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Re: [ontolog-forum] Semantic Enterprise Architecture-Interoperability?

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Dave McComb <mccomb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 23:22:32 -0400
Message-id: <C893D3AB-F892-49EA-8CCA-6C74A6D6D42A@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Very well put.  

The only thing I would add is that from a pragmatic standpoint in ontology space when a term really does have two meanings ( contexts as you suggested) we can just put different namespaces on it and be done with it.

So my favorite term with multiple meanings: "mole" becomes mammal: mole, derma:mole, CIA:mole, chem:mole, coastal-nav:mole, and Mex-cook:mole



Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 10, 2010, at 9:09 PM, "Patrick Cassidy" <pat@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rich,

It was recognized at the Ontology Summit several years ago that it was hopeless to expect everyone to agree on what an “ontology” is.  The word has developed enough cachet that lots of people use it to refer to almost anything organized in a hierarchy, like a taxonomy or thesaurus.  But those of us who are aware of the distinctions prefer to reserve the term “ontology” (to be used in our community) for those knowledge structures that are specified in a logical form that is suitable for inference.  No one can stop anyone else from using a technical term in a way that suits their purposes.  As Burt Lance once said, if you don’t like to hear the term “recession”, then call it a “banana” if that makes you feel better.  But there are useful distinctions among knowledge structures, among which are taxonomies, thesauri, semantic networks, and ontologies – of these, the useful distinction is to reserve the last word for those knowledge organizations useful for automated logical inference.  By that criterion, WordNet is not an ontology.

Automated logical inference is also the reason that each term in an ontology must have only one  meaning.   Of course, people use words in multiple senses.  That is the ***problem*** for which a well-defined ontology is the **solution**.  It is extremely hard to get more than a tight specialized community of people to use terms or words in only one sense.  But machines are different from people.  With humans, we cannot inspect the internal neural organization of other people and precisely predict what inferences will be generated form a piece of information.  With computers we can do that, and that precision provides the basis for very accurate inference, enabling a high level of confidence in the accuracy of results  generated by computers, if one takes advantage of that capability.  The point of semantic interoperability is to be sure that, when we share information among computers, all computers will interpret the information in the same way, which means that they generate the same inferences form the same data.  That is only possible if the terms in the ontologies each have only a single meaning (at least in a specified context, if contexts are defined).

   There is an issue of how to be sure that the **intended** meaning is captured accurately; in general, we cannot **completely** disambiguate the meanings of terms, but can only approach complete disambiguation by asserting multiple restrictions that eliminate alternative interpretations.  IF, over time, an ontology term is discovered to be ambiguous, additional restrictions need to be added to eliminate that ambiguity.  At any one time, the terms in an ontology should be sufficiently well-defined that no ambiguity is present that would cause error in the inference.

 

   There are plenty of situations, circumstances, and contexts in which the ambiguity of natural language words is welcome, and even pleasant.  But computational ontology is not poetry, it is a tool for performing accurate inference.   That tool only does its proper job when the terms are as unambiguous as required for the application.  It is not difficult  for people to get used to the idea of using terms in only one sense, and to understand that sense with proper documentation that differentiates among the potential alternate senses, at least when used in a particular context – that is the function of controlled vocabularies, which are widely used.

 

   Since the computer provides the potential for unambiguous descriptions of terms, it would be a tremendous waste not to use that potential.  IF there is a circumstance where you want to build ambiguity into an ontology, you can do it, but don’t expect that ontology to be useful for accurate communication of information among widely dispersed groups.

 

Pat

 

Patrick Cassidy

MICRA, Inc.

908-561-3416

cell: 908-565-4053

cassidy@xxxxxxxxx

 

From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rich Cooper
Sent: Friday, September 10, 2010 1:39 PM
To: '[ontolog-forum] '
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

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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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