I am inclined to support Rich's view below. A question I have always struggled to answer is: When is a Conceptual Model an Ontology in practical terms?.
It has been observed that academic discussions have often ignored the real progress made in practice (
).
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Semantic Enterprise Architecture-Interoperability?
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for your well thought through opinions, though I disagree on practical grounds with your conclusions. Here is Google's best response to the "define:ontology" request I gave it:
•In computer science and information science, an ontology is a formal representation of the knowledge by a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to describe the domain.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science)
Nothing in that defintion, or in any other that was returned, required a singular meaning, or unambiguous interpretation of the term ontology. There is no reference that ontologies "have to have one meaning per tem", though that seems to be the common refrain in our conversation here.
The people on this list are more deeply cerebral about ontologies than whoever defined google's responses, but I disagree that the COMMON meaning of the term ontology requires UNAMBIGUOUS meanings. I think that is because humans, which are the engines that process ontologies, are not consistent, complete or careful about the words we use.
Only the very simplest "ontologies", such as Dublin Core, have any real chance of exhibiting a singular meaning for each phrase. I am in the minority here in believing my postulate, though, and there are some great theoretical ontologists here who strongly feel that ontology is a 100% logical mathematized rendering of human concepts. So you might be better off following the mathematized theories if your goal is to write papers and research reports. When it comes to real markets, this stuff just won't work, in my humble opinion, any more than logical inference, which was supposed to change the world back in 1980 with the Japanese Fifth Generation plan to build fully logic based computers.
Ontology is a great idea - knowledge is more useful when it is organized. But to think it is semantically singular is simply misled and unrealistic, IMHO. Ontologies will ALWAYS be "heterogeneous" as you put it if they are intended to be used by humans, even in the input/output GUI way.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Patrick Cassidy
Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2010 10:27 PM
To: doug@xxxxxxxxxx; '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Semantic Enterprise Architecture-Interoperability?
Doug F is right, the WordNet is not an ontology; it was organized according
to "psycholinguistic principles" and the synsets, though organized in a
hierarchy by "hypernym" and "hyponym" links, do not form a fully accurate
inheritance hierarchy (though they often are correctly ordered), and it
therefore cannot be used for accurate reasoning. Nevertheless, it has been
used as the standard for word disambiguation for a number of year now by the
Natural Language Processing community, who recognize its shortcomings. Some
efforts have been made to reorganize or ontologized the WordNet, but they
are very preliminary.
As part of the COSMO project I am conducting, I am trying to find WordNet
synsets that are the same as or close to the logically defined concepts in
the COSMO hierarchy. It takes a lot of effort, in part because the WordNet
synsets are often heterogeneous - they include distinguishably different
conceptual components, as evidenced by the usage examples given in the
WordNet glosses. So a "mapping" of any ontology (which has been done for
SUMO and CYC) will not result in identifying WordNet synsets that can always
be identified with logically definable concepts that can be used for
reasoning.
The solution is, I believe, regrettably, to essentially redo the WordNet
and create a version that has a more accurate inheritance hierarchy at its
base, with the mappings to words that may (in different contexts) label
those concepts, to form a WordNet-like lexical resource that can be used for
NLP. Unfortunately, because most NLP these days is statistical and requires
tagged texts for training the parsers, this will also require re-tagging
texts to provide training material. There are a number of issues involved
in such an effort (for example, some words may need to be represented by
functions or procedural code, rather than FOL ontology elements). Even
though the examples of WordNet and existing ontologies will make the work
easier and faster, there is still considerable effort involved. How long it
will take before enough interest is developed to ensure adequate funding is
quite uncertain - but I think this kind of work is essential to begin the
approach to human-level language understanding. My own efforts with the
COSMO will result only in a WordNet-like resource that covers the basic
language - 2000 or so concepts, fewer than twice that many words.
But such a resource, if adopted by ontology users who want to
interoperate, can serve not only as a resource for some basic NLP but also
as the "Primitive Inventory Foundation Ontology" (PIFO) that will allow
translation among local ontology dialects that are mapped to the PIFO.
Pat
Patrick Cassidy
MICRA, Inc.
908-561-3416
cell: 908-565-4053
cassidy@xxxxxxxxx
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of doug foxvog
> Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2010 10:20 AM
> To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Semantic Enterprise Architecture -
> Interoperability?
>
> On Wed, September 8, 2010 19:37, Rich Cooper said:
> > Doug,
> >
> > But isn't WordNet the ontology being used, if synsets are the columns?
>
> WordNet is not an ontology.
>
> I was using David's terminology, where he started describing "something
> like unique synsets" to refer to meanings which can be expressed by
> multiple words and phrases and then went on to use the word.
>
> > WN may not be a very complex ontology,
>
> Again, it isn't one.
>
> > but WN itself could be one NLP disambiguation source,
>
> True.
