Dear Ed,
I don’t plan to reinvent the
Agent/Activity ontology, but I don’t want to use “action” instead of the more
aggregated “Activity” concept. The reason is because I don’t relay on
syntactic analysis as the first step. Instead, I start with the semantic
analysis that is available based on the lexicon and phraseology used in the
corpus.
But in my methods of the ‘923, it isn’t
necessary to start with a complex pantheon of concepts. I am developing a
reference design for the ‘923 which is minimalist – Agents and Activities –
rather than choosing a maximized set of concepts because I think that approach
is much more effective for the applications I have in mind.
Thanks for the reminder re SUMO. When I
get stuck with a concept, perhaps I can find precedents in the SUMO ontology.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ed Barkmeyer
Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2012 8:04
AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Self Interest Ontology
Rich/John,
There is no need to reinvent the agent/action ontology. SUMO, for
example, has a semantic take on the basic linguistic idea: An
action is a "gerund" -- a thing that is the action. So an
action is modeled as a class denoted by a verb. An action has an
"agent" property, just as the verb has a "subject" in any
simple sentence denoting an instance of the action. An action may have a
"patient" property, which is the "direct object" of the verb,
if it is transitive, in simple sentences denoting instances of the
action. Adverbial phrases are unary predicates that modify the action
(simple adverbs) or predicates/properties that relate the action thing to some
other thing (prepositional phrases), and in each case the predicate determines
the term for the related thing. It is useful to standardize predicates
for time and place.
This approach is also used in Cyc, and is common to a lot of ontologies for
interpreting natural language. For the OWL and RDF lot, it has the
advantage of avoiding n-ary relations. If the semantics of an action
intrinsically requires a 3rd participant thing, e.g., a "dative" or
"instrumental" role, the specific action class simply has a required
additional participant relation.
My favorite test case for arity>2, however, is the rendering of "X is
between A and B", precisely because it is intrinsically ternary and does
not fit the linguistic pattern.
[Aside: I have seen descriptions of this general model that say it is THE
Davidsonian model (from Daniel Davidson). My impression (Chris can
correct me) is that it is rather A Davidsonian model. Davidson only
asserts that actions are, or at least can be, things in the universe of
discourse, and thus be arguments to predicates. They can, of course, be
arguments to unary predicates that classify actions, but there is no
requirement for that, and I'm not aware of any Davidson assertion that there
have to be predicates that model "subject of action" or "direct
object of action". I would have said that the Sowa CG model --
<action> is described by <(nominalized) proposition> -- is equally
Davidsonian.]
So I'm not saying "use the SUMO model." I am saying: Look
at the upper ontology literature, and pick one.
(This fits the Hayes' Doctrine for use of upper ontologies: When you
discover you need one of these basic ideas, look to see if some published upper
ontology has a model you can use, and copy/convert those axioms, and, as a
professional courtesy, include an attribution.)
-Ed
P.S. I am terrible at providing references, and I keep finding that my
preferred ones are not the Web-available reference, if there is one.
--
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."
John Bottoms wrote:
Rich,
Hmmm, I don't understand your language. I know that it may be common to the
field but I also find that some well accepted concepts can be pitfalls without
an understanding of what is entailed. I don't know Chomsky's grammar. Which of
his many papers can you refer me to? I don't know what "highly rational
text" is, or how it is measured. It seems to imply that there are other
grades of rational text.
In opening paragraph). You contrast agents and actions ("The first distinction I want to make is between agents and
activities"). I understand this view as it was one that I
once held myself. I tend to think of these things more grammatically now. The
problem arises with the understanding of "actor" or "agent"
vs things and activities. Agents don't always do things, they may not take an
action or may be inhibited from taking an action. They are in effect
"nouns" that do "verb" things.
This view is confounded by a view of things (nouns) that do things when they
are not supposed to. I first ran into this problem in a linguistic setting;
note that you do not see this in the semantic analysis, but may in a linguistic
analysis. Take for example: a rock (clearly an inert thingy) sitting on a clay
slope. Along comes the rain and it no longer is a thing but becomes an agent
but perhaps not quite an actor. Anyway, it slides down the slope unlodging
others of its kind with a few logs. It seems to act on its own and starts to
look more and more like an avenging angel agent. My suggestion is to stay with
verbs and nouns for as long as possible. This puts you in the syntactic arena
but that is safe as long as it can be tolerated. I understand that at some point
you may need to move to semantic analysis, but resist until you can't resist
any further.
I don't have the expertise to read the patent expediently.
My other comments are embedded below.
