (in my context as Canadian, we spell it with "re" at the
end, not "er"). There are several soldiers on the ground and two roles
in miltary management maintain relationships with those soldiers. (06)
The first is the payroll master - he is responsible for paying the
soldiers salary and benefits. The second is the commander who uses the
soldier as part of his operational plans. (07)
A soldier dies. To the payroll master, he still exists and is a going
concern since he must still maintain payroll, arrange funeral expenses
etc. To the commander, he no longer exists since he cannot be used as a
resource. (08)
It is arguable that he is still a concern to the commander since the
commander may feel compelled to extract the corpse in certain
situations, but that too is subject to the context of present danger. (09)
In this case, depending on the role, a soldier's existence may or may
not be. (010)
Nicolas F Rouquette wrote: (011)
> Please be aware that I don't speak in any way for NASA, JPL or the
> California Institute of Technology.
>
> The formal ontology approach is very appealing to me for several reasons.
>
> 1) it is a "relative" formalization of 'context', 'description', ....
>
> Duane raised questions about what variables and other considerations
> are part of 'context'.
> This is important because we also need to reason about what is
> explicitly known to
> be irrelevant as much as reason about what is explicitly known to be
> relevant.
> When it's grey, then we're subject to discrepencies of interepretation
> (you mean X & I mean Y)
> because some aspects of the context are subjectively defined.
>
> 2) there is already a lot of solid work that has been done to
> "formalize" these notions
>
> - DOLCE is one example.
>
> - NIST's Process Specification Language is another example, albeit
> more limited in scope
>
> - There's another "Bob Smith" ;-) who has a lot of interesting
> things to say on the matter as well: http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/
>
> - There are some commercial efforts as well
> (e.g., TopQuadrant's "representational shift" approach)
>
> 3) At the end of the day, what matters is to have an explicit
> definition of what "context" is
> that is independently verifiable by a third-party. To verify context
> claims, we need a simple
> way to reach an agreement on the semantic meaning of a context
> definition. This is sometimes
> more difficult to achieve with commercial systems that might rely on
> proprietary systems &
> whose semantics might change. Commercial enterprises have a role to
> play but I don't believe
> we have yet established a synergetic symbiosis of academic research,
> open-source practices
> critical for standarization / reference implementations and
> proprietary systems that add
> a non-functional value-added to the whole picture (if there's
> functional distortion, then
> we're back to square one w.r..t. having to validate proprietary
> systems or having our
> IP locked in a proprietary tool)
>
> 4) Although formal ontology offers the intellectual "high-road"
> approach to 'context' , 'situation', 'process', etc...
> there is, in practice, a significant gap between how much of this can
> actually be achieved with the current
> state of the affairs w.r.t. tools, standards, validation suites, etc..
> We don't even "apply" the notions of
> context, description, etc... to talk about our own semantic web
> technology, processes, etc...
>
>
> -- Nicolas.
>
> Bob Smith wrote:
>
>> And a good trick is being able to formulate questions that raise "even
>> better" questions that expose more context for those acting on
>> "answers"...
>> ;-}
>>
>> B
>>
>> C. West Churchman's Inquiring Systems, and Mason-Mitroff's
>> popularization of
>> this technique was fun for a while.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Duane
>> Nickull
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 10:06 AM
>> To: [ontolog-forum]
>> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Re: Unambiguous context information
>>
>> I only have questions - not answers ;-)
>>
>> This is an interesting topic. My observation has been that most
>> humans are deceived by their own perception of reality. I heard a
>> noise, therefore there was a noise. I live in a
>> temporally-sequentially perceived three dimensional state therefore
>> everyone else perceived things the same way.
>>
>> I am extremely interested in Nicolas's views on this since NASA
>> obviously has to acknowledge the fact that there are other models for
>> existence.
>>
>> D
>>
>> Bob Smith wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> If you allow me to add a pragmatic question....about your point of
>>> truth
>>> tables:
>>>
>>> You said:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>>> There are a number of contextual variables that seem to have the
>>>>>> ability
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>> to contort truth tables.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>>> Terrestrial proximity (how close is the thing to a terrestrial body)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>> Temporal Temperature Existential State (example: solid, gaseous,
>>> liquid)
>>> Granularity of perception precision (to a human in an airplane, the
>>> lines
>>>
>>
>> in
>>
>>
>>> the desserts are pictures, to an ant climbing them, they are simply
>>> mounds
>>> of dirt) Number of planes of perception (3d, 4d, *) Energy (humans
>>> perceive
>>> such a small band of the overall spectrum. even something like
>>> magnetic
>>> energy can twist apparent "truths")
>>>
>>> ========================================
>>> So when decision makers have decision tables and truth tables and some
>>> Robert's Rules of Order for debate on consequences, how might resource
>>> policy be developed?
