ontolog-forum
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [ontolog-forum] ISO merged ontology effort "MCO"

To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: John De Oliveira <johnd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Richard H. McCullough" <rhm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:14:03 -0700
Message-id: <D0E436D2F36F44F280AF550A091A1067@rhm8200>
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Patrick Cassidy" <pat@xxxxxxxxx>    (01)


> Responses to points from several participants:
>
> 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.
>
> [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.
#### There are commercial companies which are selling NL interfaces.
#### Dick McCullough
>
> [John Sowa] .    If Cyc has not already solved problem X with their
> ontology,
>    what makes you think that your proposed ontology will solve X?
>
> [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.    (02)

#### CycFoundation is doing exactly what you said CyCorp does not do.
#### It is building an open community of users/developers.
#### I think CycFoundation will be successful, and will have more & more
#### influence on what CyCorp does do.
#### Dick McCullough
>
> Pat
>    (03)



_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/  
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/  
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/ 
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    (04)

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>