A comment on just one point from John: (01)
When the ontologies being
> compared have no common starting point, proving incompatibility is
> not at all easy (unfortunately, proving compatibility is not so easy
> either!). (02)
Ideally, the foundation ontology that serves as the conceptual defining
vocabulary will in fact have the common starting points that allows one
to show out how even relatively fundamental concept representations
differ from each other. If you have any thoughts about what concepts
need to be represented to do that, please let us know! (03)
Pat (04)
Patrick Cassidy
CNTR-MITRE
260 Industrial Way West
Eatontown NJ 07724
Eatontown: 732-578-6340
Cell: 908-565-4053
pcassidy@xxxxxxxxx (05)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
> bateman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 3:09 PM
> To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] A "common basis"
>
> Quoting Adam Pease <adampease@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> > ... While some folks want to keep claiming a common
> > ontology is somehow impossible, some of us having been doing the
> > "impossible" for years.
>
> There is an interesting shift in appraisal when one moves the
> "doing the impossible" to "spending one's time attempting
> the impossible", which may be a more accurate semantics
> for the "doing" here I think. The former is a wondrous feat,
> the latter is
> possibly a waste of time. We can let which it turns out to be, as you
> suggest, remain an empirical issue to avoid a lot of
> ideological keystrokes.
>
> > 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.
> >
>
> We are working on this. I don't think it is easy to come up
> with because
> getting clear what a "fully axiomatized example etc." is not in
itself
> a simple matter. You suggested yourself, Adam, that finding relations
> between different ontological categories may be impossibly difficult:
> remember the discussion of SUMO:Process, DOLCE:Perdurant, PSL:Process
> last year? (or was that another list...?). When the ontologies being
> compared have no common starting point, proving incompatibility is
> not at all easy (unfortunately, proving compatability is not so easy
> either!). But, as I said, we are working on this because our
framework
> does allow heterogenous and distinct theories to co-exist: we
> then try
> and prove
> (formally, not English text of hand-waving, but with theorem provers)
> relationships between those theories. We are considering methods for
> proving inconsistency that work for more than toy examples, but there
> is still some significant groundwork to get done. All of that
> groundwork
> requires richer notions of structure and modularities in
> ontologies than
> is commonly found in current offerings.
>
> My own take on this (but it will be an empirical matter :-) is that
we
> won't *need* 'a common basis' when we get this right.
> I spend a lot of my time teaching linguistics
> students not to take what they read in dictionaries too
> seriously, given
> that they are inherently out of date (by the time they are printed)
> and have foundational compromises that make them less than revealing (06)
> about many of the more useful words. So I'm afraid Pat C's sign of
> hope doesn't really
> compel either.
>
> I think it may be possible to pick a reasonably broad basis and then (07)
> go about defining everything one can think of in its terms:
> certainly
> gives one plenty to do. Whether one believes in the value of this as (08)
> an activity is another matter. But the issue will not be settled
> "easily" I fear and to suggest otherwise preempts some rather more
> solid results in the area.
>
> Best,
> John B.
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
> Subscribe/Config:
> http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
> Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
> To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> (09)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (010)
|