Responses to points from several participants: (01)
RHM: > We will advance the state of the art more quickly by building useful
single ontologies for particular applications, instead of searching for an
upper ontology which is suitable for all applications. (02)
[PC] That would definitely be helpful. But since there are no such
practical applications yet accessible to the general public, my suggestion
for a Foundation Ontology project includes the development of some practical
applications, among which I would recommend a basic natural Language
capability (5-6 year old English speaker) and integration of several
databases as examples. These efforts would in my expectation be synergistic
and would benefit from the integrating effect of the common FO. If we want
real practical applications **available to public inspection**, the public
is going to have to pay for it. (03)
[John Sowa] . If Cyc has not already solved problem X with their
ontology,
what makes you think that your proposed ontology will solve X? (04)
[PC] Because the issue isn't the quality of the ontology. Cyc hasn't
focused enough effort on developing a **publicly available** application
that will demonstrate the utility of the ontology. Because we already have
the benefit of a lot of Cyc's effort, which does not have to be reproduced,
we can focus on the missing parts. In particular we need a good Natural
Language interface that can hold a coherent basic conversation. I do not
know exactly how much effort Cyc has spent on such an application, but in
spite of the asserted goal of 'commonsense reasoning', the evidence I have
seen is that most of their effort was diverted into very domain-specific
work. Building an open community of users that can all contribute to the
common project is a very, very different development method than that used
by Cyc (any improvement directly benefits the contributor, who can use the
improved system freely). The FO project will create a **scientific
community** of developers that have a common paradigm of meaning and of
natural language processing, who can evolve the integrated system
incrementally and that will have a much better chance of making progress
than any local group. The development method is very different from any
available to a small commercial concern. (05)
[Ed Barkmeyer] > Well, Pat, think of it this way. The effort to create a
universal reference upper ontology with that kind of mandate will be about
power, not quality. It will be primarily governed by money and politics,
not technical excellence, and not knowledge engineering in the field. And
my 40+ years of experience warns me the result could be the Windows of upper
ontologies, and 10 years later we will have patched it into an upper
ontology that can just barely support most industrial applications. (06)
[PC] Disagree, for three reasons: (1) By having an ontology open to
modification and modular applications open to modification, the FO project
will have the capability of evolving to include any technical improvement
that anyone can think of; Technical excellence is far more likely by this
tactic than with any local development project. (2) The effect will be
precisely to avoid the compulsion effect of one commercial concern forcing
its preferences on a reluctant public by market power; the open community of
developers will be able to modify the ontology and applications of the FO
project rapidly, an effect completely closed to commercial projects like
those of Microsoft. (3) Public Money will be important to get the project
started, but the development and maintenance will depend on many local
efforts, some of which may be paid for by local sources. Since the ontology
and applications will be modular, volunteer effort on single parts will be
more practical, increasing the size of the developer base. (07)
Pat (08)
Patrick Cassidy
MICRA, Inc.
908-561-3416
cell: 908-565-4053
cassidy@xxxxxxxxx (09)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Richard H. McCullough
> Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 1:50 PM
> To: edbark@xxxxxxxx
> Cc: '[ontolog-forum] '
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] ISO merged ontology effort "MCO"
>
> Ed
>
> I agree with you.
>
> Let me paraphrase these ideas in my own words
> (plus some words borrowed from other people).
>
> The picture that is emerging in my brain is the following.
> The ontology of ontologies
> [Sowa's lattice of theories]
> [Cyc's lattice of genlMt and specMt relations]
> is much more complex than any single ontology of concepts.
> The desired upper ontology can be identified from this
> ontology of ontologies.
>
> We will advance the state of the art more quickly by
> building useful single ontologies for particular applications,
> instead of searching for an upper ontology which is suitable
> for all applications.
>
> Dick McCullough
> http://mkrmke.org
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ed Barkmeyer" <edbark@xxxxxxxx>
> To: "Patrick Cassidy" <pat@xxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: "'[ontolog-forum] '" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 9:32 AM
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] ISO merged ontology effort "MCO"
>
>
> > Patrick Cassidy wrote:
> >
> >> The caveat is, that the process of waiting patiently while
> ontology
> >> applications develop and haltingly find themselves wanting to
> >> interoperate
> >> with others, and little by little finding commonalities that they
> can
> >> share,
> >> is at best slow and I suspect will take generations to arrive at
> anything
> >> like a usable common standard of meaning that is useful for
> widespread
> >> accurate interoperability.
> >
> > Well, at the rate of 1 "generation" per 5 years in the IT community,
> the
> > fact that it might indeed require 2-3 generations does not strike me
> as
> > daunting. Further, if knowledge engineering of the ontology kind
> > actually becomes a major part of software engineering, instead of an
> > academic exercise in tool building and a government experiment in
> > technologies for classified applications, the experience curve will
> be a
> > lot steeper.
> >
> > It is my impression that the existing upper ontology work has
> > demonstrated all of the following:
> > - that there are certain essentially mathematical concepts that can
> be
> > codified and shared by many practical ontologies
> > - that beyond that one can create several levels of upper categories
> > that solve no problem of themselves and are directly useful only to
> the
> > development of possibly useful mid-level ontologies that still solve
> no
> > problem of themselves.
> > - that the upper level categorization requires ontological
> commitments
> > that are largely irrelevant to the real problem spaces but create
> > serious impediments to the merger of mid-level ontologies.
> >
> > John Sowa will doubtless tell us that Cyc -- the mysterious and
> powerful
> > Oz -- has seen all of this and conquered it (if only they could tell
> > us). (And if true, it would not be the first time that a military
> > technology had to be rediscovered/reinvented by others in order to
> > become a useful technology.)
> >
> > What Amanda proposes is that we get some real experience using
> > ontologies in more than the biomedical and intelligence communities
> > before we leap to the conclusion that some particular Gedanken
> > experiment will be useful in solving arbitrary unknown problems.
> > And that experience is actively being acquired as we write -- the
> first
> > "generation" began several years ago.
> >
> >> The pace thus far suggest to me that no one
> >> participating in this list will live to see any widespread adoption
> of
> >> broad
> >> cross-domain interoperability by this method. That would be fine if
> >> there
> >> were no costs to waiting, but there are large costs. We not only
> lose
> >> the
> >> economic efficiency derivable from data interoperability, we lose
> the
> >> potential new and more powerful applications that could be developed
> more
> >> rapidly by communities that can learn from each other's results
> because
> >> they
> >> use a common standard of meaning.
> >
> > Well, Pat, think of it this way. The effort to create a universal
> > reference upper ontology with that kind of mandate will be about
> power,
> > not quality. It will be primarily governed by money and politics,
> not
> > technical excellence, and not knowledge engineering in the field.
> And
> > my 40+ years of experience warns me the result could be the Windows
> of
> > upper ontologies, and 10 years later we will have patched it into an
> > upper ontology that can just barely support most industrial
> > applications. So, if you want to risk repeating the 1990s, all ahead
> > full and damn the torpedos.
> >
> > I, for one, would prefer to see the next 5+ years spent on in vivo
> > testing of knowledge engineering concepts, and on the development of
> a
> > discipline. Think of it as the medical experience that will give us
> > some knowledge of the required properties of your panacea.
> >
> > -Ed
> >
> > --
> > Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
> > National Institute of Standards & Technology
> > Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
> > 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528
> > Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694
> >
> > "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
> > and have not been reviewed by any Government authority."
> >
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