Dear Cory,
You wrote:
If there is a proper
representation of the terms and concepts of a complex concept like marriage
these can be properly related. "Married", "Spouse",
"Husband", "Wife", etc. are all only meaningful within the
context of marriage. Expressing the verb phrase "x isMarriedTo
y" or "x hasSpouse y" or "Marriage(x,y) are saying the SAME
THING, it is the same fact expressed in a different way - in some cases as
relations and some cases reified. I submit that to understand how the
different ways we express information are related we have to understand
concepts at this level.
You seem to be making a case for a “canonical
representation”, in this example for marriage, but extending the thought,
you are looking for a canonical representation of concepts more
generally.
But the problem is actually unbounded. Every
different subject who has a concept of marriage has a different such concept.
Suppose the female in the marriage is looking for ways to fulfill her goal of a
secure nest and environment in which to raise children. Suppose the male
views the marriage as way to enjoy an affectionate relationship with his wife
and a good environment in which to father kids.
But there are other females who view marriage as a way
to legitimatize their unwanted pregnancy, other males who want a wife to
provide maid service, and children of the marriage who, like Lizzie Borden, object
to arbitrary specific details of the marriage.
The subjectivity of the observer is what makes the
communication of concepts too specific, too individual in their relative valuation,
to ever be placed into such a clear and precise canonical representation, IMHO,
as to be shared to any great extent.
The ontology is located within an individual, and
there is no canonical ontology that has much communicable value over many
individuals, except in very small groups within tightly shared situational
constraints, such as business partners, with agreed upon interactions over any
such shared part of their ontology. But the shared part is, IMHO,
extremely limited for most practical applications.
Of course, there are very generic application
situations which are well addressed by a very simple ontology, such as Dublin
Core for library acquisition records. That kind of tiny ontology might be
useful in many communicating ways among systems.
But in general, ontologies of the size which we in
this group first anticipated simply haven’t come to fruition. IMHO,
it is because we have not properly accounted for the variations among
individuals, i.e., among the observers and appliers of the ontology at
risk.
What is needed is a better way to grow ontologies, or
to evolve them, or in some other way to automate the adaptation of ontologies in
the changing situations in which they are applied.
I suppose Google could provide tracking NGrams for
every use of the word “marriage” or its synonyms, and an
application could extract all of those meanings, with all the assertions you
mentioned in the “marriage” example, but that explodes the list of
possible meanings which any given observer could apply in that observer’s
situation. That task is too large for today’s technologies given
the number of words people use in common communications.
In sum, I don’t see a canonical ontology as very
feasible or even very useful within the current technology bounds.
-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 Cory Casanave
Sent: Saturday, November 05, 2011 12:39 PM
To: doug@xxxxxxxxxx; [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum]
N-RELATIONs: Formal Ontology, Semantic Web and Smart Applications
Doug,
Whenever I see properties with complex verb phrases
like " isCurrentlyMarriedTo ", this is a red flag that indicates that
multiple concepts are being conflated. Lets say this was expressing X
isCurrentlyMarriedTo Y. There are multiple possible facts and
representations here:
* X is married
* Y is married
* The spouse of X is Y
* X hasSpouse Y
* X is married to Y
* The above situation currently exists
* The spouse of Y is X
* There is a Marriage, in which X and Y are spouses
* M exists now.
* X hasSpouse Y
* Y hasSpouse X
Perhaps X is the male in a traditional marriage.
* X isHusbandOf Y
* Y isWifeOf X
Etc, Etc.
Notice how every one of the above statements can imply
the existence of a marriage in which X and Y are playing the role Spouse and in
some cases Wife and Husband (kinds of spouses with additional constraints).
The problem with this is that these made-up verb
phrases are black boxes that become difficult to relate to the other made-up
verb phrases. I suggest we have to stop inventing new "words"
and make more of the concepts we have. We should also be able to relate
very common concepts like "currently" to anything that may have a
time dimension and not imbed such concepts in these made- up phrases. (I have
no problem with making real composite concepts that are compositions, but we
should then understand their parts). To do this we much be able to use
the "relations" (of any granularity) as subjects of such relations.
If there is a proper representation of the terms and
concepts of a complex concept like marriage these can be properly
related. "Married", "Spouse", "Husband",
"Wife", etc. are all only meaningful within the context of
marriage. Expressing the verb phrase "x isMarriedTo y" or
"x hasSpouse y" or "Marriage(x,y) are saying the SAME THING, it
is the same fact expressed in a different way - in some cases as relations and
some cases reified. I submit that to understand how the different ways we
express information are related we have to understand concepts at this level.
