Amanda, (01)
Thank you so much for all the wise reflections in your post below. (02)
I make some extracts, and use each one to briefly spotlight a few of the
corresponding needles in my own haystack that I have allowed to expand
in such a regrettably ad hoc way: (03)
> I would urge a different way of understanding upper ontology as
> practice, and upper ontologies as artifacts. I thnk we've often got
> things the wrong way-round. And I don't mean a simplistic version of
> Bottom-up vs Top-down. I am talking about emergence, but it seems to
> me essential that models be in development whereever people are driven
> to develop them. The good decision points seem to be where models
> meet, top and bottom, bottom and top. There is some very good reason
> not to let the top drive the bottom, in its initial development.*
> There is also reason to develop partial upper models independently.
> But the adequacy and correctness, not to mention usefulness (and its
> cousin, confirmability), of Upper Ontologies, and the formation of a
> whole, coherent one, if it will happen at all, must be a process of
> emergence from those meeting points. (04)
As it happens, that is an excellent summary of where the "Ride The
Mainstream!" project comes from and is going to (as is traceable back
from my last major post now at
http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2009-04/msg00016.html, with
http://TheMainstream.info/ as a quick provisional introduction). (05)
That heuristic strategy, cultivating emergence, is even implicit in the
project's name, evoking the all-inclusive process whereby greater
commonality, on a niche-wise basis, expressed as applied
ontologies/abstractions, is invented/discovered and further leveraged,
all in market mode, where the evolutionary Supply/Demand matching
captures the fascinating Top-down/Bottom-up duality you see is needed.
(Note how those 4 "/"-ed duals correspond.) (06)
But to get there it's handy to have a framework and an infrastructure
which can efficiently support the process of needs-discovery
and -addressing in such a way that the process produces reusable
products. As you say: (07)
> The ordinary process of modeling the things, types, and relations in
> some chunk of world is given focus by a need. (08)
Hence the market orientation reflected in
http://TheMainstream.info/Market.html. (09)
Your entire emphasis on context, relativity and the key role of SMEs
slots in snugly with the IS application component architecture I have
waffled on so much about on Ontolog for the past 16 months or so. I
have elsewhere made much of relativity (most distinct from relativism),
and of interoperation as transformation between viewpoints, with or
without the mediation of bridging axioms. (010)
Finally, you close with this wish: (011)
> I'd love to see us, the broader ontology and semantic technologies
> communities, putting more energy into such areas as comparison,
> testing, evaluation, and inter-ontology connections beyond full
> mapping and translation. Maybe some of that energy we could get by
> putting less into attempting to agree on, or get people to adopt, any
> particular Upper Ontology. (012)
That is what the architecture-canonical AOS-based infrastructure (of
networked Application Operating System-driven agents) is designed and
being programmed to do: function as a collaborative IDE for the design,
building, testing and deployment of ontology-based applications. It is
therefore based on a simple and provisional 'component reuse and
application interoperation' ontology, in effect defining a manageable
OOR infrastructure too. (013)
The process will be a stepping-stone to ever greater and more applicable
ontology commonality, affording greater component reusability, where
required at the upper levels too. But any such larger "upper" component
emerging from that market process will tend to follow before it can
lead. (014)
Needless to say, building that infrastructure will also sort out that
haystack of mine, with the resulting collaborative medium presenting
those and many other needles so that everybody will be able to use them
easily and contribute to their further exponential growth. (015)
So, Amanda, I look forward to your Riding The Mainstream too, in due
course, and meanwhile I re-invite anybody possibly so inclined to
consider climbing aboard sooner, onto that craft which we shall rebuild
together while afloat (to recall once again Otto Neurath's metaphor for
our philosophical predicament, which averts us so graphically and
memorably from the a priori foundationalism you have so well steered us
away from). (016)
Christopher (017)
----- Original Message -----
From: A. J. Vizedom
To: [ontolog-forum]
Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2009 11:34 PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] ISO merged ontology effort "MCO" (018)
John, et al., (019)
I've largely stayed out of this last round of upper ontology comparison,
partly due to lack of time and partly due to the deep sense that the
framing assumptions of the discussion are fundamentally off-track, (020)
Your remarks about the *methodology* at the heart of useful upper
ontology get at one aspect of this problematic framing. Thanks for
articulating it just so. On the heals of some good conversations at
last week's Ontology Summit, I'd like to add a few comments of my own. (021)
On Methodology and Ontology -- Yes. Yes, indeed. This is a little bit
different from, but related to, a concern I've raised previously. It's
a soap-box issue for me as an epistemologist, so let me minimize the
rant by stating the critical observations as a list without full
explanation. Further comment on any particular points is available on
request, of course (see: soap-box). ;-) (022)
Too many proponents of this or that Upper Ontology appear to be some
combination of the following:
epistemologically naive; confusing intuitive clarity with truth;
unconcerned with application (or at least, with the possibility of
clearly determining how the stuff folks need to reason about relates to
their theoretical model);
confusing elegance with truth; confusing simplicity with truth (that is,
