Just one response to a comment from John Sowa:
[JS] Those 2000 defining terms in the Longman's dictionary do not map to
primitive predicates in logic. Instead, they are tokens in Wittgensteinian
language games, and each term has a different *microsense* in each possible
game. Each department in the same company will use a different collection
of language games with different microsenses for the same terms. (01)
I don't think that is the case. Cheng-ming Guo in Wilks's group did a study
of the Longman defining vocabulary and concluded that as few as 1433 words
(a subset of the published defining vocabulary) representing 3280 senses
were required to define the remaining Longman defining vocabulary.
Definitely more than one sense per word, and the closed-class words (e.g.
prepositions) tend to be more polysemous than most, but still limited. Just
how sensitive these senses are to context is an open question. Wittgenstein
is not the last word, and the question of whether "microsenses" really does
expand indefinitely the inventory of primitives is merely a theory with no
experimental support. This is an issue that is very important and should be
studied properly in the context of a logic-based ontology on which
experiments with reasoners can be performed. The ancient technology of
textual discussion using words whose meanings can shift from paragraph to
paragraph has been superseded, and we really should take advantage of
current tools to do a proper investigation. (02)
Such an investigation would be a necessary part of the collaborative
foundation ontology development. (03)
Pat (04)
Patrick Cassidy
MICRA, Inc.
908-561-3416
cell: 908-565-4053
cassidy@xxxxxxxxx (05)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 12:05 PM
> To: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Next steps in using ontologies as
> standards
>
> Folks,
>
> More comments on the recent notes:
>
> JFS>> If the federated ontologies are organized in a hierarchy,
> >> I would consider that a reasonable way to start.
>
> AA> It is. A Top-Bottom Globally Federated Ontology (GFO).
> > I wonder how do you think it should be kicked off?
>
> In publications and email notes, I discussed the organization of
> a family of ontologies as a lattice of theories. But an infinite
> lattice is obviously too big to be implemented. To avoid confusion,
> I suggest that we call the collection of *implemented* theories
> (ontologies) a *hierarchy*.
>
> The hierarchy would only only contain a tiny fraction of the
> total lattice, but the relations among theories would be the
> same: generalization and specialization define a partial order;
> a family of closely related ontologies all have a common
> generalization; two ontologies that are inconsistent have the
> absurd theory at the bottom as their only common specialization.
>
> As many people have observed, it is difficult to compute those
> relations for any two arbitrary theories. However, it is much
> easier to use those relations for *generating* or *designing*
> ontologies. Whenever you combine two modules (smaller theories),
> the larger one is automatically a common specialization. Whenever
> you delete axioms, the new theory is always a generalization.
>
> I would start the development with a registry that would allow
> anyone to register their favorite ontologies. The relationships
> among them would be computed by reviewers and users who do the
> work of adapting them for their own purposes and reporting their
> studies, observations, calculations, experiences, and results.
>
> DC> The trick is to find the organization in the US Government
> > that would fund such an effort...
>
> The initial stage could be kicked off very quickly with a minimum
> of effort and expense. As people begin to use the hierarchy, more
> structure and policies could be added to systematize those ways
> of using it that have proved to be the most productive. If and
> when it proves to be valuable, more groups would join. As an
> example of a successful collaboration by independent companies
> and individuals, see the Eclipse project, http://www.eclipse.org .
>
> RW> I do not object to government participation as long as there are
> > 99 other organizations with $100,000 worth of skin in the project.
>
> I suggest Eclipse as a model to emulate. It started with software
> contributed by IBM from a project that had been terminated. It grew
> by collaboration of businesses and individuals, and it continues to
> attract open source software from a variety of areas.
>
> MB> The participants [in the ISO 20022 financial messaging standard]
> > were mostly business subject matter experts. However, some of those
> > experts were used to looking at data in a real time market data feed,
> > so that the value of a variable was as of "now", while other experts
> > were from the back office, where they dealt with the terms that
> > are set up for a security for all time...
>
> That is true of any field. Different people for different purposes
> view the same or related things from different perspectives. In any
> company, the engineering, manufacturing, sales, financial, legal,
> and human resources departments will have very different views,
> terminology, and ways of thinking about the same things and events.
> The customers and suppliers of that company will have an even more
> varied way of talking and thinking about their interactions with
> that company and its products and services.
>
> Those 2000 defining terms in the Longman's dictionary do not map
> to primitive predicates in logic. Instead, they are tokens in
> Wittgensteinian language games, and each term has a different
> *microsense* in each possible game. Each department in the
> same company will use a different collection of language games
> with different microsenses for the same terms.
>
> In terms of the hierarchy of ontologies, it is possible to have
> very underspecified (general) ontologies for common terms that
> are shared by different departments. But those very general
> ontologies are specialized in different ways for the microsenses
> used in each department.
>
> For more about these ideas, see the paper I presented at FOIS 2006:
>
> http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/dynonto.htm
> A Dynamic Theory of Ontology
>
> John Sowa
>
>
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