I consider myself highly compentent, and I assure you that your degree in mathematical logic would not help you to do my job, nor many other jobs associated with ontology engineering from a 'business' viewpoint.
I may not be able to contribute intelligently to this thread because it is beyond my competence, but believe me, I would not hire any of you guys to work on a project cause it will never get anywhere
Paola,
This just isn't fair and it's more than a bit mean-spirited. I am one of "those guys" who think that knowledge of logic, while not sufficient, is necessary for anyone who fancies themselves to do "ontology". I also have lots of software development experience (15 years, if that's enough for you) in "business" environments and enough working on applying ontology to business problems to know what you say is just about as false as can be.
To make systems work, we have to make conceptual compromises all the time (something that none of you here seems interested in - which is your prerogative btw)
That is also false. What you mean by "compromises" are one of the main reasons that "ontology-based" information systems *fail* - compromise is hardly a self-contained desideratum. What you call "compromise" becomes manageable only when the compromiser is aware of and can elucidate what is being compromised. Else, we call it "confusion". I build controlled vocabularies, work with developers to have them impemented, make sure that ontology layer is not overlooked at project mangement level, and I dont' see your (albeing interesting) discussion can help me, and people like me
All of the people I've seen fail at applying *ontology* (and no, I'm not talking about controlled vocabularies, DEDs, thesauri, topic maps or any such) in "business" environments have one thing in common - they don't understand logic. Some also fail because they don't understand ontology. Now, some of "us guys" differ on what and how much "ontology" in the philosophical sense ought to be packed into the computational sense, but make no mistake - there is more agreement than disagreement on the fundamentals. Language and grammar are more relevant to ontology than mathematical logic the good news is you dont have to agree with what I say, cause you decide where your reality begins and where it ends (and so do I)
Perhaps, but I would not want one of your "ontologies" to be responsible for controlling a nuclear power plant.
.bill
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