A response on just one comment from Doug F: (01)
[PC] > One principle I thought would advance
> > collaborative work was to keep the working ontology as small as
> possible. Using all of OpenCyc - even 20,000 terms - could boggle any
potential
> > contributor before the project begins. But this is still worth
> exploring.
>
[Doug Foxvog] > If a major point is to be able to map to any user ontology,
we will
> need more terms than that.
>
If we are going to create and store the logical specifications of the
terms in every ontology that is linked to the FO (or consider those as part
of the FO), certainly, many more than 20,000 will be needed - and
correspondingly more time. But the principle that I had hoped would make
the project more feasible is not to *include* every ontology element in the
FO itself, but to leave them in the domain or linked ontologies. The effort
on gaining agreement among the participants would focus only on those more
basic elements that are needed for *translation* among the domain ontologies
- those would prima facie be the elements needed for the FO. Now, John has
suggested that the meaning of "Foundation Ontology" be expanded to include
everything linked to the common base (I think there already is a name for
that - the "lattice of theories"). No problem - I don't care about names of
things, just their meanings. I have suggested that if that is the way the
term "FO" will be used, then we can distinguish a "core" Foundation Ontology
which would have all of the identified primitives, and perhaps some other
elements as well. Those are the elements that are in common among more
than a few domains. I am not sure that there are more than 10,000 of those,
and that was what I was referring to. (02)
The question that has concerned me in considering the need for
interoperability is the issue of what has to be **generally agreed to** by a
large community of participants. Certainly the elements in some domain,
even one like medicine that has a large number of potential users, do not
have to be of concern to all other ontology builders. My focus on
primitives has been in response to the practical issue of how to minimize
what needs to be agreed to by the whole community of users of the FO. If
the FO is to be the whole lattice of linked ontologies, then the need for
*agreement* may merely shift to the "core FO". (03)
This is all an immensely practical issue. IF others are comfortable
starting with an ontology of 20,000-60,000 elements, and we can find a tool
that perspicuously displays that ontology (should we use the OpenCyc system
itself?) that could work. My own approach to using an FO is to treat it as
a language, and try to grasp the basic structure - grammar and basic
vocabulary. Anyone who can, say, master 60,000 Chinese characters plus
grammar in a few months may find working through a 60,000 element ontology
as a spare-time project to be no problem. It is beyond my capability. But
then John has also said it is highly modular. I am willing to be convinced,
but I had thought that the big problem was how to relate all the existing
modules to each other, rather than how to expand or use the modules. (04)
As John has presented it, there should be room within such a project for
diverse goals and viewpoints. I am still concerned that the starting point
needs to be comprehensible enough not to scare away potential participants.
So, let us consider what, concretely will be the starting point: ontology,
visualization tool, reasoner, and other things. Does the intention to start
with the whole OpenCyc mean that we should commit to using the whole OpenCyc
system? (05)
Pat (06)
Patrick Cassidy
MICRA, Inc.
908-561-3416
cell: 908-565-4053
cassidy@xxxxxxxxx (07)
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