Re: [ontolog-forum] mKR experiment

[Adrian Walker <adriandwalker@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi John & All,

John wrote: However, there is a huge gap between English texts and formalisms

Agreed.  We address this gap for the purpose of practical question answering in the system online at the site below.  The idea is to have something that works, and to see what light it may shed on "semantics" as studied in this forum and others.

A small suggestion.  In conversations about "semantics", it may be useful to distinguish:

Semantics 1   The meaning (if any) of data by itself

Semantics 2   The meaning assigned by a reasoner (e.g. does it implement a model theoretic expectation of what should be deduceable) 

Semantics 3   The meaning assigned by fragments of executable English.

Slides 14-17 of www.reengineeringllc.com/EnergyIndependence1.pdf illlustrate this.

Thanks for comments.

                        Cheers      -- Adrian

                    Cheers,  - Adrian

Internet Business Logic
Open Apps for Open Data
A Wiki and SOA Endpoint for Apps written in Executable Open Vocabulary English over SQL and RDF
Online at www.reengineeringllc.com  
Shared use is free, and there are no advertisements

Adrian Walker
Reengineering

 

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 8:55 AM, John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 4/15/2014 7:00 AM, Richard H. McCullough wrote:
> mKR version of ITOE Chapter 5 page now available at
>
> http://mkrmke.org/test/itoe.chapter5.mkr.html

Thank you for making the effort to demonstrate what can be done
with the mkr notation at its present level of development.
Following is my brief assessment:

  1. The overwhelming majority of the terms and phrases in it are
     English words with an English-based syntax.  There is no formal
     foundation (i.e., some version of logic) for representing their
     semantics or doing detailed reasoning with them and about them.

  2. But mkr does some reorganization of the source text, and it
     highlights certain aspects of the original text.  In that regard,
     it can be loosely compared to controlled natural languages (CNLs)
     and to markup languages in the *ML family (GML, SGML, HTML, XML).

  3. Trying to paste a formal semantics on mkr would take a huge amount
     of work, and half a century of very hard work has already gone into
     designing and implementing such notations and the supporting tools.
     There is no way that mkr can even *begin* to compete with them.

  4. However, there is a huge gap between English texts and formalisms
     along the lines of #3.  Many notations, such as UML diagrams,
     Topic Maps, Concept Maps, CNLs, and supporting tools have been
     implemented to fill the gap.  But more work needs to be done.

  5. The people working on #2, #3, and #4 have invested thousands of
     person years -- person millennia -- on their systems.  None of them
     will replace their systems with yours.  But if you can't beat them,
     join them.  Find out what they've done, and offer to help integrate
     your tools into their framework.

  6. When you find groups that are receptive, work with them.  Use their
     blogs and collaboration tools.  And recognize that your notation
     is -- at best -- a supplement to theirs.  It *won't* replace them.
     But if you integrate your tools with their framework, you might be
     able to make a useful contribution.

  7. But most of all, do not -- repeat **NOT** -- attempt to use Ontolog
     Forum as a tool for collaboration.  It is primarily an email list
     for announcements and brief discussions.  Most subscribers regard
     your notes as SPAM.  Their opinion of you goes *down* with every
     note you send.

Suggestion:  Your primary goal should be to find some group you can work
with usefully.  Before sending *any* notes to Ontolog Forum (not even a
response to this one), do some searching for the terms mentioned above:
"controlled natural language", "topic maps", "document annotation", and
"concept maps".  Think about how your tools could fit with theirs.

Spend at least *one week* searching the web and thinking about those
tools.  If you have any questions about them, do *not* send them to
Ontolog Forum.  Instead, send them to the people who developed those
tools.

Finally -- *after* April 21 -- send *one note* to Ontolog Forum.
Report your new plans for the future, and ask for *offline* suggestions
about how to pursue them.  As you develop your new collaborations, it
would be OK to send one note *per month* about your progress.

Goodbye and good luck,

John

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