Well, Mike, that isn't helping much. Specifcally from your slide #3:
I know plenty of philosophers (Cycorp employed several, not to mention
Barry and Randy at Buffalo and numerous more in Europe I have had
occasion to meet) who do build computer sensible models and who are
interested in a bottom line, and impacting some system. I also know
plenty of computer scientists who are very much interested in ontology
as a way to understand the world and pretty much concern themselves
with writing papers and not building systems. I wouldn't call one
philosophy and the other computer science or IT. (01)
Take the enterprise ontology, for example. Did that ever impact
anyone's bottom line or did it just help you to understand some part
of the universe? (02)
I really don't think its useful or productive to try and draw this
distinction between philosophy and computer science. As far as I
know, the difference has to do with training and education during a
rather short period of your life, and as one grows and matures the
impact of those years starts to become less significant. It has no
bearing on a definition of or especially a framework for ontology. (03)
-Chris (04)
Uschold, Michael F wrote:
> Here are a few slides summing up the difference between ontology in
> philosophy vs.. Computer science. I ran it by a philosopher who should
> know: Chris Menzel.
>
> There are a number of similarities and differences, and it is not just
> the intended purpose, though that is a very important difference.
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> ==========================
> Michael Uschold
> M&CT, Phantom Works
> 425 373-2845
> michael.f.uschold@xxxxxxxxxx
> ==========================
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
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>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John F. Sowa [mailto:sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 10:35 PM
> To: Ontology Summit 2007 Forum
> Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] Ontology Framework Draft Statement for
> theOntology Summit
>
> Leo,
>
> I agree with Chris W:
>
> > Surely after 15 years we can do better than "specification of > a
> conceptualization"? Isn't it time we put that one to rest?
>
> A lot of hard work has gone into that draft, but I have some concerns
> about the definitions at the beginning:
>
> 1. I don't believe that the definitions in philosophy and
> computer science differ in any significant way.
>
> 2. Where there are differences, they are differences in
> emphasis or goals.
>
> 3. If possible, we should adopt a common definition that
> is acceptable to both fields, and include a few comments
> about the way that differences in goals and emphasis may
> cause differences in usage.
>
> I'll start with the first point:
>
> > There are at least two important word senses for 'ontology':
> > ontology as a field of study "ontology (philosophy)" and > ontology
> as a technology for computer and information > scientists. We are
> talking about the second sense of the > word, "ontology (computer
> science)".
>
> Suggestion: I would delete the two qualifiers "(philosophy)"
> and "(computer science)". Then replace that statement with
> the following:
>
> There are two important senses of the word 'ontology':
> ontology as a general field that studies what exists,
> and a particular ontology that is the result or product
> of such a study.
>
> Then follow that with examples of such products, such as Aristotle's
> ontology of 10 top-level categories, Kant's 12 top-level categories, and
> various computer versions, such Cyc, SUMO, etc.
>
> I agree with Chris that the following definition has some serious
> problems:
>
> > An ontology, for computer and information sciences, is > a
> specification of a conceptualization...
>
> A definition is supposed to define a poorly understood word in terms of
> other words that are simpler, more common, or easier to understand. But
> the word 'conceptualization' is much harder to define than 'ontology'.
> It is also a less common term. (Google has 14.5 million hits for
> 'ontology', but only 4.3 million for 'conceptualization' -- or 6 million
> if you include the spelling 'conceptualisation'.)
>
> If we define "ontology" as "study of existence" and define "an ontology"
> as the result of that study, those definitions depend only on the three
> words "study", "existence", and "result", which have, respectively, 492,
> 179, and 762 million hits on Google. That meets one criterion for a
> good definition: define uncommon words in terms of more common ones.
>
> I have some quibbles about the remainder of the report, but my primary
> recommendation is to make a drastic cut in the opening section: replace
> everything up to the heading "kinds of ontologies" with those simple
> definitions above.
>
> John
>
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--
Dr. Christopher A. Welty IBM Watson Research Center
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