If you could boil down the claims of this early Libertarian and critic of
the New Deal into a formal set of assertions stated in a logical language
that would be a good foundation for a Libertarian "micro-theory" ontology. (01)
The set of relations and types used by such assertions would be useful in
a more general economics ontology. (02)
Does Henry Hazlitt's book explain why it is in the self-interest of the
Republicans to do what is necessary to ensure that the US economy does not
improve before the November 2012 election so that they have a better
chance of gaining control of the Senate and presidency? (03)
-- doug foxvog (04)
On Sat, November 5, 2011 14:31, Rich Cooper said:
> Dear Self Interested Ontologists,
>
> I discovered a book written in 1948 that explains
> why the Keynesian theories don't work - he
> describes what he calls the "broken window
> fallacy" here:
>
> http://www.fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-
> lesson/
>
> I hope that helps stimulate more discussion of the
> role of self interest in AI and in ontology
> developments. Moy conclusion is that a true AI
> system will have to EVOLVE effectiveness as an
> ontology of communication among a plurality of
> self interested observers.
>
> -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: Saturday, November 05, 2011 8:24 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>;<semanti
> c-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/2
> 006Apr/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-universa
> l-ontology-knowledge-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&rep=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 must be ours."
> - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
> ==================================================
> ===========
>
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> (05)
=============================================================
doug foxvog doug@xxxxxxxxxx http://ProgressiveAustin.org (06)
"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.
============================================================= (07)
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