Re: [ontolog-forum] Looking for a razor

[Adrian Walker <adriandwalker@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Sean and Rich,

I believe you may be throwing the English baby out with the bath water.

Sean : I would insist that terms are context sensitive, particularly where conventional terms are used with a particular technical sense by a business process.... The problem of accurate communication is therefore one of alerting people to the actual meaning of a term in the context in which it is being used....

Context is one of the things Executable English is about.  Please take a moment to look again at slides 51-52 of [1] to see this.

To reinforce Sean's argument that context is essential, one can look at Air Traffic Control.  Aviation English documentation appears to struggle (and sometimes fail) to disambiguate terms taken out of context [2]:

"Incidents have occurred where pilots and controllers using the same term have not had the same understanding. Ambiguity is one of saftey’s [sic] worst enemies.  Measures should be taken to ensure that a common understanding of terms and definitions prevails among different States that use the same language. Involving the end user at the planning stage will help find the most appropriate terms, the ones that leave no ambiguity in their meaning amongst all that use them.

1.3 In the case of phraseology, for example, the semantics of a phrase may not be related to the intention of the term in the original text."

                            Cheers,  -- Adrian 


[1]  www.reengineeringllc.com/Internet_Business_Logic_e-Government_Presentation.pdf,
      Slides 51-52

[2]  http://www.icao.int/icao/en/anb/meetings/anconf11/documentation/ANConf11_wp139_en.pdf

               
Internet Business Logic
A Wiki and SOA Endpoint for Executable Open Vocabulary English Q/A over SQL and RDF
Online at www.reengineeringllc.com    
Shared use is free, and there are no advertisements

Adrian Walker
Reengineering

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 4:01 PM, sean barker <sean.barker@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

 

Adrian,

 

    My problem space is aerospace and defence, where getting things wrong costs lives. One way of restating the problem is that I am looking for systematic ways of evaluating the risk that a term will be misapplied, or applied inaccurately, and also of minimising that risk, where risk is the product of the probability of an occurrence and the impact of that occurrence.

 

From your slides, Executable English is not concerned with that problem. In fact, rhetorically, calling something "executable English" is a claim that people already understand what terms mean. I would contrast your statement on slide 19 "A term is defined by the set of its superclasses in the taxonomy, and by its properties" with my final comment "ontology classes used by a business process are exactly those classes which label the alternative routes onward from a decision process, and therefore define the grounding of terms." The way many people would read your definition is that terms are acontextual, whereas I would insist that terms are context sensitive, particularly where conventional terms are used with a particular technical sense by a business process. For example, in one business, a "drawing" was a concept reified as a database entry, whereas a thing with lines on showing the shape of a part was called a "drawing sheet".

 

The problem of accurate communication is therefore one of alerting people to the actual meaning of a term in the context in which it is being used, rather than allowing them to assume they already know what the term means. In terms of Executable English, I can see that it might have applications where the impact of misinterpretation of terms is limited, but I see it as part of the problem exactly because it draws attention away from the need to manage such risks. This is more a statement of requirements than a criticism of Eexecutable English

 

Sean Barker, Bristol UK.

 

---

From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Adrian Walker
Sent: 09 August 2010 21:08
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Looking for a razor

*** WARNING *** This message has originated outside your organisation, either from an external partner or the Global Internet. Keep this in mind if you answer this message. Sean --

You wrote:

I am looking for a razor that can cut between the "ontologies as a formal system" and "ontology term grounding" parts of the discussion, and so ensure that both parts are solved.

A candidate for your desired semantic razor is Executable English.

The diagrams on slides 14-17 and slides 51-52 of [1] illustrate this.

There's a runnable example on slides 35-43.

                      Cheers,  -- Adrian
 
[1]  www.reengineeringllc.com/Internet_Business_Logic_e-Government_Presentation.pdf

              
Internet Business Logic
A Wiki and SOA Endpoint for Executable Open Vocabulary English Q/A over SQL and RDF
Online at www.reengineeringllc.com   
Shared use is free, and there are no advertisements

Adrian Walker
Reengineering

_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 

_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/  
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/  
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/ 
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    (01)