John, some comments below. (01)
Thanks,
Leo (02)
Leo
> How can we possibly understand what you are saying here, if we don't
> greatly share common semantics and a common ontology? (03)
Obviously, we can't talk to one another if we don't share any semantics.
But people from totally different backgrounds can and do manage to
communicate successfully on specific problem areas -- even though
they may have major disagreements and misunderstandings in other areas.
[Leo: ] John, we do can so because we share a common ontology (and a common
semantics). (04)
In fact, we can even communicate with people with whom we don't even
have a common language. We can go to a store and communicate by just
pointing to what we want and taking out some money to pay for it. (05)
For that transaction, the context (store, designated item, and money)
provides all the common semantics we need to complete the purchase.
[Leo: ] Again, we share a common ontology: the store, the item(s), money,
people, hands, mouths, etc. We also share a common semantics of pointing
(pointing to the object, pointing to your mouth), etc. (06)
Computer systems have been interoperating successfully since the 1960s
without having an explicit ontology. We all believe that an explicit
ontology can help. But you can get a great deal of successful
interoperability without assuming a fully axiomatized formal ontology.
[Leo: ] Sure, by a human programmer hard-coding the interoperability. My point
is that we all share an implicit ontology, and implicit semantics, to achieve
something like 95% commonality. As computer scientists, of course, we also want
to achieve explicit machine-interpretable ontologies. (07)
For interoperability on a specific problem, you don't need to share any
semantics about anything outside the context of that problem. Sharing
more semantics might be helpful for a broader range of problems, but
sometimes it's harder to achieve agreement on the shared semantics
than to solve whatever problems need to be solved. (08)
I'm not against the idea of having a broader ontology. But there
has to be some trade-off: How much time and effort can you devote
to solving a problem or to developing an ontology that might help
you solve the problem? (09)
John (010)
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