Re: John Sowa and Anders Tell comments:
wrote:
>
> Im not sure neutral is the quality to look for. Neutrality is often
> ascribed to the caretaker of an ontology, and interoperabilty includes
> a process of agreeing in order to reduce risk and costs for involved
> parties.
>
The point I think is worth considering is that, unless one actually has a
common vocabulary to describe one's models, there is no way to tell that
they are in fact different. The "process of agreeing" might well focus on
agreement on how to describe the similarities and differences in one's
domain models. In terms of an ontology, I believe that a foundation
ontology that contains an inventory of all the known primitive elements
would serve that function. The term "neutral" need not be used, but as I
use it means that no model is *assumed* as generally true if there is
another model that is logically contradictory. Use any other word you wish
to describe this property. (01)
As John Sowa has mentioned on numerous occasions, when one actually wants
to interoperate by describing observable facts, the observables have to be
consistent - unless one system is provably wrong. This suggests that the
primitive elements may focus on observable phenomena, and perhaps also on
mathematical or graphical primitives that can serve to build the mental
models people use. (02)
Of course, as new information is gathered the basic vocabulary itself
might also expand. How quickly it expands, and how this might affect
existing applications is an empirical question that will be interesting to
explore. (03)
John Sowa said:
[JS] >
> In fact, modern physics is the closest to having such a unified
> theory, but every engineering application of physics uses
> special-purpose approximations, since the general theories are
> too difficult (or impractical) to apply to specific problems.
> See the references in rolelog.pdf to Alan Bundy's work on
> ontology repair and evolution for problem solving in physics.
>
Yes, and these approximations are described in a common language understood
by all engineers, so that they can know in what way the approximations may
be inaccurate, and when they will be useful. It is that common vocabulary
that can serve as the basis for interoperability, if and when
interoperability makes any sense at all among systems. Isolated systems can
use any language at all, independent of all other languages - no common
ontology is needed if interoperability is not required. (04)
[JS] >
> But that depends on either (a) having infinitely many words
> (or predicates) in the language, or (b) using and reusing
> a finite vocabulary in a way that makes the words ambiguous
> with a potentially infinite number of word senses for each.
>
> In fact, the linguist Alan Cruse made the claim that any
> word in any NL can have an open-ended number of what he
> called *microsenses*. I believe that he's right. See
> the rolelog.pdf article for references.
>
And yet, and infinite number of things (e.g. integers) can indeed be
described by a small number of primitives, and rules of combination. In
that manner, all microsenses might well be logically specified by a small
number of primitives. Each microsense itself does not have to be a
primitive, and I suspect that very few are. Examples of cases considered
problematic would be instructive. (05)
[JS] > Interoperability requires a compromise that
> uses the barest minimum of axioms in a highly underspecified
> theory.
When such compromise is required, it will not be possible unless there is
a common agreed vocabulary that describes the differences and how they
affect the desired results, and how the "compromise" changes the behavior of
the individual systems. Finding that common vocabulary is not usually
difficult in specific situations, as we already have a good inventory of
primitives in the natural languages, which can be supplemented as required
for specific cases, by addition of a small number of additional primitives.
I believe that finding a broadly functional set of ontology primitives is a
project that could begin to transform ontology engineering from its current
state as an art into a more scientifically based enterprise. It is
something I think is worth considerable effort. (06)
The development of formats suitable for reasoning in ontology is already
well advanced, but there has been much less progress on agreement on the
meanings of some basic terms. Efforts at creating pluggable (reusable)
ontology modules do move in that direction, but I think that such modules
will cover only a small fraction of the required meanings used for practical
systems. (07)
Pat (08)
Patrick Cassidy
MICRA, Inc.
908-561-3416
cell: 908-565-4053
cassidy@xxxxxxxxx (09)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Anders Tell
> Sent: Monday, January 03, 2011 4:12 AM
> To: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Quote for the day
>
>
> On Jan 3, 2011, at 7:11 AM, Patrick Cassidy wrote:
>
> > It is indeed well known that different models can be more useful for
> > different purposes. But I have not seen any analytical arguments to
> > extrapolate from that and then say that there can never be a neutral
> > ontology that can **describe** all the different models, and specify
> the
> > similarities and differences,.
>
> Drawing from my inter-industry standardization experiences then it
> seems unlikely that there will be a common ontology in the domain of
> international commerce.
> One simple reason is that different legal systems require different
> conformance for enterprise within their jurisdiction.
>
> On the other hand, most industries start out by saying that they have
> different requirements but after a while , the "shared" percentage
> starts growing significantly. And patterns of Variablity aspects start
> appearing. Some aspects are similar and some different. Commerce has
> established a set of agreed patterns over the year, some even agreed to
> by UNIDROIT, UN/CITRAL etc.
>
> Managing Variablity is IMHO a useful modeling practice. As well as
> managing conflicts and disagreements.
>
>
> > The basis for general
> > interoperability is to find and agree on that neutral ontology that
> does not
> > **assume** any of the contradictory models, but can **describe**
> conflicting
> > models.
>
>
> Im not sure neutral is the quality to look for. Neutrality is often
> ascribed to the caretaker of an ontology, and interoperabilty includes
> a process of agreeing in order to reduce risk and costs for involved
> parties.
>
>
> /Anders
>
> /Anders W. Tell
>
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