>What
George E.P. Box said about models (?All models are wrong, but some are
useful.?) is true for ontologies as well.
>AA:
Wrong. This is the whole point of ontology to create true models of the world,
formal and informal, analytic and desciptive.
Andreas
is right, Azamat.
AA:
Now you are both wrong :-).
An
ontology is a model and inherits all the limitations of any other model of the
world.
There
are models and models. Take a fashion model, of local scale and global range.
The same goes for real ontology, a global model of things, physical and
digital.
Models are at best incomplete representation of the world.
AA:
Models are at worst incomplete representation of the world. At
best they are complete and consistent with the facts, reality and the world.
This is what is defined as true.
There
is no such thing as a single ?true? representation of any aspect of the
world.
AA:
wonder if anybody called for this thorny issue now.
In
fact, I think ?true? is a red herring;
AA:
Don't see any point here if "red herring" is any diversion from the main
issue.
the
most desirable (if not only) objective for a model is fidelity and accuracy
with respect to purpose.
AA:
This is all kinds of truth, to remind the meaning of "accurate", it is
what "conforming exactly to truth or a standard".
Azamat
Bill
From:
ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
AzamatAbdoullaev
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 10:40
AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Cc: vasile.mazilescu@xxxxxxx;
semantic-web@xxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Just What Is an
Ontology, Anyway?
Responding to the seemingly
eternal question: what is ontology? I suggest a simple answer, the World
Desciption Framework, WDF, giving basic meanings to information, and
incorporating all the generic and specific schemas and models and
theories,like RDF, E-R Model, upper ontologies, CL, common metadata models, OO
models, UML, etc.
What also concerns: we
hotly discuss the same issues on <what ontology and semantic web might
be> for a rather long time trying to set the frontier of the research,
while the "periphery" is coming up with really innovative ideas (see
the attached PDF Doc on the Intelligent Knowledge Management and Universal
Knowledge Technology from Romania).
PS: If we are aimed
at semantic interoperability, it would be good to try the
concept from the exchange of information between the two closed fora, SW
and Ontolog.
----- Original
Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, October
27, 2009 8:53 PM
Subject: Re:
[ontolog-forum] Just What Is an Ontology,
Anyway?
This
viewpoint is not completely new to everyone. In particular in the modeling
& simulation community, the idea that each model represents ? very
similar to an ontology ? a viewpoint needed to address a given challenge
(the model was build to help solving a problem, and the viewpoint needed to
solve the problem becomes the viewpoint of the model) becomes predominant.
Each model is a purposeful abstraction and simplification of reality, again
similar to an ontology.
AA:
Right.
What
George E.P. Box said about models (?All models are wrong, but some are
useful.?) is true for ontologies as well.
AA:
Wrong. This is the whole point of ontology to create true models of the
world, formal and informal, analytic and desciptive.
iIn
other words: each ontology contributes a different facet to a description,
and in order to get the whole picture, all facets are
needed.
The
only common ontology description integrating everything is the world
AA:
Here is the confusion of the universe of discourse and the discourse itself.
See on the WDF above.
(if
we exclude imagination of what could be to make the problem a little bit
easier), but we could not use the world to answer our problem in the first
place, that is why we developed a simpler model for our
use.
Long
story short: we do not need a common ontology,
AA:
that's a strategic mistake.
but
we need a common way to describe our work allowing the mediation of
viewpoints. As our worldviews differ in scope (what we look at), resolution
(detail we are looking at), and structure (categorization of what we are
looking at), these mediations will not always be loss-free, but that is part
of the nature of the beast.
It
seems like we are starting to come to very similar observations and reach
mappable conclusions in different scientific domains.
Andreas
From:
ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Burkett,
William [USA]
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 2:30
PM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum]
Just What Is an Ontology, Anyway?
Bravo,
Rich ? this is the first time I?ve heard anyone in any of these ontology/SUO
forums stress so strongly the human-factor aspect of data semantics.
I?ve been trying to argue this point for years but to most CS-trained
individuals it just falls on deaf ears. I even have a nice
little catchy name for the theory: ?Data Is Speech?.
As you suggest, there will be multiple ontologies (or whatever you want to
call them) to formally represent different views of the word and they will
need to be quickly adaptable to changing business requirements . And
the one significant missing and way way underserved ingredient is mapping
and translation technology.
Bill