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Re: [ontolog-forum] A "common basis"

To: "[ontolog-forum] apease@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Duane Nickull <dnickull@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 11:47:36 -0700
Message-id: <C25E2AD8.E4B5%dnickull@xxxxxxxxx>
+1    (01)


On 5/2/07 11:39 AM, "Adam Pease" <adampease@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:    (02)

> 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.
> 
> Adam
> 
> 
> 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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