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Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontologies as social mediators

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Cc: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: "doug foxvog" <doug@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 4 Dec 2009 03:58:17 -0000 (GMT)
Message-id: <2789.74.96.159.7.1259899097.squirrel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
John A. Yanosy Jr. wrote:    (01)

> My understanding is that instances in a domain identified by some symbol
> are asserted to be members of a specific Ontology concept, thus having
> potential property relationships to other individuals and their denotation
> symbols in other concepts in the Ontology. Whether these symbols denote
> real objects in a domain of discourse or states of affairs or situations
> is immaterial, the relationship between the symbol and something in the
> real or human conceptual world is entirely defined by humans.    (02)

It is defined by humans; but humans may have programmed computers to act
on the basis of the definitions they programmed.  Thus there may be an
operational meaning to the terms implicit in the coding.    (03)

> If the labels used for concept and properties in the ontology are from
> some domain of discourse by people, the common understanding from shared
> background knowledge may be more accurately understood by a subset of
> people who know that domain adn they may have a better chance of
> understanding the expressions of the ontology in the language used. Yet
> the ontology has very specific meaning asociated with its structure of
> relationships and rules of inference, which is a very small subset of
> knowledge in a domain.    (04)

The ontology has an intended meaning that may be very specific or left
vague, depending on the skill of and care taken by the ontologists.  If
programming has made (part of) the ontology operational, then a very
specific meaning of certain assertions is the mapping to the actions that
the computer systems processing the assertions make.    (05)

Such operational meaning might include retrieval of goods from inventory,
the shipping of goods to an address, and the billing of an account.  In
military operations, operational meaning of some assertions using the
ontology might start with the conclusion that a military target exists
at a certain location, and (in the future, if not already) with the action
of a missile being fired at that location.    (06)

> When I read an ontology i always have to
> concentrate on what the ontology is saying rather,    (07)

You must include both the applicable rules in the ontology and what is
operationally programmed in    (08)

> and be very careful not
> to add meaning not defined by the ontology.    (09)

> Is my understanding correct?    (010)

For cases in which the only output of the ontology is to provide information
to people, yes.  Otherwise, you must also consider the operational meaning
resulting from code   processing staements asserted using the ontology.    (011)

> Best Regards,
> John A. Yanosy Jr.
>
> Cell: +01-214-336-9875
> PH: +01-972-705-1807
> Email: JAYANOSY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
> Edward Barkmeyer <edward.barkmeyer@xxxxxxxx>
> Sent by: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 12/03/2009 03:32 PM
> Please respond to
> edbark@xxxxxxxx; Please respond to
> "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>
> To
> "Burkett, William [USA]" <burkett_william@xxxxxxx>
> cc
> "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject
> Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontologies as social mediators
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Bill,
>
> I think we agree, but we are talking about two different topics.
>
> I wrote:
>>> It means exactly what it says and only what it says.
>>>
>
> Bill wrote:
>> Does not make sense without considering (at least a limited) social
> setting.  The ontology means absolutely nothing if there is no human (or
> his/her software surrogate) to interpret it.  "Meaning" is a human
> phenomenon - isn't it?
>>
>
> This is entirely correct.  But, as I said, the intended audience for an
> ontology -- a software artifact that represents knowledge in a formal
> logic language -- is not primarily human.  A human can read the ontology
> and assign all kinds of loads to the terms, but the reason why a human
> reads the ontology is only to determine whether it is suitable for use
> by his software in performing his target application.  A reasoning
> engine, or another software tool, will only work with the formally
> specified elements according to the formal meaning of the formal
> language.  The notion "meaning" for the software tooling is what
> inferences it can make, what derived forms it can produce, what
> decisions it will affect.  And those will not be based on what the human
> thinks the ontology terms "mean".
>
> The human is judging whether the ontology is "practically consistent"
> with his intent.  And he may be wrong in his initial judgement.  He may
> get specific inferences he didn't expect.  But that is exactly the same
> learning process that two humans go through in establishing effective
> communication.  They think they have agreement on the concepts, terms
> and rules, until some outlier case demonstrates that they don't have
> quite the same concepts.
>
> The idea here is that what the software will do with the ontology
> concepts should be predictable (within the limits of competencies and
> implementation errors), but what humans will do with any exchange is not
> predictable, because we cannot really know exactly what meaning they
> took from the exchange.  What makes the human interactions work is
> tolerance and fuzziness, but what makes the software work is the rigidity.
>
> We do not yet know how to make software that reads natural language text
> and behaves as predictably and as usefully as software that interprets
> formal ontologies.
>
> If your objective is to improve communication between humans, it is not
> clear that an ontology is better than a text corpus.  That said, the
> strictures of a formal language force a discipline on the author of the
> ontology that may improve the communication over what that person would
> have written in natural language.  And in fact, as some previous
> discussion on this exploder revealed, a lot of knowledge engineers have
> discovered that introducing formalism and graphical presentation of
> concepts often significantly improves the ability of a group of domain
> experts to achieve a reliable common terminology and understanding.  It
> gets them past the sloppy text that passes for communication of concepts
> in their communities and the related presumption that unspecified
> properties and constraints are part of the shared understanding.
>
> You and I are probably in violent agreement.
>
> My long-standing point is that knowledge engineering is an engineering
> discipline; it is not a branch of philosophy or linguistics or cognitive
> science, and it is not primarily about communications among humans.  It
> is about communicating between humans and software.  The amazing thing
> about AI software is that it doesn't have any idea what domain it
> operates on, or what any of its manipulations actually "mean", but it
> produces valuable results.  But then again, the same is true of Newton's
> calculus, and the IBM 704.
>
> (I am reminded of a presentation I heard about 30 years ago from a
> person from Shell Oil.  He described an elaborate program for evaluating
> their software performance in various ways and making improvements in
> certain areas to reduce the total computational time.  At the end, he
> said:  "Taken together, this set of improvements (which must have cost
> several million dollars) has reduced our total computational load by
> 12%."  And as the audience snickered, he followed that with: "Since the
> Shell research center has 9 5M$ computer systems, that saving is one
> entire computer system!"  The meaning of a result is definitely
> context-dependent!)
>
> -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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=============================================================
doug foxvog    doug@xxxxxxxxxx   http://ProgressiveAustin.org    (013)

"I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great
initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."
    - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
=============================================================    (014)


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