This might work. Personally, I will be most interested in the "dumb version" but
it makes sense to base that one a more sophisticated structure. (01)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John A. Bateman
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 9:47 AM
To: Ontology Summit 2007 Forum
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] Defining "ontology" (02)
My take on the discussion yesterday is the following. I agree with Steve Ray
that it could be useful to achieve a more 'commonsense'
description of ontologies that would enable them to be sold more readily to
those without the technical backup. I am sure many of us have used variants of
the very useful overhead from LOA and the Wonderweb project showing the
dimension ranging from indexes and glossaries at one end to full formalised
axiomatised ontologies at the other. The update of this in Michael Uschold's
overhead on the wiki is a further example: (03)
http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MichaelUschold (04)
These establish a clearly understandable (or apparently so) characterisation
that people can situate their interests on.
I presume that a characterisation such as Steve was suggesting would move us
further in the direction of having a finer articulation of the positions on this
and other similar dimensions. (05)
I would not agree, however, that such an endeavor should be undertaken *before*
looking at more formal characterisations.
We can already say a lot more about the dimensions taking us from index to
Ontology adopting what is known from the formalisation side. But, conversely,
the fact that we do not have the final word on a formalised characterisation of
the space of ontologies and the simple dimension is still quite useful,
demonstrates that we need not wait for the final formal word before having
useful taxonomies (folksonomies? :-) of ontologies themselves. Therefore I see a
need for (at least) three parallel working group efforts, that will each appeal
to different (but hopefully overlapping) participants. These could be pursued in
parallel with as frequent as possible reporting back to see how soon they can
start being combined. (06)
(1) Characterisation of 'kinds of ontology' building on
whatever dimensions of characterisation appear useful.
These could start with the index-glossary-taxonomy-
Ontology continuum and add as seems useful. (07)
(2) Characterisation of kinds of ontology building on
the formal structuring mechanisms employed (one module,
many modules; modules of the same expressivity,
modules of different expressivities; ...), on the
formal languages employed in each of these
modules, on ways of characterising
the concrete use made of the expressive resources
available (e.g., proving that some ontology X actually
lies within some restricted modal logic rather than
the full first order logic casually claimed by its
developers; or that a fragment lies within some other
sublanguage, etc.), and then perhaps notions of size. (08)
(3) Characterisation of use cases, working through a classification
of what kinds of purposes, functionalities, users,
are involved. (09)
I would expect that there are going to be many points of contact and, finally,
even semiformaliseable connections/relations between the three activities. But
since there is much to do in each of these areas before it is quite clear what
is going to be talked about even internally, mixing the three from the start may
be a way of having a lot of very crossed purposes/wires. (010)
This might be one way of leading up to a very nice 'deliverable' by the time of
the April summit. (011)
Thoughts? (012)
best,
John B. (013)
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