rejecting complex, context-incorporating models as "relativistic,"
without being willing or able to consider that possibility that reality
requires complex, context-senstitive models; assuming that a single path
into modeling decisions (be it logical, introspective, or a particular
instance or type of application) will provide sufficient information on
which to ground a broadly applicable model; or making some other, less
uniquely ontological error conflating the outcome of personal debates
with evidentially significant trials. (023)
I would urge a different way of understanding upper ontology as
practice, and upper ontologies as artifacts. I thnk we've often got
things the wrong way-round. And I don't mean a simplistic version of
Bottom-up vs Top-down. I am talking about emergence, but it seems to me
essential that models be in development whereever people are driven to
develop them. The good decision points seem to be where models meet,
top and bottom, bottom and top. There is some very good reason not to
let the top drive the bottom, in its initial development.* There is also
reason to develop partial upper models independently. But the adequacy
and correctness, not to mention usefulness (and its cousin,
confirmability), of Upper Ontologies, and the formation of a whole,
coherent one, if it will happen at all, must be a process of emergence
from those meeting points. (024)
I offer some points in support of this understanding: (025)
The task or process of modeling all of the things, types, and relations
in some chunk of world is undoable. Applied ontology projects that begin
from this conception of their goal fail. They produce less structured,
complete, and coherent models than those that begin in more focused way,
if they produce anything at all. In as many cases, they never get going
or exhaust themselves in a futile quest for completion. After all,
however small a chunk of world you choose, you can always find more to
model. Ontology is fractal. (026)
The ordinary process of modeling the things, types, and relations in
some chunk of world is given focus by a need. It could be some reasoning
to support, some analysis to provide, some information to translate,
some service to expose semantically. If done well, the ontology
developers are able to get decent abstraction and reusability, not by
going up to an upper ontology, but by bringing in multiple angles on the
focus. For example, if the driving task deals with data, bringing in
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in the business processes or other
activities that use or produce the data, focusing on what they do with
it (decisions, belief formation) or to get it (factors, conditions,
limitations), can provide the balancing factor that moves the ontology
toward reusability, and brings more of the implicit assumptions to
light. That's generally good enough locally, and where the local context
does not require metaphysical specificity and future extension and
interoperability needs needs are unknown, it is better to make as few
metaphysical commitments as needed. Whatever are made beyond that likely
will not be grounded in what is known about the world being modeled. (027)
Within a small-scale, well-defined domain, it's often the case that
little or no upper ontology is needed. The need comes when we want to
cross contexts, however defined. There are many of us working projects
with semantic interoperability at their core, now. This may be one
reason a broader range of people are caring about upper ontologies
recently, and why some existing ones are being tried out in new
contexts. (028)
When a well-defined, context-specific ontology project occurs with
cross-domain interoperability in mind, part of the task becomes the
inclusion and/or connection with of defining concepts and relations that
possible non-domain users would recognize. Middle-to-upper ontology
questions come in quickly here, and naturally. SMEs understand and can
supply clarifying relations to such cross-domain concepts as Event,
Process, Place, Time, Individual, Organization, Information, Physical
thing. Supporting ontologists can ask the questions to identify what
well-defined concept a SME is invoking. Ontologists are better able to
ask the right questions and specifiy the right concepts because an
experienced applied ontologist is a sme about these mid-to-upper
concepts. The ontologist is therefore able to *ask the right questions*:
the questions that distinguish the upper categories from each other,
define the upper relations. (029)
If a single Upper Ontology has been pre-ordained, there is likely to be
difficulty here. In my experience, an upper ontology developed in one
context (application type or lack thereof, domain, people, etc), never
fits a new context nearly as well as one would have expected if it were
truly the sort of grounding, universal model its authors claim. From an
epistemological perspective, I find this immensely unsurprising. As a
dilletante fan of the cognitive sciences, I find it nearly impossible to
imagine how it could be other wise. Based on unscientific surveys of
other experienced, working, applied ontologists, I suspect that I am in
good company. From this perspective, it is a matter of head-shaking and
amazement that certain schools of ontologists continue to think that
they can generate something that fits naturally over ever good
middle-to-lower ontology by attempting the best abstraction, etc., they
can muster, with various rules and practices to guide them.
Nevertheless, all the normal rules of modeling apply. Things may be
missed or emphasized, overlooked or overfit, elegant/seductive but
unused/extra baggage. Ontological models are really not so different
from scientific models, in this way. Yes, you are trying to model
something real, and accurately. You never try to model all of it, nor
could you. You model the parts that matter for your activities. You
model the characteristics that might explain the observables of your
field, and so on. (030)
*This is not at all a disaster.* Nor does it spell the end of
abstraction, proper generality, and conceptual analysis across domains.
