Hello Patric,
Largely agreed, although I think we should do more than just a set of
primitives, as I describe below. (01)
> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Namens Patrick Cassidy
> Verzonden: donderdag 6 september 2012 13:12
> Aan: '[ontolog-forum] '
> Onderwerp: Re: [ontolog-forum] Universal Basic Semantic Structures
>
> Just a note in response to some of John Sowa's remarks about Gellish:
>
> [JS] >> The goals are important, and I believe that Andries has put
> >> together an impressive system of interrelated ideas.
> >> I believe that Gellish contains a lot of good material that is worth
considering.
> >>
> >> My major concern is that it is YASS -- Yet Another Semantic Structure
> >> that is designed to solve all the world's problems -- but ONLY IF
> >> the entire world swallows it whole and converts everything to it
overnight.
> >>
> >> The biggest YASS of all is Cyc, which had one person millennium of
> >> work invested in it as of 2010. Cyc is very impressive. It has
> >> implemented many things very well, and Doug is better able to explain
> >> those than I am. But as we have seen, it still has not been swallowed
whole.
>
> I agree with this assessment. Just building a reasonable semantic
> structure is, based on experience, unlikely to lead to its wide
> adoption, no matter how technically capable or sophisticated.
>
> [JS] >> Meanwhile, much less tightly organized things such as Linked Open
> >> Data have had a much faster uptake with a much looser organization.
> >> The question of how to combine ideas from LOD with any of the many
> >> YASSes is still an unanswered research issue.
>
> Yes again. I have made my analysis in this forum on several
> occasions, and will repeat it here in this context.
> (1) an ontology (or any other semantic structure) intended for
> interoperability among systems must be agreed to explicitly by all of
> those who want to (or should) use it;
[AvR] agreed; they may only use concepts that are defined in the language
dictionary-taxonomy or that are added according to formal rules. (02)
> (2) the best way to get buy-in is to make it possible for those who
> use it to modify it to their purposes without creating the kind of
> ambiguity and synonymy found in natural languages; (current semantic
> web efforts have too little control to avoid those problems)
[AvR] partly agreed; modification by extension is O.K. But modification by
changing semantics basically creates another language, which destroys the
commonality of the language. (03)
> (3) the best way to allow such universal applicability is to focus the
> common semantic language on those primitives that are required to
> logically specify the meanings of all of the terms in the domain
> languages, and to keep a public inventory of those logical specifications.
[AvR] Why limit the semantic expression capability of the language? For
practical applications we need precise semantics. If the concepts, including
kinds of relations and kinds of roles, are arranged in a proper
subtype-supertype hierarchy, then improvements of that hierarchical network
can be discussed and will improve the language. But freedom to allow
everybody to create his own language does not help information integration. (04)
> (4) such an inventory of primitives will constitute a foundation
> ontology that will represent a set of basic concepts sufficient to
> logically specify the meanings of almost all terms in any domain
> ontology;
> (5) any missing primitives required for new domains can be added;
[AvR] Provided that the process to extent the language is managed according
to an agreed methodology. (05)
> (6) logically inconsistent theories can be represented **as theories**
> -- i.e., not as part of the fundamental "belief" system of the
> foundation ontology.
> (7) focusing on the primitive concept representations keeps the
> learning curve as shallow as possible by keeping the number of elements
> to be learned to the smallest set that will do the job.
[AvR] The problem is that there are always new students, who want to
question the earlier agreed concepts. Therefore such a limitation to
primitives does not help to develop a full language. (06)
>
> In effect, a common ontology is a language and a language is not
> usually imposed from above, but developed by agreement among the users,
> based on common usage. The problem with a logical language for
> interoperability is to avoid ambiguity and synonymy, an absolute plague
> when every person or small community tries to do their own thing (as
> with human languages)
[AvR] Synonymy (and homonymy) should be allowed as it is solved by using
unambiguous UID's. It should even be stimulated, as many companies use their
own terminology. Allowing synonyms stimulate adoption. (07)
>
> The problem is how to develop a community that will agree to such a
> common ontology, and build applications demonstrating that the ontology
> will in fact serve to enable accurate interoperability. "let a
> thousand flowers bloom" results in a thousand isolated flowers blooming
> in a thousand isolated gardens.
> Any of several large organizations could probably create the
> critical mass of users for some primitives-based foundation ontology:
> Microsoft, Google, Oracle, IBM, or a large government agency - in the
> US, Europe, or perhaps China?
[AvR] Do you know Malcomb Gladwell's book 'The Tipping Point'? It nicely
describes how idea's sometimes suddenly become adopted or not. Usually we
only know afterwards why some idea's were widely adopted. (08)
>
> I hope I live to see the day.
>
> Pat
>
>
> Patrick Cassidy
> MICRA Inc.
> cassidy@xxxxxxxxx
> 908-561-3416
>
>
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