-Cory
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of doug foxvog
Sent: Saturday, November 05, 2011 11:24 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum]
N-RELATIONs: Formal Ontology, Semantic Web and Smart Applications
On Fri, November 4, 2011 14:02, Cory Casanave said:
> The other strong use-case for reification,
besides n-ary, is to
> support relations as first-class elements that
can also be the subject
> of other relations. I have found this
essential to represent the
> concepts of a domain accurately -
"marriage" is such a relation.
In ontological terms, Marriage is a temporal
situation.
"isCurrentlyMarriedTo" is a relation -- in
this case a binary relation.
Beginning ontologists often start creating binary and
multiple arity relations to represent sets of columns in a database, not
stopping to consider what the underlying classes of things are and realizing
that many more relations could apply to those classes of things in various
circumstances. Events and situations are common categories of things that
are often so modeled.
Conceptually higher-arity relations are relations
among multiple things that are more than the sum of their parts, e.g. (between
X Y Z) and (betweenOnPath Y X Z P1).
> The other use-case for
> relations of relations to add metadata about the
assertion, including
> the authority and time for which the relation is
valid.
This is a useful case for reifying assertions.
The concept of "relations of relations"
covers relations which can be mapped into rules relating assertions on
statements using one relation to assertions on statements using the other
relation. E.g.,
* subRelations
(subRelations parentOf relativeOf)
* transitiveClosure
(transitiveClosure parentOf ancestorOf)
* disjointRelations
(disjointRelations youngerThan ancestorOf)
-- doug foxvog
> The problem with this
> in RDF/OWL properties is that the same concept
may need, at times, to
> be a reified relation but in simpler cases a
single property will do.
> So a general representation seems to always need
to use reification.
> On the down-side reification (in RDF/OWL) makes
queries much more
> complex and it removed the relations from any
"normal" inference as
> they are not asserted in the same way.
>
> For these reasons I have concluded that the
simpler approach is for
> all relations to be "first class" so
that these artificial differences
> don't exist. Once that simplification is
made the logic &
> infrastructure can support all relations
consistently and efficiently.
>
> -Cory
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Ed
> Barkmeyer
> Sent: Friday, November 04, 2011 12:32 PM
> To: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum]
N-RELATIONs: Formal Ontology, Semantic
> Web and Smart Applications
>
> The practice of reifying relations in binary
models goes back at least
> to Peter Chen and the original
Entity-Relationship models.
>
> That is, you make the relation itself a
'class'/'entity', and then it
> has binary relationships to each of its arguments.
Each of those
> binary relationships is a term for the 'role' --
the 'argument name'
> if you will, or in the least informative of
cases, just the position number.
>
> This is precisely the recommended best practice
for representing n-ary
> relationships in OWL: the relation becomes
a 'class', and each of the
> argument slots becomes an objectProperty (or
datatypeProperty) named
> for the role. The domain of the argument
property is the relation
> class and the range of the argument property is
the range of the
> argument. One can create the inverse of the
role property where it is
> useful, i.e., where one needs to navigate the
model from one argument
> of the relation to another.
>
>
> The problem the RDF folk and the OWL folk have is
the absence of a way
> to declare that the 'class' term represents an
n-ary relation. That
> is the one semantic addition that is created by
the UML AssociationClass.
>
> Unfortunately, the other rules for handling
association classes in UML
> v1 made the structure hard to use, and many UML
best practice
> documents forbid its use. The problem for
slavishly object-oriented
> models is whether there is a difference between
the role links and the
> attributes of the would-be class, and whether a
class whose instances
> play one of the roles has an attribute that
refers directly to another
> role player, and of course, what the resulting
C++, C# and Java
> implementations will look like. An
alternative used by database
> modelers in UML v2 is to create a <n-ary
relation> stereotype for
> classes representing reified relations and a
<role> stereotype for the
> arguments. The advantage of this approach
is that it allows the
> modeler to mark up the model to characterize
participation multiplicities correctly, and to create the useful inverses.
> And for database models, it distinguishes
the functional arguments
> (the role players and their keys) from the
dependent variables (the
> other attributes and associations) in the 3rd
normal form re lation.
>
> All of this only says that the practice of
reification of relations is
> common, but has evolved differently for different
implementation
> mechanisms and for different semantic
concerns. And make no mistake:
> Tableaux reasoning is an implementation
mechanism, and more than half
> of the RDF folk are more worried about managing
triple stores than
> manipulating their semantics.
>
> -Ed
>
> P.S. I now await John Sowa's further
elaboration/correction on the
> history of reification. :-)
>
> --
> Edward J.
