Leo, AJ, and Deborah, (01)
Many of the proposed definitions of ontology are much too broad.
When all the useful and important, but peripheral things are
thrown in, the difference between ontology and KR becomes blurred: (02)
AJC> I read Deborah's paper, Leo's presentation and other
> materials on ontology spectrum that were mentioned on this list.
> I found it's a nice way to view how knowledge representation
> has been evolved. If I understand correctly, the ontology spectrum
> view implies the term "ontology" is used almost as the replacement
> for "knowledge representation". (03)
It is important to distinguish two points (04)
1. What is required logically. (05)
2. What is important for other very important, but ancillary
purposes: efficient computation, development tools, etc. (06)
The question of expressiveness is important for computational
purposes, but its only logical effect is to determine how much
of the subject domain can be stated or must be omitted. Although
that may be important for many purposes, it has no effect on the
definition of what is or is not an ontology. (07)
From a strictly logical point of view, every ontology is a theory.
And a theory consists of two things: (08)
1. A base logic, whose syntactic details are irrelevant. At
the logic level, RDF, OWL, SQL, and any of the formalized
versions of UML are all subsets of Common Logic. The very
important practical differences between them are irrelevant. (09)
2. A collection of axioms that define all of the nonlogical
predicates. And by nonlogical, that means everything except
the base operators of and, or, not, some, every, etc.
Even arithmetic and set theory are part of the ontology. (010)
This gives a very crisp, very sharp definition. The supporting
tools are extremely important, but it is essential to recognize
that they are *not* part of the ontology. (011)
John Sowa (012)
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