John,
Yes, you have completely misunderstood my proposal, and your description
of it shows why.
I have not suggested creating a terminology by using words as
representatives of primitive concepts, and at no time have I *ever* confused
words or other terms with the concepts that they label, nor with the logical
representations of the concepts that they label. I have suggested creating
a common foundation **ontology** that *includes* logical representations of
the concepts that are also represented by the Longman defining vocabulary.
The meanings of those logically represented concepts will be as unambiguous
as any logical representation can be, and their **computational behavior**
does not in any way depend on the human language used in the documentation,
nor on any errors in interpretation of that usage by humans who rely only on
the documentation. Any nuanced division/partition of a general concept
considered significant by any member of the consortium can also be included
(using a different label for each representation of a different meaning),
and the logical specification of each nuance of meaning will be different
from any other logical representation in the ontology. The labels used for
the logical specifications are ***irrelevant***, except insofar as they can
help (or mislead) *human* readers in understanding the intended meanings and
computational behavior of the logical specifications; but the real meanings
are determined only by the logical specifications themselves. The labels
can be gensyms (or can be replaced by pictures if the pictures could be used
as entity label in reasoning), without affecting the meaning of the logical
specifications. This is ***not*** a terminology, nor is it any attempt to
fix on a controlled terminology. The relations of the logical
specifications to human-language words are entirely dependent on the
preferred usage in different communities, and is a subject for natural
language understanding programs. The ontology itself is independent of
language. The focus on conceptual primitives is not a *requirement* for
creating an effective foundation ontology that is useful for translating
among multiple ontologies (or databases), but is a tactic that can help
focus the initial effort and minimize the size of the ontology that is the
initial goal. As it gains in usage, the foundation ontology and all of the
other ontologies in the resulting lattice of theories can be expanded or
modified. (01)
> 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.
>
As Pat Hayes pointed out, all of his time theories can be "expressed by"
(Pat Hayes's phrase) axioms containing only three classes, time point, time
interval, and duration. That is ***exactly** the same sense in which I have
said that a very large number of complex concepts (such as, but not
restricted to, concepts defined by necessary and sufficient conditions) or
theories can be represented as combinations of the primitive concepts. I am
using a different terminology than Pat Hayes, but I am expressing
**exactly** the same idea. I go a little further, in suggesting that there
is likely a lot of benefit in identifying those basic concepts, not just for
the time theories, but for all the other theories and concepts in domain
ontologies that can be expressed by axioms using the basic concept
representations. It is useful to distinguish the theories and complex
concepts that can be expressed by the basic concepts from the basic concepts
themselves, so as to minimize the number of concepts that can be included in
the first version of the FO. (02)
If you think there are no such things as basic concepts that can be
distinguished from theories that are expressed by those basic concepts,
please argue the point with Pat Hayes, he has been saying the same thing
(using different words) for years. He also seems to have persistently
misinterpreted what I have been suggesting - except that we may disagree on
the number of the basic concepts, not their existence - but I'm not sure of
that, because he hasn't yet acknowledged that the basic concepts he uses to
express his time theories are the same sort of thing as my "primitives", and
he hasn't yet suggested an alternative term to label that class of things
(the class that contains representations of the concepts TimePoint,
TimeInterval, and Duration, but not the theories expressed by using those
concepts). (03)
None of that says that the different time theories, or any other logically
inconsistent set of alternative theories, can be made **logically
consistent** by finding these basic concept representations, nor can they be
"reduced" to each other. The relations of the theories can be discovered by
inspecting their different representations that use the same set of basic
concepts. Logically inconsistent theories will be part of a lattice of
theories. Just how much of the lattice should be maintained by the
consortium is for the consortium to decide. What we don't know now, but
can discover by the consortium process, is just how large a group of
logically consistent ontology elements can be agreed on, whether they are
considered "basic" or not. Learning this is something I feel certain will
help advance the art and science of ontology. I think that knowing the
extent of agreement on the basic concepts will be better than not knowing,
even if there are some people who are not interested, and even if it turns
out that the number of "primitives" is actually unlimited. (04)
There probably are some genuine differences in our opinions on the issues we
have been discussing but they have been horribly confused by the
misinterpretations that you and Pat Hayes have been putting on the things I
have been saying. (05)
PatC (06)
Patrick Cassidy
MICRA, Inc.
908-561-3416
cell: 908-565-4053
cassidy@xxxxxxxxx (07)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
> Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 2:35 AM
> To: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Next steps in using ontologies as
> standards
>
> Pat,
>
> 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.
>
> PC> It is clear that you have completely misinterpreted the
> > proposal I have been making.
>
> I'll summarize your proposal:
>
> 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.
>
> 2. Use those primitives to define a much larger vocabulary of
> terms and thereby relate them by means of those primitives.
>
> 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:
>
> energy. The power which does work and drives machines:
> atomic/electrical energy | the energy of the sun.
>
> 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.
>
> 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...
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> That distinction creates an inherent conflict:
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> John
>
>
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