Barkmeyer Email:
edbark@xxxxxxxx
> National Institute of Standards & Technology
Manufacturing Systems
> Integration Division
> 100
Bureau Drive, Stop
8263
Tel: +1 301-975-3528
> Gaithersburg,
MD 20899-8263
Cel: +1 240-672-5800
>
> "The opinions expressed above do not reflect
consensus of NIST, and
> have not been reviewed by any Government
authority."
>
>
> David Price wrote:
>> WRT RDF doesn't it simply boil down to being
based on graphs which,
>> quoting from Wikipedia, are
"mathematical structures used to model
>> pairwise relations between objects from a
certain collection". So,
>> I'm confused by comments like "N-ary
relations work great in a graph model."
>> which seems completely at odds with the fact
that graph relations are
>> pairwise.
>>
>> UML has N-ary associations and
AssociationClass, so there's at least
>> one standard from which the semantics
community might steal an idea or two.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> David
>>
>> On 11/4/2011 2:57 PM, AzamatAbdoullaev wrote:
>>
>>> I believe this fundamental issue more
belong to the Ontolog Forum.
>>> Risk to start the n-relations thread...
>>>
>>> Azamat
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "David
Booth"<david@xxxxxxxxxx>
>>> To: "glenn
mcdonald"<glenn@xxxxxxxxx>
>>> Cc:
"AzamatAbdoullaev"<abdoul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>;<semantic-web@xxxxxx>;
>>> "Frank
Manola"<fmanola@xxxxxxx>; "Sampo
Syreeni"<decoy@xxxxxx>;
>>> <alexandre.riazanov@xxxxxxxxx>
>>> Sent: Friday, November 04, 2011 3:13 PM
>>> Subject: Standard representations for
n-ary relations [was: Re:
>>> relational
>>> data as a bona fide member of the SM]
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Plus RDF doesn't have any *standard*
way to tag or represent n-ary
>>>> relations -- we have taken a
do-it-yourself attitude[1] -- and thus
>>>> tools cannot predictably recognize
n-ary relations as such.
>>>>
>>>> Personally, I think this is something
that would be good to
>>>> address, and there are several simple
ways it could be done.
>>>>
>>>> 1.
http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-n-aryRelations/
>>>>
>>>> David
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, 2011-11-04 at 08:49 -0400,
glenn mcdonald wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> N-ary relations work great in a
graph model. The only reason they
>>>>> seem awkward in the Semantic Web
world, in my opinion, is that RDF
>>>>> leads us to looking at a graph
*decomposition* instead of an
>>>>> actual assembled graph. This
effect cascades onto SPARQL and OWL,
>>>>> and thus we end up with a great
forest we're reduced to looking
>>>>> at, and talking about, one twig
at a time.
>>>>>
>>>>> glenn
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Friday, November 4, 2011,
>>>>>
AzamatAbdoullaev<abdoul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> That's a big issue of
Relational Ontology, or "N-Relational
>>>>>> Ontology
>>>>>>
>>>>> of Things", as discussed 5
years ago:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2006Apr/0047.html.
>>>>>> And it is not strange that a
consistent formal account of
>>>>>>
>>>>> N-Relations has been long
missing. Relations are so ubiquitious
>>>>> and omnipresent that most people
take them for granted. In a
>>>>> general sense, everything is
related to everything. We are related
>>>>> to the world around us, to other
people, to our country, to our
>>>>> family and children and to
ourselves. There are ontological,
>>>>> logical, natural, physical,
mechanical, biological, psychological,
>>>>> emotional, technological, social,
cultural, moral, sexual,
>>>>> aesthetic, and semiotic
relations, to name a few. For most people,
>>>>> there is no particular problem
with most of these relations, may
>>>>> be, except ontological and
semiotic (semantic, syntactic and
>>>>> pragmatic) relations.
However, theorists have been perpetually
>>>>> puzzled over relations, and they
have tried to understand them
>>>>> theoretically and systematically,
but consistent, machine-readable
>>>>> models of relations have proved
extraordinarily difficult to construct:
>>>>>
>>>>>> "What Organizes the
World: N-Relational Entities":
>>>>>>
>>>>>
http://www.igi-global.com/chapter/reality-universal-ontology-knowl
>>>>> edge-systems/28313
>>>>>
>>>>>> What is hardly questionable,
to be implemented, the semantic web
>>>>>>
>>>>> indeed requires a unified formal
ontology of relations: UFOR.
