Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology for Climate Change - need input

["Rich Cooper" <rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear John,

I agree with most of what you wrote in this email, but I would like to discuss one point. 

You wrote:

RC

> The solution to this conundrum has yet to be

> found, and indeed may not even exist.

There is a solution.  And C. S. Peirce stated it over a century ago:

CSP

> It is easy to speak with precision upon a general theme. Only, one > must commonly surrender all ambition to be certain. It is equally > easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague. It is not > so difficult to be pretty precise and fairly certain at once about > a very narrow subject. (CP 4.237)

In other words, it's easy to be precise in a universal ontology, but your precision will have no correspondence with reality.

It's also easy to have a broad ontology that is widely applicable, but only if it is "sufficiently vague".  That is why schema.org is much more likely to be generally applicable than any universal formal ontology with detailed definitions.

But as CSP said, you can be "pretty precise and fairly certain" about a very narrow subject.

Solution:  You need a broad "vague" upper level.  And the only places where you can have enough precision for detailed reasoning (or specification) are in the very narrow, specialized microtheories.

John

You've convinced me that CSP is a worthy person to quote (if only I could read him in modern English). 

But the problem here is that few pairs of readers could be predicted to agree on what exactly comprises being "vague" or "precise".  The exception might be that vague is a very short text, and precise is much longer. 

The reason I think "no solution exists" is more credible than "vague or precise" is because so few people pairs agree on much of anything that is complex.  Look at the lack of agreement on this list over the years we have been comingling our individual interpretations! 

I do agree if you mean that for a very narrow domain, we could be precise enough to agree in more details than disagree, and in a very broad domain, we could be vague enough to not make much progress yet have a good feeling in our tummies for the discussion.  But I don't think that is what you meant. 

I still think the problem is in having a machine-to-human interface that can use Q&A methods to formulate (by the machine) what the human thinks in some interchangeable format, but not one that is complete and consistent with all the other humans talking to their own machines on the same network and sharing conclusions.  The goal of interchangeability is what ontology seems to be about, but how to achieve said interchangeability seems problematic, at least to me. 

Perhaps a more limited goal of one consistent ontology for each human subject is more achievable.  That could provide many benefits, for example in EHR databases kept by one health care provider. 

-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 John F Sowa
Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 1:58 PM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology for Climate Change - need input

Ed, Rich, and Doug,

I agree with your observations.  But I would qualify or revise the

conclusions.

EB

> The whole idea in ontology development is that we sort all [those

> definitions] out in the formal language.  In a formal ontology,

> all terms are Humpty Dumpty words:  They mean exactly what we say

> they mean, neither more nor less.

I agree.  But I would add that there's a major problem in getting anyone

other than Humpty D. to understand what he meant in whatever arcane

notation he chose to use.  Even Humpty himself is unlikely to remember

from one day to the next the exact details of every definition.

How many programmers can recall exactly what assumptions they made

in a program they wrote ten years ago?  Ten days ago?

Can anyone expect an ontologist (or worse, a committee of ontologists)

to remember the definitions of every term?  To reread those definitions

every time they use the terms?  To understand exactly what they read?

To use what they thought they understood in the way it was intended?

EB

> An ontology in which most of the terms are primitive (not formally defined)

> does not provide much of a foundation for inference.  In particular, most

> OWL models I see are information models, not ontologies.  They don’t DEFINE

> terms using both necessary and sufficient (iff) characteristics.

I agree.  But this isn't just a problem with OWL.  The same issues occur

in systems that have much more detailed definitions.  But when you put

all that detail into the definitions, the likelihood that anybody will

read and understand them exactly as intended is very, very low.

It doesn't matter how precise your definitions are if the data entry

people don't read, understand, remember, or use them.

RC quoting "Ordered Chaos"

> We have discussed earlier the possibility of naming ontological nodes

> as non linguistic labels, perhaps like X3-05023-C which makes it clear

> that there is NO linguistic relationship between ontological nodes and

> words.   But that has been an unworkable approach as well.  The authors

> of the nodes  assign "meaningful" names, such as "river", and do not

> exhaustively characterize  the node "river" to include all the > varieties of river which we have

discussed in the past.

In short, the only things that people remember and use are the English

phrases in the "meaningful names".  The pretense that the anybody will

remember or use the formal definitions is more hope than reality.

RC continuing the quote:

> The point is that mnemonic names for ontological nodes must necessarily

> be misleading at some point in using the ontology.  Blaming "erroneous

> interpretations" on the NL side in order to leave the ontological side

> blameless is just an exercise in self delusion.

Yes, indeed!

DF

> If the term and its meaning(s) is/are known to an ontologist, all that is

> needed is to map the NL term to the term(s) in the ontology that

> it may represent.  If meanings are known, it is irrelevant to the ontologist

> whether any of the meanings may be calculable from the NL term.

Several qualifications:

The assumption that any two ontologists who are using the same formal

ontology understand and use all the terms in exactly the same way is

unlikely.  It's even unlikely that the *same* ontologist will remember

and use every term in the same way from one month (or even one day)

to the next.

For anybody who has ever written a program, just think of how many bugs

crop up from mistakes in remembering the details of every definition

in every function or subroutine in a large system.  Just look at the

huge number of patches that emanate from Redmond, Wash, every week.

Every patch changes the definition of something in the system.  And

there is nobody who understands the whole thing.

RC

> The solution to this conundrum has yet to be

> found, and indeed may not even exist.

There is a solution.  And C. S. Peirce stated it over a century ago:

CSP

> It is easy to speak with precision upon a general theme. Only, one

> must commonly surrender all ambition to be certain. It is equally

> easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague. It is not

> so difficult to be pretty precise and fairly certain at once about

> a very narrow subject. (CP 4.237)

In other words, it's easy to be precise in a universal ontology,

but your precision will have no correspondence with reality.

It's also easy to have a broad ontology that is widely applicable,

but only if it is "sufficiently vague".  That is why schema.org is

much more likely to be generally applicable than any universal

formal ontology with detailed definitions.

But as CSP said, you can be "pretty precise and fairly certain"

about a very narrow subject.

Solution:  You need a broad "vague" upper level.  And the

only places where you can have enough precision for detailed

reasoning (or specification) are in the very narrow, specialized

microtheories.

John

 

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