-John Bottoms
FirstStar Systems
Concord, MA USA
On 5/30/2012 5:22 PM, Rich Cooper
wrote:
John,
those are excellent questions for describing the context of this project.
My comments are below,
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich
Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
Rich,
I find it useful to start the development with questions that define the scope.
What is the problem to be solved.
This formulation is a system spec for a
reference design that practices my patent 7,209,923, attached to this
email. A previous reference design was developed to process patent claims
from the USPTO patent database.
This reference design (TBD) is intended to
demonstrate the ability to analyze highly rational text, which Chomsky
typically writes (though not always). The idea is to manage a lexicon of
verbs (including gerunds and signatures a la Beth Levin) that relate to activities
which individuals perform, as described in the corpus text.
The first distinction I want to make is
between agents and activities. With the signatures there are embedded
variables that can be bound to the actual objects and phrases that are not
verbs or gerunds according to the initial lexicon. Chomsky’s language is
so precise and consistent (IMHO) that his texts provide a foundation for
simpler accumulation of signatures for verb phrases that might be useful
initial lexicons for specific applications TBD later which also practice the
‘923 methods.
1. Is this taxonomy looking outward?
I’m not sure what you mean by “looking
outward”; please elaborate so we are talking the same concepts.
By "outward" I mean from the self to another
agent. The difference between self-interest and other-agent's-interest is in
the missing information for the other-agent. So the processing is different.
Is there someone's (or some group's) motives I am
trying to understand?
Yes, Chomsky’s favorite subject relates to
political, economic and military actions performed by politicians, government
employees, corporations, NGOs and at least those other agent classes.
Does this pertain to the patent?
(As an aside, I believe there are entre's to duTocqueville's "hidden
hand" concept if the duality analysis is pursued carefully. That would be
an interesting study.)
This view would be useful in duality evaluations.
Please define “duality evaluation”; I’m
not sure what you mean by that phrase.
Nah, I made it up. I am referring to the ability to
develop a theory for an agent based on behaviors. Of course, to do it right one
has to consider oneself as part of the situation.
2.
For myself, looking inward; what is my goal and what are the range of behaviors
or processes that are candidates to further my position vis à
vis my goals.
My goal is to have a reference design that
can be adapted to a wide variety of applications, and which can be attractive
to licensees of the patent. The main attraction is to provide a minimal
reference design that can start an application designer on the path to
practicing the invention.
3. What problem is trying to solve. That is: what is the current restrain on
this self-interest. This would lead to a change of analysis of restraints.
By reducing the cost and schedule of a considered
application, the reference design helps potential licensees get a jump on
minimizing the cost and schedule for the application. That economy is in
the licensees self interest.
It sounds like you are trying to develop a grammar for
an application. Is that right?
Re the self interest of the corpus and the
agents mentioned there, I think the best approach is simply to build a case
base of the behaviors which each agent performs (i.e., which activities and
which object bindings). The case base in this patent is stored in a
database that can be dynamically sized and configured (see the ‘923
specification for an explanation). Finding patterns of linguistic use
within the parsed and stored database is a lot easier than constructing the
software to make and manage that database in the first place.
It sounds like you need a meta-grammar application to
find and label the patterns. This is done for Hidden Markov Model systems that
are typically hand-tweaked. Statistical analysis such as in Watson can help,
but to be safe you need to have a human review the results of any machine
learning algorithm.
For me, I don't see much of a difference between patterns and algorithms at
some point. There appears to be a mathematical mapping from one to the other.
Watson has contributed by identifying the important subject areas under the
query curve, at least for Jeopardy. Clearly, it doesn't understand the subjects
being discussed, and in that sense it is my opinion that it is a
"statistical gossip machine".
4.
'Course the "cost/benefit" is elemental, including community standing
as a self-interest item (both in terms of success or failure).
Again, the behaviors
(actions) of the agents can be organized into a case base and analyzed to infer
self-interest and coping behaviors from the database of text phrases and IDEF0
interpretations.
I'm not as fully studied in behavioral economics as I
would like to be. My exposure in this area is via assessment, which is an
adolescent field. I would encourage you to include metrics linked to scoring
and behaviors to understand another's self-interest traits.
5.
History: how has this been solved before, why can't that be done now. Precursor
contexts may be interesting: how did we get here, why does this problem need to
be solved.
Agreed; the Before and After conditions of
each activity should be linked through database indexes to identify patterns,
infer self interest and coping behaviors for each agent.
