This is a good point.
However, what is NOT apples and oranges is to address the question: (01)
When someone sees a term in an explicit representation that is an
ontology and wants to understand what that term means: how easy is it
for them to do that? How much can they know about the intended meaning
of the term? (02)
* If there is only a term, then there is hardly any meaning
expressed so it is hard. (03)
* If it is a term in a thesaurus with some broad/narrow and
related to links, it is a little easier. (04)
* If it is a term in a formal ontology expressed in logic, and
there is no information about the term other than to say it is a class,
i.e. that class is not used in the domain or range of any relationship,
etc. THEN: it is also very hard.** If there was natural language
documentation describing the intended meaning of the term it would be
easier. (05)
* If the term is described in great and glorious detail in a
natural lang, using very precise and carful wording, and is related to
many other terms also carefully defined/described, then it is also much
easier still. (06)
** In a strict logical sense one can say it is easy to say what it means
(it is a set). But I'm talking about the real world meaning perspective.
How is a term intended to be used? In that sense, the only hint at how
a term is intended to be used comes from its term (e.g. 'event', or
'FOAF:person'...) (07)
Mike (08)
==========================
Michael Uschold
M&CT, Phantom Works
425 373-2845
michael.f.uschold@xxxxxxxxxx
========================== (09)
----------------------------------------------------
COOL TIP: to skip the phone menu tree and get a human on the phone, go
to: http://gethuman.com/tips.html (010)
-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Menzel [mailto:cmenzel@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2007 11:28 AM
To: Ontology Summit 2007 Forum
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] ontology as logical theory? (011)
On Feb 23, 2007, at 1:00 PM, Uschold, Michael F wrote:
> [ChrisW wrote:]
>> The "degree of formalization" was the primary axis in all the
>> continua
>> (?) I've seen. This can be related to the language you use.
>> There is
>> not one "logic".
> --
>
> Probably so. It is important to note that it is not the only important (012)
> factor/dimension. Another key one that is fairly orthogonal is the
> "amount of meaning specified" in an ontology. Some things called
> ontologies (e.g. a thesaurus, or a taxonomy) don't have much facility
> for expressing meaning. Also, you can take a simple informal ontology (013)
> with little meaning specified, and represent it in a formal logic, and (014)
> while it is in one sense unambiguous (from a formal model theory
> perspective) it is highly ambiguous from the perspective of real world (015)
> meaning (i.e unintended models). The more meaning you have the fewer
> unintended models you have.
>
> ...
> Conversely, natural language is highly expressive and capable of
> capturing 'ontologies' that express a lot of meaning, even if the
> language is informal. (016)
I'd want to qualify that by noting that (as you know) the idea of
expressiveness vis-a-vis natural languages inherently has no precise
meaning, so it's a bit apples/oranges to talk about it in the same
breath with formal languages, where expressiveness can be spelled out
model theoretically in rigorous and precise terms. Ultimately every
ontology to which one hopes to apply computational tools to support
representation, sharing, re-use, and reasoning has to take the latter
form. (017)
-ChrisM (018)
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