Dave McComb, President, Semantic Arts, Inc. www.semanticarts.com
(970) 490-2224 twitter
@semanticarts
(01)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ed Barkmeyer
> Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 5:21 PM
> To: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Foundation ontology, CYC, and Mapping
>
> Dave McComb wrote:
>
> > We've found a foundation ontology with about 100 properties and 100
> classes typically needs another 100 properties to cover the kind of
> enterprise ontologies we've been working with, and several hundred very
> specific categories to cover the kinds of distinctions people generally
> create in commercial systems, that aren't easily reduced to axioms.
> >
>
> Which, I assume means you didn't. So you have several hundred very
> specific "primitive" classifications, i.e., "undefined" in any formal
> sense?
[DMc] Yes, but this is down from several thousand, so it seems like progress. (02)
>
> > Not only is it a productivity aid, over 90% of the classes we've
> defined have been subclasses of the FO, which is encouraging as many
> organizations are concerned about what to do as their systems
> boundaries are extended past their four walls. Even more than the
> productivity, it helps resolve ambiguity earlier in the process than
> starting with a clean sheet of paper.
> >
>
> I am curious as to how this follows. If most of the several hundred
> useful business categories are defined to be subclasses of some
> abstract
> FO classifier, but not further defined by distinguishing features
> (axioms), how much ambiguity does that resolve? I suspect that what
> Dave means is that some commonly used business/domain terms are used
> with multiple intents, such as referring to a physical thing and some
> conceptualization of it. A common example is the commercial use of
> "product" to refer to a product instance or the design for it and/or
> the
> marketing concept. And in that case, the value of the ontology is that
> it provides two different base concepts (physical thing and conceptual
> thing) for two or more distinguished terms, one of which refers to the
> physical things, and one of which refers to the conceptualization. But
> it may not give you any way to distinguish between a product design and
> a plant design, because those are "kinds of distinctions people
> generally create in commercial systems that are not easily reduced to
> axioms."
[DMc] I probably wasn't clear. Most of 600 or so useful classes were axiomized
and were subclasses of the FO. However they often rely on terms that are
needed to separate close concepts (for instance the distinction between an
employment contract and a subcontractor contract is theoretically reducible to
axioms most of that reduction is just pushing a distinction around (ultimately
according to the IRS there are some 10 or so pretty squishy distinctions that
they use to determine whether someone was in fact working as a employee). From
a practical standpoint though its more useful to say that they had an agreement
with a particular organization and we categorized it as either employment or
subcontracting.
>
> Those of us who are highly skeptical of simplified upper ontologies,
> and
> upper ontologies in general, find this to be precisely why the beauty
> of
> upper ontologies is only in the eye of the beholder. The upper
> ontology
> Dave describes may be somewhat useful in creating disciplined speech
> among humans, but it is of negligible value in reasoning systems. If
> the several hundred concepts that cannot be axiomatized are effectively
> primitive concepts in the domains in which you have worked, why not
> just
> start there? Put another way, if there are no useful axioms to
> distinguish these concepts, how do two people know that the concept has
> the same extension in their common world? Most of the problems in
> communication arise not from people assigning meanings that are
> radically different in kind, but rather from people assigning meanings
> that have unpredictable overlaps in their extensions. E.g., is a
> suicide bomber an "unlawful combatant" (under the Geneva conventions)?
>
> -Ed
>
> P.S. I realize that by guessing at what Dave meant, I may be
> constructing the strawman I am knocking down. My apologies if I am
> well
> wide of the mark.
[DMc] It's not perfect, but I don't see why you wouldn't start with an FO that
has been rigorously debated and disambiguated as a starting point. Our
experience is that it was useful. (03)
>
> --
> 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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