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Re: [ontolog-forum] standard ontology

To: "'[ontolog-forum] '" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Ian Bailey" <ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:53:06 -0000
Message-id: <024b01c98bc9$f6909e50$e3b1daf0$@com>
Does anybody read past the first sentence before firing off responses to the
exploder  ?    (01)

As I said earlier, this is the IDEAS *foundation*. I did ask what your
understanding of "foundation" was in a previous posting...I guess I got my
response, albeit not quite in the manner I expected.     (02)

Under the foundation, we have common patterns for agent, process, etc.     (03)

As for syntax...I seem to recall getting a severe beasting from Pat for
suggesting RDF is just a syntax (it is). The IDEAS categories are
extensional, therefore tightly coupled to the real world. I can choose to
represent them in RDFS if I wish, 'cos it's a syntax. In the previous mail,
I represented them as a tree of text...which is also a syntax. I could also
barcode them on my backside, 'cos that's a syntax (in fact I have, but
that's a private matter). Because we bothered to record our criteria for
identity of the IDEAS categories, we can be confident of what they are.
Because we know what they are, we don't give a monkey's what we use to
represent them. I realise this a quite a long way down the mail, so you
won't be reading it, but here goes again:    (04)

INDIVIDUALS have spatio-temporal extent (i.e. you can kick them, or could
kick them in the past / future)
TYPES are identified by their members - which could be individuals, types or
tuples
TUPLES are identified by their ends    (05)

-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
Sent: 10 February 2009 21:27
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] standard ontology    (06)

Ian and Pat,    (07)

I agree with Pat:    (08)

PH> I wouldn't describe this list as an ontology at all, more
 > like the underlying formalism of an ontology. I would add
 > immediately that this isnt a clear boundary, but your list
 > here doesn't seem to be about the world being described so
 > much as about the apparatus you propose to use to describe it.    (09)

The following classification is closer to a description of the
permissible syntactic categories:    (010)

-Thing
   -Individual
   -Type
     -Powertype
     -TupleTyple
     -IndividualType
     -Name
     -NameType
   -tuple (thing, thing, thing, ...etc.)
     -couple (thing, thing)
       -superSubtype (type, type)
       -typeInstance (type, thing)
         -powertypeInstance (powertype, type)
         -nameTypeInstance (nametype, name)
       -namedBy (thing, name)
     -triple (thing, thing, thing)
     -quadruple (thing, thing, thing, thing)
     -quintuple (thing, thing, thing, thing, thing)    (011)

Common Logic, for example, is called a logic rather
than an ontology.  But it is possible to define a dialect
of CL that uses the labels above to name the syntactic
features of CL.    (012)

  - A thing is anything named by a CL name.    (013)

  - A type is a monadic relation that is used as a
    restriction on a quantified name.    (014)

But as Pat said, the boundary isn't clear.  You could say that
your system does make the following "ontological commitment":    (015)

  - If there exists a thing x and a thing y, then there exists
    a couple consisting of x and y.    (016)

In CLIF, that statement could be written as the following axiom:    (017)

    (forall (x y) (exists (z) (= z (couple x y))))    (018)

However, this level of commitment is far below what you would
get from adopting any first-order logic plus some obvious
mathematical theories that can be axiomatized in FOL:  sets,
functions, relations, integers, real numbers, etc.    (019)

But that is still very far from giving us an ontology that can
represent all the stuff of science, engineering, business, etc.    (020)

John    (021)



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