At 12:57 PM 3/20/2008, Pat Hayes wrote:
>At 9:03 AM -0400 3/20/08, <phismith@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>On Thu Mar 20 2:34 , "John F. Sowa" sent:
>>
>> >For any product, including an ontology, the best recommendations are
>> >the reviews and reports from users that are recorded in the metadata.
>> >As the reviews accumulate, prospective users can decide for themselves
>> >which ontologies are best suited for their purpose(s).
>>
>>I think democratic ranking (the wisdom of crowds) is indeed valuable for
>>refrigerators and other similar products. Hence the success of
>>ranking systems on
>>eBay and amazon.com. But it is surely of less importance in
>>scientific contexts
>>-- we would not decide on which interpretation of the equations of quantum
>>physics to accept by taking a vote of users. Since the OBO Foundry
>>ontologies are
>>built by scientists, to support scientific research, it is not
>>clear that they
>>are to be treated as products.
>
>This is where I part company with Barry, and indeed where I believe
>that the very idea of controlling the contents of an OOR (noting
>that the first O means 'open') needs to be examined very, very
>carefully. Of course we would not argue that majority voting should
>be used to choose scientific theories; but ontologies, even those
>used by scientists, are not themselves scientific theories. The OBO
>Foundry is quite clear, in its own documentation, that the basic
>ontological assumptions on which it is based are ultimately
>philosophical decisions, not scientific ones. (01)
The actual work of the Foundry in maintaining its ontologies is 50%
of the time focused on getting the science right. I think this
percentage will rise, as the ontologies themselves become more mature. (02)
> Such assumptions most emphatically do not have the force of a
> scientific theory, even when the ontologies constructed according
> to them are being used by scientists. (03)
So anything goes, eh? (04)
>And any such implication of 'scientific' authority must be examined
>especially carefully when the, er, foundry is controlled by the
>philosophers themselves (05)
One philosopher, one computer scientist, two computer
scientist-biologists, one immunologist, one world-class geneticist. (06)
>, and its gatekeepers are mandated to only allow ontologies which
>conform to the somewhat arbitrary philosophical views of its
>founders (for example, by requiring consistency with a single 'base' ontology). (07)
Actually not -- the single base ontology we started with has already
been modified because it did not fit the science. (08)
> I do not mean this to be a criticism of OBO itself, but I do claim
> that OBO hardly qualifies as anything like an "open" ontology
> repository. In the contrary, in fact: it is quite firmly closed to
> an entire approach to ontology construction which, while
> successfully deployed elsewhere, happens to not conform to the
> philosophical views that Barry has so nobly defended in so many publications. (09)
No one, I think, is suggesting that all the criteria applied for
admission to OBO should be applied also to OOR -- just some of them;
the obvious ones (see earlier emails). If, as you say, you will in
any case put your ontologies on the web, then I suppose for you the
criteria to be applied are: correct html (perhaps not even that). (010)
>>While refrigerator manufacturers may allow
>>democratic ranking to influence e.g. size and color, they would use other
>>strategies e.g. in matters of thermodynamics.
>
>Perhaps so: but we are here discussing matters of ontology, and in
>the current state of the art, this may have more in common with
>consumer product choice than with thermodynamics. (011)
This thing:
http://www.gnowsis.org/ont/kissology.html
was admitted into the http://www.schemaweb.info/ repository of RDF schemas.
Do we want its OWL brother to be admitted to OOR?
BS (012)
>Pat
>
>>BS
>>
>>
>>
>> >
>> >
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