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Re: [ontolog-forum] Next steps in using ontologies as standards

To: "'[ontolog-forum] '" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Matthew West <dr.matthew.west@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 14:59:14 -0000
Message-id: <4975e6d0.04a1260a.5724.7229@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Dear Colleagues,    (01)

Well with all this talk of "Chris's Book" let's at least give a proper
reference.    (02)

Partridge, C. Business objects: re-engineering for re-use,
Butterworth-Heinemann, (second edition) 2005, The Boro Centre    (03)

I recommend it too.    (04)

Of course all this talk of extensionalism means that you are 4D. But that is
the price of simplicity.    (05)

Regards    (06)

Matthew West
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/     (07)


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
> Sent: 20 January 2009 14:51
> To: ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Next steps in using ontologies as
> standards
> 
> Ian,
> 
> Please do not confuse me with Pat Cassidy.
> 
>  > The initial approach we took is very similar to the one suggested
>  > by John below...and it was a miserable failure.
> 
> In that note, I was not suggesting any approach.  What I was trying
> to do is to convince Pat that the approach he was proposing was a
> dead end.
> 
>  > 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).
> 
> I  agree with that.
> 
>  > 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.
> 
> I think very highly of Chris Partridge and his book, and I believe
> that his technique is light-years ahead of any approach that starts
> with concepts -- or even worse with RDF and OWL.  One of the best
> features of his book is that he emphasizes *logic*.
> 
>  > 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).
> 
> I very strongly agree.  RDFS and OWL are horrible examples of how
> *not* to design an ontology language.  The designers started with
> two disastrous implementation-based assumptions:
> 
>   1. They wanted to reuse their XML-based parsing tools by forcing
>      everything into the world's worst syntax.
> 
>   2. They forced a weird semantics in which the only relations
>      are dyadic.  That means that you can't even say 2+2=4
>      because the "+" operator is triadic:  it takes two inputs
>      and generates one output.
> 
> These two blunders are the source of those bizarre features you
> mention above.  You can't entirely ignore RDF and OWL because
> they were foisted on a large set of people who didn't know enough
> to see that they were dupes in a Ponzi scheme.  But you should
> always preserve your sanity by thinking in terms of something
> better, and Chris P's book is a good place to start.
> 
> John Sowa
> 
> 
> 
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>     (08)


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