Folks, (01)
In the IDEAS Group we have a consortium of a reasonable size (with
representatives from the defence depts of Australia, Canada, Sweden, UK &
US). We didn't actually set out to develop an ontology. What we wanted to do
was share information (related to enterprise architecture) between the
nations. The initial approach we took is very similar to the one suggested
by John below...and it was a miserable failure. If you try to work
concept-by-concept, it's doomed to failure. You can never be sure that you
have full consensus between everyone in the room, because you can't be sure
that one person's understanding of a concept is precisely the same as
another's (no matter how long you debate it). One of two things happen; you
make no progress because you can't reach agreement, or one dominant
personality railroads the whole thing. In my experience over several
standards projects, the loudest voice rarely belongs to the most competent
person, so neither of these outcomes is favourable. (02)
Facing a lack of modelling progress in IDEAS, we went back to the drawing
board and decided we'd try a formal method for analysis. We chose Chris
Partridge's BORO method, as a few of us had read his book and wanted to give
it a try. It has the advantage of ignoring ideas such as "concepts" and
"terms". It's ruthlessly extensional - individuals are identified by their
physical extent, classes by their members, and relationships by their ends.
Once you've figured out something's extent, you can then apply whatever
names you want to it. The process can be achingly slow, but at least it gets
results, and the results can't be refuted. (03)
Not so long after we started on IDEAS, I went to a NATO workshop on
terminology. It was facilitated by someone we were told was a guru at this
sort of thing. His approach was to work concept-by-concept and we hit the
same problems we'd just got over in IDEAS. In a three day workshop they
managed to produce three terms for the glossary. There were about fifteen
people in the room, so that's fifteen man-days per concept. If you plan to
work on Longman's dictionary, you'd better have plenty of time on your hands
and the patience to deal with a room full of experts. (04)
Another tip is to sort out your ontic categories early on. I'm not sure OWL
and RDFS give you a proper foundation for ontology development - there are
some very strange things in the W3C spec about how an individual in one
ontology can be a class in another (bizarre even in an intensional
approach). We published the IDEAS foundation elements on the website -
http://www.ideasgroup.org/3Foundation/ - and you're more than welcome to
re-use them. (05)
I'm not suggesting you use BORO if you set out to develop your foundation
ontology, but I think you do need some very strong criteria about how you
identify things. Going extensional solves the problem of identity, but does
mean that the ontology developers have to think a lot harder about what
they're doing, and ground all their work in the real world. Not usually a
problem if they're philosophers or logicians, but if they're computer
scientists, you're going to spend the first six months coaxing them out of
the Matrix and back into the real world. Intensional approaches seem to suit
information technology folks a bit better, but I'm not aware of any
water-tight methods in this area. (06)
The problem in standards development is one of personalities (and there are
some very strong ones in information management disciplines). Additionally,
there are issues of reputation and commercial interests to consider (if a
standard goes a certain way, it could close the market for a vendor, or
negate ten years of academic research). One way to bypass the egos and
hidden agendas is to get them all to sign up to a method that guarantees
results. They might not all like the results they get, but at least they're
defensible. My old job was developing ISO data standards (esp. in ISO10303)
and I've got to say that if we'd had a method like BORO when developing some
the data models there, we'd have done it in half the time and saved a lot of
arguing (some of the people involved still don't speak to each other). (07)
Cheers (08)
Ian Bailey
www.modelfutures.com (09)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
Sent: 20 January 2009 07:35
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Next steps in using ontologies as standards (010)
Pat, (011)
I know *exactly* what you are trying to do, and your comments
show that you haven't seriously examined the definitions in
Longman's dictionary, which you keep citing as a paradigm. (012)
PC> It is clear that you have completely misinterpreted the
> proposal I have been making. (013)
I'll summarize your proposal: (014)
1. Find a set of primitive concepts that are common to all
natural languages. These would be similar to the defining
vocabulary of Longman's dictionary for students who are
learning English as a second language. (015)
2. Use those primitives to define a much larger vocabulary of
terms and thereby relate them by means of those primitives. (016)
This idea is not bad for writing a dictionary that is intended
to be used by students who *already* learned the concepts in
their native country and just need to learn the English words
for them. Just look at a typical definition: (017)
energy. The power which does work and drives machines:
atomic/electrical energy | the energy of the sun. (018)
If the students had already learned the concept, this kind
of definition would enable them to relate the English word
'energy' to their previous knowledge. But for an ontology,
this definition is worthless. In physics, the words 'energy',
'work', and 'power' express three different, but related
concepts that are defined by different formulas. For an
ontology, the above definition would be worse than useless
-- because it happens to be false. Almost every definition
in that dictionary is either false or hopelessly vague. (019)
PC> The whole point of creating an FO by a large consortium
> is precisely to be certain that the views representing many
> different interests and ways to express knowledge are taken
> into account... (020)
A consortium or committee is good for evaluating proposals,
but they can't solve the unsolvable. Just look at the way
the Newtonian concepts of space, time, mass, and energy
evolved in the progression to relativity and quantum mechanics. (021)
Those words are used in all three theories (and many other
variations). But those words are *not* defined in terms of
primitives. They are related to one another by various
equations. Furthermore, the equations in the three theories
are not only different; they are contradictory. There is
nothing that remotely resembles defining primitives. (022)
That observation is true for every formal ontology. There
are no primitives. There are just equations (or other
kinds of formulas) that relate the terms. The words in
one theory and its successors are frequently the same
or similar. But the equations that relate them are
very different. (023)
There's a fundamental reason why it's impossible to use any
subset of natural language vocabulary as ontological primitives:
NL words are intended to be used in a open-ended number of ways,
but ontological terms are absolutely precise within the scope
of a particular theory. (024)
That distinction creates an inherent conflict: (025)
1. There are common ideas expressed in the basic vocabularies
of many different languages, as many people such as Len Talmy
and Anna Wierzbicka have shown. But the corresponding words
are vague, with many different *microsenses* that vary from
one "language game" to another. (026)
2. Formal ontologies and scientific theories require sharply
defined terms that denote values that can be measured
precisely. Those terms are defined only within a formal
theory (or language game), and any paraphrase in the words
of #1 is at best a vague approximation. (027)
The Longman's defining terms (or anything similar, such as
Wierzbicka's primitives) are inherently vague. They cannot
be used to define ontological terms that must have a precise,
formally defined sense. (028)
John (029)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Config Subscr: 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 join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (030)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Config Subscr: 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 join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (031)
|