On Wednesday, January 21, 2009 7:02 PM, Patrick Cassidy (01)
"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."
I believe many agree to your suggestion. I wonder who will start posting
these ontology elements, and where. Thanks.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick Cassidy" <pat@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "'[ontolog-forum] '" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 7:02 PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Next steps in using ontologies as standards (02)
> 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.
>
>> 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.
>
> 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).
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> PatC
>
> Patrick Cassidy
> MICRA, Inc.
> 908-561-3416
> cell: 908-565-4053
> cassidy@xxxxxxxxx
>
>
>> -----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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