John,
I am not sure I understand your characterization of ODM as lost in
syntax, ODM is defined in terms of the meta model behind the syntax, not
the syntax. Now, such meta models can be more syntactically focused or
more conceptually focused and I would agree that the ODM meta models
represent more of an "abstract syntax" than "concepts", but you could
take any one of those models and express them in any form of syntax
(Music would be interesting). (01)
There is a difference between abstracting away syntax and abstracting
away concepts just because those concepts can be reduced to some
combination of other, presumably more basic, concepts in ones favorite
formalism. That ODM captures these composite concepts (including the
meta modal for and mapping to CL!) seems like a good thing, the concepts
exist in that domain and are part of the conceptual framework of those
languages. A rich set of concepts that make it easy, intuitive and
precise to express ideas are positive aspects of languages (I am not
taking a position as to any language filling those requirements or not). (02)
What ODM didn't do, which I wish it had, is to normalize the concepts
between the languages - and the CL mapping would have been a great way
to validate that normalization. This would have started to build a
library of concepts regardless of their syntax or language. (03)
What I don't want to do is loose potentially useful concepts just
because they can be "reduced" into something else. I also don't want to
loose concepts just because they can't be reduced, some concepts have a
shared (and perhaps even fuzzy) meaning but still seem essential to
discourse. Perhaps over time we will successfully formalize all
concepts of conceptualization and discourse, but it doesn't seem we are
there yet. (04)
So CL, as a reduction of powerful concepts, is very useful. But I don't
see it playing the same role as ODM or even an ODM like thing that was
more normalized over concepts. Both ODM and CL share an "abstract
syntax" approach which enables multiple representations. (05)
However, I don't know that any of this is particularly relevant to
"Categorizing ontology" (06)
-Cory Casanave (07)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F.
Sowa
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 9:39 AM
To: Ontology Summit 2007 Forum
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] categorizing "ontology" (08)
I realize that the ODM document is the result of a lot of very hard
work, but what I find depressing about all such efforts is that they get
lost in syntactic detail. (09)
Syntax is certainly important for readability and usability, but the
purpose of Common Logic is to eliminate syntax from consideration when
analyzing the options for interchange of semantics from one notation to
another. (010)
All of the languages in the ODM report can be translated to Common
Logic. When that is done, all syntactic issues are eliminated, and it
is possible to examine exactly which aspects of logic each source
language can or cannot support. (011)
People often complain that logic is hard to understand, but logic is
actually an extremely simple subset of the language people use every
day. Just the following words in normal English syntax provides the
full power of Common Logic: (012)
and, or, not, if-then, some, every, equals (013)
If you throw arithmetic and sets into the ontology, you get everything
that is present in any of those languages listed in the ODM document. (014)
Names are certainly important, but any naming scheme ever invented can
be adopted and used in English or logic. (015)
That's all there is to first-order logic. You can add the word "that" in
order to support metalanguage for using logic to talk about any other
language, including logic itself. And you can add some modal words --
may, can, must, shall -- if you want to use modal logic (which can be
defined in terms of FOL plus the word "that" for metalanguage). (016)
The complexity results from the option of using and reusing those basic
words in all possible combinations. But the foundation is extremely
simple. (017)
John Sowa (018)
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