"Database data models are sometimes
referred to as ontologies, although ontologies have constraints and
inferential rules in addition to entity relationships. An ontology is one way
of structuring conceptual models into classes, objects and relationships among
the objects. An upper level ontology of concepts has been suggested among the
community of philosophers, logicians and software engineers as an initial
ontology for applications. The IEEE Standard Upper Ontology (SUO) working
group applied some of the world's best logicians, philosophers and linguists
to the problem of choosing at least a small "universal" ontology based on a
conceptual framework. This is one approach to narrowing context, but is not
specifically linguistically based. Ontologies are presently being studied in
many areas, but have not made much commercial progress, perhaps with Cyc as
the most well known example. And even after years of searching, the SUO group
was unable to agree on a suitable top level ontology. One conclusion many SUO
members reached was that no universal ontology exists because the meaning of
classes, objects and relationships constitute subjective experiences on the
part of the sending and receiving agents, and do not represent abstract
properties of reality...Ontologies as actually used by people are empirically
developed through individual experience, rather than abstractions describing
reality in some objective way."
RC> Thank you for
focusing so cleanly on that observation. It seems clear to me. Did
I misstate anything, in anyone?s opinion, in that
quote?
That message from SUO
was a clear one to all concerned, I believe, that only subjective theorizing,
classifying, experimenting and observing within a database can recreate a
human ontology. Objective methods are more likely to be used in
communications among differing subjective models ? in the mapping from one to
another. The problem of communicating from the point of two different
ontologies seems to me to be the exact central point of this email group?s
focus.
What am I missing
Azamat, or do I simply misunderstand your question
?
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT
com