Pre- and -post scoring in statistics is better
understood than normative assessment. The cutting edge currently is in
"adaptive polytomous assessment". These extract multiple traits while
selecting against a controlled variable. These techniques require significant
investment until better tools are developed and there's not a lot of call for
them now. Again, the proximal region hasn't required it just yet.
6.
Future: how is this going to affect the context, who are those in the context
that will be effected
Context is the represented element of an
IDEF0 activity that is organized into the database as associated ICOMAs and
their component object types and decompositions.
;TL, DR
7.
Time, how long will it take, do the parties have that much time?
The plan, as in 3 above, is to provide a
starting structure for reducing the cost and schedule for developing future
applications. Not every writer is as precise and accurate as Chomsky, so
metaphors, incomplete sentences, ambiguous sentences and phrases, and other related
application elements will show up, but ways to handle those derived
considerations still will have to be done individually, for each application,
on top of the reference design.
My comments here referred to the length of time an
assessment takes. That may not be relevant in your case if the assessment can
be handled strictly with semantics aside from time considerations.
-John
Bottoms
FirstStar Systems
Concord, MA
Thanks for your
comments; they were very useful. Please keep them coming,
-Rich
On 5/30/2012 1:41 PM, Rich
Cooper wrote:
Ed
Barkmeyer wrote:
This is
a would-be taxonomy without classification criteria, or
consequent
properties, which makes it ontologically useless.
Alternatively,
one can see it as an itinerary of places to be visited on
the way
to formulating some kind of political science ontology.
-Ed
True, it’s only a starting point, not a finished
ontology. The final version should ultimately be capable of reasoning in
its various shades.
I still want to map the elements cited (and others
TBD) into a regular rendering, and I prefer IDEF0 since it is well known by
nonontologists. When the ontology is finished some day, it can be mapped
into the IDEF0 structures and interconnects, and augmented with rules for
logic, etc.
This is
a would-be taxonomy without classification criteria, or
consequent
properties, which makes it ontologically useless.
Alternatively,
one can see it as an itinerary of places to be visited on
the way
to formulating some kind of political science ontology.
True. Its only a starting point.
Your discussions below re the meaning of self interest
is also useful. I’ll think about it some more, but I think self interest
is still a slippery concept to me, and will take some deeper thought to render
properly.
Thanks for the thoughts; more would be appreciated
also,
-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 Ed Barkmeyer
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2012 8:52 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Self
Interest Ontology
Ignoring the choice of political scientist as source,
this purports to
be the basis for an ontology.
What is the basis for this high-level taxonomy?
What are the
distinguishing properties of the 2nd level classifiers?
And how do those properties relate to
"self-interest"?
All organizations have self-interests, and their human
components
typically share some of those interests, either out of
ideology -- what
the organization does is "good" -- or out of
pragmatism -- I will do
well only if the organization does well (even though
the definition of
"x does well" is quite different for x=me
vs. x=the organization). But
there are also cases in which the self-interest of the
individuals may
be to the detriment of the organization -- I can use
the organization to
do well -- as in the leveraged buyout game. And
a lot of work is
motivated by "pride in accomplishment" --
personal fulfillment, which
may or may not be "useful accomplishment" --
organizational value.
Bureaucrats commonly mistake making a contribution for
making a useful
contribution. So, it is not at all clear to me
how position in an
organization affects the self-interest of either the
individual or the
organization.
This is a would-be taxonomy without classification
criteria, or
consequent properties, which makes it ontologically
useless.
Alternatively, one can see it as an itinerary of
places to be visited on
the way to formulating some kind of political science
ontology.
-Ed
Rich
Cooper wrote:
>
> If we limit the Self Interest Ontology to just
the players Chomsky
> mentions (directly or indirectly), the set of
agents could be
> organized thusly:
>
>
>
> -government
>
>
-legislators
>
>
-judiciary
>
>
-cabinet level executives
>
>
-employees
>
> -NGOs
>
> -corporate
>
>
-stockholders
>
>
-directors
>
>
-executive management
>
>
-lobbyists
>
>
-employees
>
> -individuals
>
>
-taxpayers
>
>
-adults
>
>
-minors
>
>
-beneficiaries
>
>
-adults
>
>
-minors
>
>
>
> This gives one view for the Ontology which
identifies the agents that
> participate in the Chomskyesque materials.
Does anyone want to
> suggest additions, deletions, or changes to the
list above?
