Michael, (01)
I am very pleased you will be at the meeting. Your insights will bring us
to a new level of understanding. (02)
tom (03)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Uschold, Michael F [mailto:michael.f.uschold@xxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 11:58 AM
> To: Ontology Summit 2007 Forum; tom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: [ontology-summit] Ontology Framework Draft Statement for
> theOntology Summit
>
> Tom and John:
>
> IMHO, there is more agreement than meets the eye between Tom and John
> Sowa.
> I disagree with some of John's words, but when I look behind them to see
> what I think he means, I often agree. In my experience, John will often
> backpeddle and realize that he himself did not quite mean it as
> oringally worded.
>
> To me, John sums it up pretty well by saying:
>
> > 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.
>
> I think that Tom and most of the rest of us could agree there there is a
> lot of core truth in this - an there also some details that one can
> quibble about (like whether this difference should give rise to two
> distinct word senses)
>
> I came up with this same conclusion myself, as per the slides I just
> sent along.
> --
>
> TG> To say there is no difference between what a professor
> > of Aristotelian ontology means by ontology and what a >
> bioinformatics computer scientist managing a gene database > means is
> absurd.
>
> JS> No. If they both have a good background in logic, they would be in
> complete agreement about the definition of ontology and its application
> to bioinfomatics.
>
> John this may be correct, but misses the point. An IT ontology is an
> engineered artificat for a specific purpose, often to play a role in a
> software application. As such, the ontology engineer will have very
> different needs than a philosopher, and they will and they SHOULD come
> up with ontologies that have important differences (as well as many core
> similarities). This is what Tom is emphasizing, and I agree.
>
> It is also true, as Chris Welty points out that the artifacts being
> created by philosophers and computer scientists are coming together
> more.
> --
>
> TG> There is a new word sense for ontology...
>
> JS> No. In both philosophy and computer science, there are two ways of
> using the word 'ontology'. I suggest the following two definitions,
> which apply equally well to both fields:
>
> JS> Ontology: The analysis and classification of what exists.
>
> This is quibbling about whether an agreed difference in meaning should
> give rise to two word senses. I think should, John does not. Cool. But
> we all agree on the fact that the output of a study is different than
> the process of performing the study itself. That is more important.
>
>
> Mike
>
>
> ==========================
> Michael Uschold
> M&CT, Phantom Works
> 425 373-2845
> michael.f.uschold@xxxxxxxxxx
> ==========================
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
> COOL TIP: to skip the phone menu tree and get a human on the phone, go
> to: http://gethuman.com/tips.html
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Gruber [mailto:onto@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 12:49 AM
> To: 'Ontology Summit 2007 Forum'
> Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] Ontology Framework Draft Statement for
> theOntology Summit
>
> John Sowa wrote:
> > 1. I don't believe that the definitions in philosophy and
> > computer science differ in any significant way.
> > 3. If possible, we should adopt a common definition that
> > is acceptable to both fields
>
> The draft document is written as a logical walk down a set of
> distinctions, so that we could discuss the source of disagreements and
> clearly identify the point of departure. John's objections to the first
> and most fundamental distinction (philosophy vs. computer science word
> senses) makes evident the reason why certain topics are never "put to
> rest" by philosophers and other dialectic sportsmen. To say there is no
> difference between what a professor of Aristotelian ontology means by
> ontology and what a bioinformatics computer scientist managing a gene
> database means is absurd.
>
> There is a new word sense for ontology, just as there are new word
> senses for other technical terms in computer science: process, client,
> server, etc.
> While my training in philosophy is surely inferior, I would dare say
> (with no loss of irony) that John's argument makes an ontological
> category error.
> The Ontologies of philosophy are theories, ideas, ways of thinking about
> the world, and arguments about the nature of Reality. The ontologies
> that are the subject of W3C standards, manipulated by software, and used
> to represent huge stores of data in databases are material, concrete,
> objective documents in the same category as programs, database schemata,
> and other digitally stored representations.
>
> Another irony is the rhetoric that we should put the "15 year old"
> definition in our literature "to rest" and replace examples of computer
> based ontologies that we have been collecting for our summit with
> examples from Aristotle and Kant.
>
> There is a reason why a lot of people have stopped reading this list. It
> is because of this style of long-winded argument by attrition.
>
> Next week we are going to meet to do something constructive: get a clear
> understanding of how the family of computer-based representations that
> we work with every day -- from formal ontologies to concept hierarchies
> to topic maps to taxonomies to folksonomies and a lot of interesting
> other cases -- are alike and differ. If we are successful, we will have
> come up with a framework and way of talking about ontologies that will
> allow normal people to stop glazing over when they hear the term. We
> have no need or ambition to come up with a definition of ontology that
> is "acceptable to both fields" (philosophy and computer science). It
> would be a great achievement to get an understanding, if not a
> consensus, of our own.
>
> tom gruber
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > [mailto:ontology-summit- bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John
> > F. Sowa
> > Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 10:35 PM
> > To: Ontology Summit 2007 Forum
> > Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] Ontology Framework Draft Statement for
> > the Ontology 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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