Gary
Berg-Cross, Ph.D.
EM&I
Semantic
Technology
Suite
350 455 Spring park Place
Herndon VA 20170
703-742-0585
http://colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?GaryBergCross
Executive
Secretariat
Spatial Ontology Community of Practice
(SOCoP)
http://semanticommunity.wik.is/Spatial_Ontology_Community_of_Practice
JFS>> But the types at the upper levels may
become very abstract
>> and sophisticated.
MW> I agree that
there are some abstract concepts. But they are
> relatively few (tens rather
than hundreds in an ontology of
> tens of thousands).
(013)
Yes, but those very
few concepts may have an enormous number of
implications. Otherwise, they wouldn't be in the
upper level. (014)
MW> Of course
those that are dealing with things at a lower level
> of abstraction do not even need
to be aware of these. Most
people
> are happy when they can see
that the next immediate supertype is
> appropriate. (015)
I agree. And that is why task-specific
interoperability has
worked so
successfully for people (and, I would claim, for most
computer agents as
well). (016)
JFS>> For
example, consider some of the sophisticated notions in
>> relativity and quantum
mechanics, which must be accommodated
>> by any truly global
ontology... (017)
MW> I would not
see this as upper ontology stuff at all. This
> is the stuff of detail at a
very low level of reality.
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
on behalf of John F. Sowa
Sent: Sun 3/16/2008 3:14 PM
To:
[ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology similarity and
accurate communication
Dear Matthew and Pat,
An integrating ontology is a goal
that many of us have been pursuing
for over 20 years:
PC> You
don't think you need to worry about the upper ontology for
>
integration?
>
> Then everyone will have their own
(potentially incompatible) meanings
> for person, place,
organization, time, object, substance, artifact
> (manufactured
object), event (happening), group, path, properties
>
(attributes/relations), organism, reasoning, emotion, gravity,
>
agents, goals, obligations, exchange, money, liquid flow....
I worry
about it constantly. The only correction I would make
to that point
is the replacement of "will have" with "does have".
If God handed down
Avril's "perfect" ontology on tablets of stone,
it would do as much to stop
the proliferation of ontologies as
His earlier tablets did to stop
vice.
Following is our current state:
1. We don't have a
perfect ontology, we don't know whether any
of our
very many proposed ontologies are even adequate, and
we
don't see anybody who has a current proposal
who is willing to
drop it in favor of any
other.
2. We do have billions, if not trillions, of dollars of
software
that supports the world's economy, and we
see legacy software
that is 40 years old or older
still in daily use -- none of
which is or will be
converted to any "integrating" ontology.
3. But we do see a
history of thousands of years of civilization,
in
which people with very divergent views manage to
cooperate
on task-specific terminology to
accomplish major goals.
As I have said many times, I have not abandoned
the search for
suitable foundations for ontology. But given the
above, the major
question is how to get from where we are to where we want
to be.
My suggestion is that point #3 is a good place to
start.
MW> When you develop your interfaces with a single ontology,
then
> for each system you have only one ontology to integrate
with,
> rather than one per system that you interface to. Also it
is the
> same ontology you integrate to for all systems, and that
is
> another benefit.
Yes, that has been the goal for at
least 20 years or more.
JFS>> But the types at the upper
levels may become very abstract
>> and
sophisticated.
MW> I agree that there are some abstract concepts.
But they are
> relatively few (tens rather than hundreds in an
ontology of
> tens of thousands).
Yes, but those very few
concepts may have an enormous number of
implications. Otherwise, they
wouldn't be in the upper level.
MW> Of course those that are dealing
with things at a lower level
> of abstraction do not even need to
be aware of these. Most people
> are happy when they can see
that the next immediate supertype is
> appropriate.
I
agree. And that is why task-specific interoperability has
worked so
successfully for people (and, I would claim, for most
computer agents as
well).
JFS>> For example, consider some of the sophisticated
notions in
>> relativity and quantum mechanics, which must be
accommodated
>> by any truly global ontology...
MW> I
would not see this as upper ontology stuff at all. This
> is the
stuff of detail at a very low level of reality.
I agree that we do
*not* want to put relativity and QM into
the upper levels. But by the
term 'accommodate' I meant that
the upper levels must be neutral with
respect to any or all
physical theories, including Newtonian, QM, string
theory, etc.
Whitehead's system achieves that, but without mentioning QM
or
relativity in any way.
MW> So what you are saying is that when
you are integrating
> some external ontology with yours, you do
not need to worry
> about its upper ontology. That I would agree
with.
Great! That is the primary point I wanted to emphasize,
and
I'm happy that we
agree.
John
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