>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. (01)
As you know, Patrick, I don't think this is even remotely feasible.
Whats more, it isn't necessary, even if it were feasible. Your
'foundation ontology', described below, will have different points of
view enclosed in 'contexts',and will be freely expandable, and will
have ontology-style definitions of concepts in terms of other
concepts, or more generally inferential connections between concepts.
This thing, under another name, is already being constructed. It is
called the Semantic Web. The ontologies in the SW are your
'contexts', and the entire SWeb, a world-wide distributed entity
always under construction and never finished, is your 'foundation
ontology'. But the main difference is that, rather than being built
by a committee and located in and controlled by a single institution,
it is being built by anyone who wants to get involved, is located
nowhere and everywhere, and is owned by nobody. (02)
Pat (03)
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