>>>>>
>>>>>> Azamat Abdoullaev
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>>> From: Frank Manola
>>>>>> To: Alexandre Riazanov
>>>>>> Cc: Semantic Web List
>>>>>> Sent: Friday, November 04,
2011 1:23 AM
>>>>>> Subject: Re: relational data
as a bona fide member of the SM
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Nov 3, 2011, at 6:22 PM,
Alexandre Riazanov wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 5:20
PM, Frank Manola<fmanola@xxxxxxx>
>>>>>>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Nov 3, 2011, at 3:19 PM,
Alexandre Riazanov wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I have been asking this sort
of questions for a while and the
>>>>>> only
>>>>>>
>>>>> decent answer I know is that
>>>>>
>>>>>> Description Logics only work
with unary and binary predicates
>>>>>>
>>>>> (classes and properties),
>>>>>
>>>>>> although I believe RDF was
initially developed independently from
>>>>>>
>>>>> the DL and OWL work.
>>>>>
>>>>>> RIF
and RuleML seem to be going in the relational direction (see
>>>>>>
>>>>> also the earlier work
>>>>>
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.48.7623&r
>>>>> ep=rep1&type=pdf by Harold
Boley), but it is difficult to break
>>>>> the monopoly
>>>>>
>>>>>> of RDF+OWL.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> From my point of view,
a major reason for focusing on unary and
>>>>>>
>>>>> binary predicates (the logical
forms that underlie RDF triples) is
>>>>> that it's easier to deal with the
problems of integrating
>>>>> heterogeneous data (a key issue
in the semantic web) if the data
>>>>> is in (or is mapped to being in)
that form, as opposed to data in
>>>>> arbitrary arity relations (for
example, with n-aries you need a
>>>>> schema to interpret any tuples
you encounter "in the wild",
>>>>> otherwise you don't know what the
"columns" mean). If you go back
>>>>> to the period before the
"monopoly of RDF+OWL" :-) and look at
>>>>> the work on integrating
heterogeneous relational databases, one of
>>>>> the major approaches to
developing the mappings between the
>>>>> various relational schemas was by
interpreting the various local
>>>>> schemas in terms of unary and
binary relations for just this
>>>>> reason (compound keys had to be
dealt with in this way too,
>>>>> because the same combinations of
columns didn't necessarily
>>>>> constitute the keys in otherwise
corresponding relations
>>>>> in the different local
schemas). Mind you, if you're NOT worried
>>>>> about integrating heterogeneous
data, RDF introduces extra pain of
>>>>> its own (figuring out all those
identifiers, for one thing), but
>>>>> if you ARE worried about
integrating heterogenous data, I think
>>>>> you want those identifiers
around.
>>>>>
>>>>>> I don't quite understand your
argument. Indeed, interoperability
>>>>>> is
>>>>>>
>>>>> the target. Syntactic
interoperability is not a problem as long as
>>>>> you use the same or convertible
syntaxes.
>>>>>
>>>>>> Semantic interoperability
requires shared understanding of the
>>>>>>
>>>>> identifiers being used, which has
nothing to do with arity.
>>>>> Reinterpreting legacy relational
schemas is a related, but
>>>>> separate issue.
>>>>>
>>>>>> Binary predicates are often
handy to represent attributes, but it
>>>>>>
>>>>> does not mean n-ary predicates
cannot be helpful in the same
>>>>> (although I could not recall a
real example) and other KR tasks.
>>>>>
>>>>>> Let me try again, then
(although I can't guarantee I'll be any
>>>>>> more
>>>>>>
>>>>> understandable this time!).
The original question (I thought) was
>>>>> why there weren't relational
approaches applied in
>>>>> Semantic-Web-like contexts
(where, as you say, interoperability is
>>>>> the target). I cited the
integration of heterogeneous relational
>>>>> databases to argue that, in this
case, where relations were
>>>>> already being used by all
parties, and interoperability was the
>>>>> target, those doing the
integration found that using unaries and
>>>>> binaries helped (I agree that
shared understanding of the
>>>>> identifiers is necessarily for
semantic interoperability, but in
>>>>> RDF+OWL, at least the identifiers
are *there*; those putting the
>>>>> data on the Web had to create
them).
>>>>> All
>>>>> that RDF is doing is starting
from the unaries and binaries. This
>>>>> is not an argument that n-ary
relations aren't helpful in data modeling.
>>>>> Nor is it an argument
that you can't do semantic integration
>>>>> using n-ary relations. I
simply think it's *easier* to do that
>>>>> integration with the RDF
approach, and I cited an historical
>>>>> example as evidence that others
have found that as well. Now,
>>>>> they/we may have simply missed
the boat, and if so, someone
>>>>> (possibly you) will have to come
along and show us a better way
>>>>> (I'm serious). There have
certainly been attempts to provide more
>>>>> general KRs (allowing n-ary
predicates) for data/knowledge
>>>>> exchange
>>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> David Booth, Ph.D.
>>>> http://dbooth.org/
>>>>
>>>> Opinions expressed herein are those
of the author and do not
>>>> necessarily reflect those of his
employer.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
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>>
>> --
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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
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