Re: [ontology-summit] [strategy] Blank Stares and Semantic Technology: A

[Michael F Uschold <uschold@xxxxxxxxx>]

See inline comments.

On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 7:45 PM, John F. Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 3/3/2011 7:54 PM, Michael F Uschold wrote:
> I think there is emerging agreement that we need to focus less on
> abstract principles and more on concrete examples that MADE MONEY and
> for the technology folk, WHY the money was made.

That is an idea everybody can understand.  I like it.

And I had a further thought about why I object to describing
the purpose of an ontology as "eliminating ambiguity":  that
is a negative way of talking.

In a positive sense:  The primary purpose of an ontology is to make
the structure of the subject matter clear.

Sort of...  It may be more accurate to say that whatever the real purpose(s) of having an ontology may be, the ontology needs to make the subject matter clear for it to do its job.  So clarity is the means to the end for building an ontology.

 

 You don't need a formal
notation to be clear.  You can be clear in ordinary English.

Often yes, not always.  I found I was going in circles trying to think of a good way to be clear and precise, even in my own head - regarding the ontology application framework.  Putting it in a highly structured notation helped a lot.  I have never seen ordinary English do that particularly well.  

I wrote the Enterprise Ontology paper years ago. It was in English, and it was a definiitive specification for the formal ontology (in Ontolingua).  There were a whole lot of decisions I had to make due to the (IHMO) inherent ambiguity of English on common usage. Sure, you could use a highly formalistic English to be much more precise, but by then it may be so verbose as to be harder to understand than a formal lang depicted in a good visualiztation/exploration tool.

 

But I admit that a formal notation is useful because it
makes it impossible to be vague, ambiguous, or imprecise.
But what it says so precisely might not be what the author
intended.

The same is true for English. I find that it is not really possible to understand the intended meaning of a formal ontology if there are not good English definitions in the comments.  

It is best to have both informal and formal descriptions.

The idea that a formal (logic-based) ontology is unambiguous is only true in a not very interesting sense.  I explain this point in detail in slides 24-39 of my 2006 Invited Talk at the Protégé Users Conference.

Ontologies Ontologies Everywhere, but Who Knows What to Think?

This is not meant to directly oppose your views - more likely we are broadly in agreement.  I'm just going down a layer.

 

In any case, I would stress the idea of *clarity*.

That is a positive virtue that improves communication and
understanding among the humans *and* the machines.

Next, emphasize (a) how improved communication makes money
and (b) how poor communication loses money.

John

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-- 
Michael Uschold, PhD
   Senior Ontology Consultant, Semantic Arts

   LinkedIn: http://tr.im/limfu
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