>
> > and where synsets CAN have unique meanings, it is
> > one to one with interpretants.
>
> My understanding of interpretants is that each interpreter has its own.
>
> > Where a synset itself is ambiguously
> > interpreted, you would need special handling events or other method
> for
> > further disambiguating. And still further, you would need to have
> > identified an interpretER to get that far into the disambiguation.
>
> I don't see that you need to identify a human interpreter yet.
>
> -- doug foxvog
>
> > Suggestions?
> > -Rich
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > Rich Cooper
> > EnglishLogicKernel.com
> > Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
> > 9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of doug
> foxvog
> > Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 4:22 PM
> > To: [ontolog-forum]
> > Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Semantic Enterprise Architecture
> > -Interoperability?
> >
> > On Wed, September 8, 2010 17:57, Rich Cooper said:
> >> David,
> >>
> >> I think he is referring to something like unique synsets, which have
> a
> >> single meaning, but which can have multiple word instantiations, a
> la
> >> WordNet.
> >
> > Except that WordNet synsets do not have unique meanings. The
> multiple
> > words in a synset have similar meanings. I am referring to terms in
> an
> > ontology, each of which has a unique meaning, and which may be
> expressed
> > in a natural language in multiple ways.
> >
> >> That arrow runs from the single meaning (synset) toward the
> >> {words}, not the other way around. Reverse that arrow and you have
> the
> >> single interpretation that can be actually emulated; at the other
> end,
> >> you
> >> have words that point to several synsets which may alternatively
> >> interpret
> >> them, so the direction of the arrow is the critical concept I think.
> >
> > It seems to me, both that an individual word has multiple meanings
> and
> > that individual meanings can be expressed by multiple words or
> phrases.
> > The arrow direction would depend upon the relationship indicated
> between
> > the entities referenced by the head and tail of the arrow.
> >
> > Below the discussion leaves ontologies (if it was really there) and
> moves
> > to a discussion of enterprise architecture databases.
> >
> >> So the enterprise architecture database should have columns that are
> >> unique
> >> synsets (in effect) of enterprise meaning. Each synset could have
> one
> >> row
> >> for every word that instantiates it, perhaps one row for every word
> that
> >> can be interpreted with that synset as interpretant.
> >
> > Are you saying that each column has a different set of rows?
> >
> > Or are you suggesting a matrix of synsets with a row for each word in
> > the synset? Since there would be a lot more synsets than words in a
> > synset, perchance it would be better to have the rows being synsets
> and
> > the columns being words in the synset.
> >
> >> Which brings up the problem of representing multiple interpreters.
> >> Would
> >> each synset have one set of interpretant rows for each interpreter?
> It
> >> seems like the only conclusion unless you want everyone in the
> >> enterprise
> >> to use words the same way (unlikely to be successful).
> >
> > It could be useful to define contexts in which given words have
> different
> > meanings. Then the interpreter would choose their context (payroll,
> > sales, etc.) for their current task. Separate rows for each
> interpreter
> > would not be called for.
> >
> > Even if restricted to database tables, if one used a column after a
> word
> > to encode the set of contexts in which it was used one wouldn't need
> to
> > repeat rows (or tables) for each context.
> >
> > == doug f
> >
> >> -Rich
> >>
> >> Sincerely,
> >> Rich Cooper
> >> EnglishLogicKernel.com
> >> Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
> >> 9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David
> Eddy
> >> Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 2:24 PM
> >> To: doug@xxxxxxxxxx; [ontolog-forum]
> >> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Semantic Enterprise Architecture
> >> -Interoperability?
> >>
> >> Doug -
> >>
> >> On Sep 8, 2010, at 5:12 PM, doug foxvog wrote:
> >>
> >>> a Semantic Web needs ontologies of terms with fixed meanings
> >>
> >> Is this saying that a term (word, phrase, acronym, abbreviation,
> >> whatever) can only have a single meaning?
> >>
> >> What did I miss here?
> >>
> >>
> >> As I have observed before & will undoubtedly observe again...
> >>
> >> George Miller's "Ambiguous Words" http://www.kurzweilai.net/
> >> ambiguous-words offers an average of 10 meanings per (real) word.
> >>
> >> My dictionary of largely acronyms (but where's the line between
> >> acronym & real word... I don't have a clue) finds some 34 meanings
> >> per term/word. Whittling that down to 1 meaning per term is going
> to
> >> be tough.
> >>
> >> ___________________
> >> David Eddy
> >> deddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >>
> >> 781-455-0949
> begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 781-455-
> 0949 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
> > begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 781-455-
> 0949 end_of_the_sk
> > ype_highlighting
> >>
> >>
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> >
> >
> > =============================================================
> > doug foxvog doug@xxxxxxxxxx http://ProgressiveAustin.org
> >
> > "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.
> > =============================================================
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> >
> >
>
>
> =============================================================
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>
> "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.
> =============================================================
>
>
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