>>>
>>> My context is the effort of RAND in the early 1970's to model
>>> Presidential
>>> warfare decision making contexts (Graham T. Allison, Essence of
>>> Decision,
>>> Little Brown, 1971; and subsequent context models including Rational,
>>> Political, Bureaucratic, and "chaos theory".)
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Bob
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Duane
>>> Nickull
>>> Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 9:29 AM
>>> To: [ontolog-forum]
>>> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Re: Unambiguous context information
>>>
>>> Nicholas:
>>>
>>> Many thanks for taking the time to parse my initial thoughts. The
>>> paper only touches the surface of where this thinking may go. I
>>> will read the Dolce next to understand more. Here are some
>>> additional thoughts to
>>>
>>
>> ponder:
>>
>>
>>> Where does one draw the line between something being a universal
>>> truth and a perception/assertion? If I smash two rocks together, it
>>> makes a sound. Sure - on earth if there is a gaseous environment to
>>> transmit the shock waves. What if it happens very slowly by two
>>> rocks being forced together as part of continental shift? It still
>>> makes a sound, yet it would likely be imperceivable to humans due to
>>> the long distance between frequency peaks.
>>>
>>> A rock is matter. In the context of human perception, it appears
>>> solid, yet it is not. If we examined it under close enough
>>> scrutiny, it is a matrix of related bits of energy.
>>> <quote who="me">
>>> Are humans' axioms of 'universal truths' tainted by our own
>>> arrogance in assuming our perceptions are ubiquitous?
>>> </quote>
>>>
>>> A rock has mass. How can you measure the mass. In the context of
>>> static terrestrial existence, it is easy to assign a value based on
>>> relating the gravitational pull to some scale. In space, the
>>> measure of mass is completely relative to the velocity contrast to
>>> the perceiver.
>>>
>>> There are a number of contextual variables that seem to have the
>>> ability to contort truth tables.
>>>
>>> Terrestrial proximity (how close is the thing to a terrestrial body)
>>> Temporal
>>> Temperature
>>> Existential State (example: solid, gaseous, liquid)
>>> Granularity of perception precision (to a human in an airplane, the
>>> lines in the desserts are pictures, to an ant climbing them, they
>>> are simply mounds of dirt)
>>> Number of planes of perception (3d, 4d, *)
>>> Energy (humans perceive such a small band of the overall spectrum.
>>> even something like magnetic energy can twist apparent "truths")
>>>
>>> There are probably many more human being related contexts too.
>>>
>>> I am definitely going to read the Dolce work you referenced. Sounds
>>> very interesting.
>>>
>>> Duane
>>>
>>> Internet Business Logic wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Nicholas --
>>>>
>>>> You wrote:
>>>>
>>>> /If you really want unambiguous context information, it ought be
>>>> spelled out in a way that is sufficiently formal and sound to make
>>>> reasoning valuable and useful. /
>>>>
>>>> I'd suggest that a _representation shift_ can help with this.
>>>> As you may know, we have been suggesting that reasoning directly
>>>> with open vocabulary English can help to solve these kinds of
>>>> problems. Why describe the problem and its solution in English,
>>>> then try to solve it in a non-English notation? That's the source
>>>> of most of the problems.
>>>>
>>>> Although reasoning directly with open vocabulary English may sound
>>>> like blue sky, there is a system that does this, albeit with a
>>>> subtle trade off to avoid dictionary construction yet get precise
>>>> English semantics. (The underlying logical semantics is
>>>> model-theoretic.)
>>>>
>>>> The system is live, online, with a number of Ontology and other
>>>> examples, at the site below. The author- and user interface is
>>>> simply a browser. The approach is described in the e-Government
>>>> presentation. There's also a recent paper at
>>>> http://www.w3.org/2004/12/rules-ws/paper/19 .
>>>>
>>>> Thanks in advance for comments.
>>>>
>>>> -- Adrian
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> Internet Business Logic -- online at www.reengineeringllc.com
>>>>
>>>> Reengineering LLC, PO Box 1412, Bristol, CT 06011-1412, USA
>>>>
>>>> Phone 860 583 9677 Mobile 860 830 2085 Fax 860 314 1029
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
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