Re: [ontolog-forum] is-part-of: a really, really, bad practice?

[William Frank <williamf.frank@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 2:48 AM, doug foxvog <doug@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, May 28, 2013 20:10, William Frank wrote:
>...
> For example, chardonnay is NOT a type of wine, contrary to the OWL
> tutorial. Chardonnay is a type of grape, and a wine may be classified
> according the grapes used to make it, as well as in myrid other ways.

If wines my be classified according to the types of grapes used to make
them, why do you object to these "classes" of wines being called "types"
of wine?

Perhaps what I am saying and what you say about acyclic directed graphs are close.   I also suspect I am missing something. 

I find It much more flexible and requiring less baggage to treat the huge variety of classification schemes (schemes such as color, region, etc.) according to which something (such as Wine) can be classified, and all the classifiers in each scheme (red, white, burgundy, chardonnay),  as themselves part of the model, and their definitions, at the same level as the wines themselves.   Instead of chardonnay being a 'type' of wine, if instead we define the wine grape classification scheme and the classifier chardonnay, as for all x:wine charadonnay(x) iff (the grapes from which x were made were at least 50% chardonnay grapes).    Then, I would want to say, this wine **is classified as a* that classifer,  Both the classifier and the thing classified existing at the same logical level, and in the *is classified as a* being the logical relation between them.   

At the same time, I have found that it is useful to construct a single, quite shallow natural type hierarchy, easy for bilogical obects like grapes, and not so hard for some things like wine, where we can define what it means to be a wine, (manufacture method), natural wines, fortified wines, perhaps as the two first nodes.  I heard here not long ago that figuring out what was the right core hierachy for minerals was not so obvious to all, but many of the other descritors, such as hardness, I would treat differently.  For things like financial instruments, there is a very shallow hierachy based on the nature of the obligation and rights involved, while all the virtually infinite varieties of financial instruments are better distinquished by the parts they are assembled from, and the features of those parts.  I have found the classifications of them ineffective if done with multiple types (it becomes almost like a fine wire mesh), rather than with simple definitions of what it means, for instance, to be a sushi bond or a PIK bond.   This idea of natural types I do not know how to easily argue for, though I have seen such arguments that convinced me.  Me, I only find it effective.   

I have often criticized the wine tutorial, but i do not find this to be one
of its problems.

> These are not different 'types" of wine, using the bilogical analogy for
> taxonomies.

Formal ontology has long since moved past taxonomy trees.  It is
much more useful to use directed acyclic graphs.

> Wine would have only ONE subtype hierachy, based on
> what is essential about wine being wine.  (How it is made).

One valid subtype hierarchy of types of wine is based on the type of
grape.  Another (single level) hierarchy of wine type is by color.  A
third is regional.  A regional division of wine types by vineyard might
be useful at some level of business, but a further division by vineyard
and grape variety provides a useful disjoint set of types of wine.  This
hierarchy of types can be taken one step further -- by vintage year.

Of course, if one wishes to use the type concept in this way, this is right, so I am seeing that my criticism of the wine tutorial is perhaps misplaced.   Perhaps I simply am not happy with the way the authors of OWL want to use OWL.  Perhaps I am arguing more against official UML semantics, and OWL has nothing to do with it.  For in UML, it seems that they have striated the world into so many levels each of which requires a different model, when in fact it is much simpler to consider the ways we classify things to be things too.

If you could help me get to the bottom of this, I would be most grateful.

Wm

>> ...
>
> --
> William Frank
>
> 413/376-8167


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