>
>
>
> Activities of the Self Interest Ontology might
include:
>
>
>
> -government
>
>
-taxation
>
>
-regulation
>
>
-legislation
>
>
-enforcement
>
>
-judgments
>
> -corporate
>
>
-markets
>
>
-monopolies
>
>
-competitors
>
>
-persuasion
>
>
-operations
>
>
-finance
>
>
-capital
>
>
-revenues
>
>
-costs
>
>
-lobbying
>
>
-employment
>
>
-taxation
>
> -Individuals
>
>
>
> One way to develop materials for filling in the
lower levels of the
> ontology might be to process NLP from Chomsky’s
books and articles,
> and news stories, including daily news articles
from individual
> reporters, articles from corporate news sources
(e.g., WSJ, NYT,
LA
> Times, etc). By identifying the named
entities that correspond to the
> agent classes above, it should be possible to
organize news stories to
> deepen the Self Interest Ontology to include
lower level subclasses.
> This is a very limited first step in identifying
the actors and
> activities that play identifiable roles a la
Chomsky’s viewpoint. It
> should also identify the news sources which are
biased in each
> direction for each class of agents.
>
>
>
> Has anything serious been left out of the top
level for the Self
> Interest Ontology? Again, suggestions are
appreciated,
>
>
>
> -Rich
>
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Rich Cooper
>
> EnglishLogicKernel.com
>
> Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
>
> 9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
*On Behalf Of *Rich Cooper
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 30, 2012 6:46 AM
> *To:* '[ontolog-forum] '
> *Subject:* Re: [ontolog-forum] Self
Interest Ontology
>
>
>
> Chomsky’s theories of the corporate-state partnership,
and how it
> concentrates power in the hands of large
corporations, are well known,
> especially:
>
>
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TieGj2Yi5r8
>
>
>
> But neither Rand nor Hayek subscribed to
corporate-state partnership.
> In both cases, they value the individual, not the
corporation and not
> the state and certainly not the combination of
the two. So I don’t
> think that is the reason why he is unhappy with
both Rand and Hayek.
>
>
>
> From the above video “elections are always
bought”, “President Obama’s
> election was funded by corporate interests”, and
numerous other
> examples indicate his deep displeasure with the
state-corporate binding.
>
>
>
> I would like to see quotes from Chomsky that
specifically describe his
> displeasure with both Rand and Hayek rather than trying
to predict his
> rationale. Chomsky is always very deep in
his rationale, so I don’t
> think that we can simply say the corporate-state
binding is why he is
> against either Rand or Hayek.
>
>
>
> Mike Pool quoted this short paragraph from the
article, which is
> somewhat enlightening:
>
>
>
> "Hayek was the kind of 'libertarian' who was
quite tolerant of such
> free societies as Pinochet's Chile,
one of the most grotesque of the
> National Security States instituted with US
backing or direct
> initiative during the hideous plague of terror
and violence that
> spread over the hemisphere from the 60s through
the 80s. He even sank
> to the level of arranging a meeting of his Mont
Pelerin society there
> during the most vicious days of the dictatorship.
"
>
>
>
> But that critique is not directed at Hayek’s
ideas about economics in
> general, only about his interpretation of Hayek’s
poor showing in the
> political area, specifically in supporting
Pinochet and the US
methods
> of supporting property owners at the expense of
the average citizen.
>
>
>
> His description of how democratic groups in Haiti
were overturned by
> the US
government and a dictator was reinstalled under US actions, is
> typical Chomsky, and very clearly in line with
his past work. But in
> broad brush strokes in the article, he paints
both Rand and Hayek
> (neither of whom are known for their political
wisdom) as evil without
> considering the kudos they gave to the
individuals.
>
>
>
> -Rich
>
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Rich Cooper
>
> EnglishLogicKernel.com
>
> Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
>
> 9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
*On Behalf Of *Chris
> Menzel
> *Sent:* Monday, May 28, 2012 5:30 AM
> *To:* [ontolog-forum]
> *Subject:* Re: [ontolog-forum] Self
Interest Ontology
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 2:09 PM, Rich Cooper
> <rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>>
wrote:
>
> Thanks – a very interesting article. I’m
surprised at how vehemently
> Chomsky shrugs her off as evil. He doesn’t
give any explanation in
> the article; do you have any information about
WHY he thinks Rand
is
> evil?
>
>
>
> It's obvious if you read Chomsky's (vast) work on
political theory and
> American social and political history, especially
his writings on
> social security, taxation, corporate welfare, the
massive
> redistribution of wealth from the middle class to
the top income
> brackets engineered by conservative tax policy
over the last dozen
> years, etc, all of which are in vehement
opposition to the social
> darwinism that lies at the heart of Randian
economic theories (and
> current GOP economic politicies).
>
>
>
--
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."
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