Simon, (01)
Thank you for copying my note to Tom Gruber. It was posted to the
email list for SRKB (Shared Reusable Knowledge Bases) in August 1992. (02)
http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/email-archives/interlingua.messages/220.html (03)
The good news is that the note can help resolve the recent debate
on terminology. The bad news is that you can pull out an SRKB note
from twenty years ago, post it to Ontolog Forum, and the level of
the debate is indistinguishable from the debates going on today. (04)
Some relevant points: (05)
Tom Gruber
> So I think we have a case of agreement on semantics, and a difference
> on terminology. Sound familiar? (06)
JFS
> And the term that seems to be causing the greatest difficulty for me,
> and I believe also for Charles Petrie and others is "ontology". (07)
TG
> Formally, an ontology is:
> a set of terms (relation, function, and object constants)
> a set of documentation strings for these terms
> a set of of defining axioms for these terms (08)
JFS
> First of all, I would delete the "documentation strings" from the
> "formal" definition, since they are comments that are not intelligible to
> the formal system (no matter how important they may be for the humans).
>
> I'm willing to accept the set of terms as essential, but I am bothered
> by the phrase "defining axioms"... It raises the question of whether
> there are any other kinds of axioms besides defining ones...
>
> Furthermore, the term "ontology", strictly speaking, implies a theory
> of existence... (09)
I believe that we can end the recent controversies and debates just
by adopting two definitions: (010)
1. The field of ontology is the study of existence. (011)
2. An ontology is a theory of existence. (012)
These two short definitions are consistent with the OED and M-W.
They're also consistent with what philosophers, logicians, and
computer scientists have been saying for years or centuries. (013)
They also avoid controversies caused by the phrase "formalization
of a conceptualization". Barry Smith and I have both complained
that it confuses more issues than it clarifies. (014)
If anybody wants to distinguish various kinds of ontologies, they
can add any adjectives or other qualifying phrases to the word
'ontology' that could be added to the word 'theory': (015)
Formal, informal, integrating, normative, or descriptive theory. (016)
Theory about a particular domain, stated in KIF, written in English,
used by a theorem prover, existing only in somebody's head, etc. (017)
John (018)
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