No more than location-based variations in perspective spell the end of
physics. It does mean a certain tolerance of complexity, of pockets of
unknownness. It does mean that we may ourselves not be able to see how
all the different perspectives fit together; that's a kind of
unknownness that some people find intolerable or equate with relativism
(in the sense that is opposed to realism). Nevertheless, acknowledging
the reality and complexity of context, and the fact that we have little
basis on which to declare its irrelevance or to predict the patterns
that might characterize it -- well, these all seem both unavoidable and
something we must grapple with. They are also a far, far cry from the
"anything goes" characterization that some send up in alarm. (031)
The best way to develop an upper ontology may be to let it emerge.
Pursue applied ontology projects as described above, and bring in the
upper (and upper-middle) as they are needed. Bring in higher level
concepts as you need them to connect concepts accross domains, to model
the logical behavior and other characteristics of the domain-specific
concepts, to avoid redundant and oddly-placed assertions on domain
concepts that can accurately be placed on shared concepts shared across
the domains. Now, every ontology project cannot and should not develop
its own theory of whatever middle and upper levels it needs. A better
approach is to import only what is needed, and to select from multiple
models based on evaluation against the specific need. (032)
If existing models are inadequate, the provision of this information may
inform efforts to extend, combine, or replace upper ontologies or
portions thereof. Patterns in which projects tend to make use of which
upper ontologies may also reveal errors (that matter only to certain
types of project), assumptions, dependencies and/or missing compentents
that can be modeled. Who knows, maybe such a process would emerge, in
the end, in a clear winner: a single Upper Ontology that is really the
best one. I'm happy to be neutral on that question. What seems clear to
me is that such clear winner -- a Best Upper Ontology -- sure as hell
*isn't* going to come about from Theorize and Impose from Above
approach, or be developed from a single domain or application context,
short of somebody showing up with an Improbability Drive. (033)
To enable this emergence, to let the meeting points be tested, it's
essential to keep the channells of visibility, criticism, shared use,
and implementable importation open. That way folks working as described
in #1 can find and select candidates to fill the higher-needs.
Supporting these channels is also essential to enabling semantic
technologies without forcing a single, inadequate model on everyone.
What most kills us is when the multiple models aren't visible, to
potential users or to each other, and time and energy are wasted
building things we don't need. It also kills us when people spend
hundreds of person-years trying to argue idealogically for one upper
ontology over another, instead of putting energy into supporting
attempts to hook real world middle and lower ontologies up to it, or
(Imagine!) listening, watching, and gaining understanding of what makes
and upper ontology useable or not usable, trying to improve it. Both of
these -- emergence of better middle-upper and potentially upper ontology
(via testing, improving, and so on across many use contexts) and
avoidance of wasted time and energy -- are among the reasons that
Ontolog and more domain-specific but still vital knowledge and ontology
sharing organizations, and their ontology repositories, are so vital. (034)
If we are keeping those channels open, the cost of allowing multiple
representations (and letting better and/or more comprehensive ontologies
emerge) is not so high. It's certainly lower than the cost of attempting
to enforce any existing Upper Ontology on everyone. The modularity of
ontology, and the support for modularity in the existing representations
and technologies, already go a great distance toward enabling successful
implentations and interoperability without a single, unifying theory at
the top. There is certainly more to do, more to solve. I'd love to see
us, the broader ontology and semantic technologies communities, putting
more energy into such areas as comparison, testing, evaluation, and
inter-ontology connections beyond full mapping and translation. Maybe
some of that energy we could get by putting less into attempting to
agree on, or get people to adopt, any particular Upper Ontology. (035)
Best,
Amanda (036)
* I mentioned above that there is good reason not to let the top drive
the bottom. I don't want to leave that totally unexplained, so let me
just throw in one more point that I see as badly under-appreciated: An
preponderance of evidence - research and experience - suggest that
middle-to-lower ontologies must be developed with as few mediators
between the SMEs and the semantically-explicit model as possible. In
practice, every additional layer of assistance/intervention adds a heap
of lost context (that is, meaning and dependence that is then never
captured -- a loss that reduces the reusability of the model), not to
mention misunderstandings, oversights, and the familiar bottleneck
factor. It's also multiply evident that SME's knowledge is often only
elicted accurately when they are able to exercise the kind of thinking
(pattern recognition over scenarios, for example) that they use when
applying the knowledge normally. A consequence of these facts (beyond
the prioritization of more and better tools to support SME knowledge
entry in such contextual, domain-appropriate, ontology-under-the-hood,
modes) is that when accuracy and efficiency really matter, as much as
possible, the development of mid-to-lower ontologies should be by SMEs
themselves, or by SMEs with ontologist assistance that does not derail
their expert thinking. (037)
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