ontolog-forum
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology similarity and accurate communication

To: Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx>
Cc: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:25:28 -0500
Message-id: <47DF5248.4030703@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Pat,    (01)

My preference is to build ontologies from a library of modules
at varying levels of depth.  I'm not against the idea of putting
some axioms at a very high level for some kinds of reasoning.
Some of the *optional* modules might have very detailed and
very general axioms that are inherited by lower levels.    (02)

But I have serious doubts about legislating a one-size-fits-all
ontology with many *required* axioms at the upper levels.    (03)

MW>>> Not what I have seen, I see small number of important things,
 >>> but they are inherited by a lot of stuff, and thus support
 >>> consistency.
 >
JFS>> That's what I would call "an enormous number of implications".
 >> Every general property and mechanism of Animal has implications
 >> for Cat, Dog, Worm, Fish, Koala, Wombat, or Binturong.
 >
PH> But John, I believe you said in another thread that your ideal upper 
 > ontology would have no axioms in it. So what is there to infer from 
an > inheritance? What is there to inherit?    (04)

I was talking about Matthew's ontology.  I would not start with any
fixed upper level, but I believe we must accommodate any upper level
that Matthew or anybody else chooses to adopt.    (05)

John    (06)


_________________________________________________________________
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    (07)

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>