>> I agree with everything that Kathy said up to the
>> following sentence:
>> 
>>> I think ontologies need to be able to represent
>>> probabilistic relationships like these.
>> 
>> I certainly agree that such relationships should be
>> represented somewhere, but the question of where
>> they should be represented is another issue.
>> 
>> For years, I have maintained that the base ontology
>> (i.e., what is usually called the "upper level")
>> should have very few detailed axioms of any kind.
>> 
>> In fact, I would be delighted to have a base ontology
>> that contains nothing but a type hierarchy plus the
>> minimal constraints that everybody can agree to without
>> reservation.    (01)
<Duane>
Nicola Guarino summed this up nicely:    (02)
"a conceptualization is a set of extensional relations describing a
particular state of affairs, while the notion we have in mind is an
intensional one, namely something like a conceptual grid which we
superimpose to various possible state of affairs"    (03)
Questions:    (04)
Do hypothesis have a legitimate right to exist in a formal ontology or
should the ontology be used solely as a factual basis to feed some form of
inference machine to form further hypothesis?    (05)
Should ontologies be strictly limited to only "universal truths" and
"aspects" (assuming they are represented as a contextual viewpoint) or
should they include probabilistic relationships?    (06)
I have heard arguments on both sides for these questions.  Too bad most
ontologies don't define ontology.    (07)
</Duane>
-- 
**********************************************************
Sr. Technical Evangelist - Adobe Systems, Inc.           *
Chair - OASIS SOA Reference Model Technical Committee    *
Blog: http://technoracle.blogspot.com                    *
Music: http://www.mix2r.com/audio/by/artist/duane_nickull*
**********************************************************    (08)
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