Folks,
For what it's worth, this is an old debate and I thank Pat for
framing this as an issue that deserves experiment and not debate. SUMO
has been evolving to integrate concepts in a common ontology as needed
over about 5 years now. Cycorp has been doing the same for much longer
(protestations about microtheories notwithstanding since the very large
BaseKB is monolithic). While some folks want to keep claiming a common
ontology is somehow impossible, some of us having been doing the
"impossible" for years. If it's really impossible, it should be easy to
give a concrete, fully axiomatized example of irresolvable
incompatibility (not English text or hand-waving, but a real formalized
example). No one has yet done so. (01)
Adam (02)
Cassidy, Patrick J. wrote:
> Chris, John, et al:
> I think that a perfectly feasible "common basis" for
> interoperability and integration of multiple ontologies is a foundation
> ontology structured as a "conceptual defining vocabulary" that contains
> all the concepts that are necessary and sufficient to specify the
> meanings of any other more specialized concepts, using subclasses,
> relations, functions, and axioms all of whose constant terms are either
> (1) contained in the foundation ontology or (2) themselves specifiable
> (recursively, if necessary) by terms in the foundation ontology. The
> foundation will of course be expandable to include any primitive
> concept representations that are found to be needed as new specialized
> terms have their meanings specified using the foundation ontology (and
> its extensions specified recursively by it). It should be possible to
> include anything that anyone wants in it - no need for police here.
> Whether it will be necessary to include logically inconsistent elements
> in the foundation ontology is not clear yet; if so, a sequestering
> mechanism would be needed to be clear what the consequence is of
> adopting a representation inconsistent with the default (defined by
> majority vote for those who couldn't care less about the finer points
> of the standard). Naturally, different contexts and belief systems
> need to be able to be represented, in their own contexts.
>
> It is unlikely that any standard of any kind whatsoever would be
> accepted by "everyone" but that is not necessary. To have an effective
> standard for information interchange, it is only necessary to have a
> large enough user base so that third party vendors can make money
> building interfaces to make using it easy, and building applications
> that illustrate the utility of the standard.
>
> The feasibility is strongly suggested by the fact that such a principle
> has already been used for over twenty years by some dictionary vendors,
> who use a controlled "defining vocabulary" with which to define all the
> words (ca 100,000) in their dictionaries. Linguistic definitions of
> specialized terms will often use words not in the base 2000-word
> defining vocabulary, but the undefined words can themselves be defined
> by the base defining vocabulary. I did a test using the Longman's
> defining vocabulary and defined 500 words (including 'DNA') not in the
> base vocabulary and found that all of the definitions could be grounded
> (recursively, as explained) on the base defining vocabulary, with the
> need to add only two new words to the defining vocabulary itself
> ('dimension' and 'participant'). A simple utility that will allow you
> to test a definition against either the base controlled vocabulary
> (baseCV) or the supplemented vocabulary containing additional words
> defined with respect to the baseCV can be downloaded at:
>
> http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/SICoP/ontac/reference/ControlledVocabul
> ary/checkdefs.zip
>
> Since the words serve as labels for concepts, it is reasonable to
> expect that a similar process will allow identification of a core of
> foundation (primitive) concepts whose meanings are specified in
> relation to each other in a foundation ontology, and to use that
> foundation ontology to specify the meanings of more specialized
> concepts. The size of such a "conceptual defining vocabulary" is not
> known; I expect it to be at least 4000 concepts, and perhaps 6 to 10
> thousand. It's a question for experiment, not debate.
>
> This specific use of a foundation ontology has yet to be proven
> feasible, and it is one of the tasks I hope to be able to spend time on
> in the near future. I want to have the foundation ontology aligned
> with the linguistic defining vocabulary so that definitions in ordinary
> English will be automatically translatable into the ontological
> specification. I have expanded the COSMO ontology from the
> ONTACWG/COSMO effort, and created a merged foundation ontology from the
> most basic elements of OpenCyc and SUMO and BFO and added in a few
> other concept representations, but it is still at an early stage.
> There are about 3000 classes and 300 relations, and it is currently in
> OWL. The definitive version will have to be in a more expressive FOL
> language, possibly KIF, when properly developed. The current OWL
> version is available in the folder:
>
> http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/SICoP/ontac/reference/COSMO-ontology/
>
> The ontology is undergoing constant revision and the version number
> will be part of the file name.
>
> I will post a more detailed description of the project to the ontolog
> and ONTACWG lists within the week. Anyone who has any opinions on the
> topic is encouraged to make constructive suggestions, about structure
> or methodology. A project like this is more likely to succeed if it
> has multiple participants with different needs and views. It may never
> succeed if not, at some point, funded adequately to permit serious time
> from many participants.
>
> As Chris says, finding the common basis ontology is a really difficult
> problem, but one that I think should be given a serious try before
> anyone claims that it is not possible. One also needs to distinguish
> technical adequacy from social acceptability - two different issues,
> both important.
>
> Pat
>
> Patrick Cassidy
> CNTR-MITRE
> 260 Industrial Way West
> Eatontown NJ 07724
> Eatontown: 732-578-6340
> Cell: 908-565-4053
> pcassidy@xxxxxxxxx
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
>> Christopher Menzel
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 12:34 PM
>> To: [ontolog-forum]
>> Subject: [ontolog-forum] A "common basis"
>>
>> On May 2, 2007, at 9:39 AM, Patrick Durusau wrote:
>>> ...
>>> I attended a presentation on the use of ontologies at NASA and the
>
>>> speaker took great pains to point out that a single
>> ontology (well,
>>> multiple ontologies but with mappings to a single master ontology)
>
>>> was a prerequisite to success. When I asked if it wasn't possible
>>> to have mappings between multiple ontologies that did not share a
>>> common basis, he said that was possible, but that it was a
>>> difficult problem.
>> Holy smoke! The last 20 years would suggest it's the other way
>> round: It is (perhaps) possible to have a common basis for mapping
>> between multiple ontologies, but it is a (really) difficult
>> problem!
>> What did this guy have in mind as a "common basis"? If all the
>> speaker meant was some sort of overarching reference model in well-
>> circumscribed domain, then ok. But it sounds like he or she had
>> something more comprehensive in mind.
>>
>> -chris
>>
>>
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>
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> (03)
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