ontology-summit
[Top] [All Lists]

[ontology-summit] [Quality] The point of ontologies

To: 'Ontology Summit 2012 discussion' <ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Mike Bennett <mbennett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:37:25 +0000
Message-id: <4F2D7AE4.3000206@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
I hope people don't mind if I take a drive-by comment I made in another thread and make it a root message here, for people to shoot down / agree / violently ignore as they see fit.

What I want to draw out here is, are there things about the purpose of an ontology, which seem differently obvious to different people, and if so, can and should these be articulated as a pre-requisite to being able to verify or validate the resulting ontology?

Also I realize that Cory's point about enacting does't only encompass semantic tech reasoning, but for many creators of ontologies it does. So apologies if I'm mischaracterizing the original points in order to make the quality assurance related point.

Mike

On 02/02/2012 02:36, David Price wrote:
On 2/2/2012 1:37 AM, Cory Casanave wrote:
... the entire point of ontologies is to be able to “enact” what the ontology implies. 

Hi Cory,

...the entire point of ontologies is actually the formal clarity of definition that other technologies lack.

Surely both of these is a point of an ontology. Neither of them is the entire point, they are just the entire point of an ontology that one or another person has created.

Part of knowing if an ontology does what it was intended to do, is to have some clarity of what it is intended to do.

To some, being able to reason over an ontology and carry out semantic technology applications is the only reason to do one, and so for that ontology, that is the reason for it and the reason against which one can determine if it is right or not. To others, being able to formally pin down the meanings of concepts in some domain (perhaps for formally specifying the terms that are to be designed for in a database or message application, or perhaps not), is the only reason for doing that ontology. So different verification and validation measures would apply. In both cases, it's wise to write down what you thought was obvious to everybody, because (a) nothing is ever as obvious as you think and (b) it might not have been the only reason to do a thing.

Mike

-- 
Mike Bennett
Director
Hypercube Ltd. 
89 Worship Street
London EC2A 2BF
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7917 9522
Mob: +44 (0) 7721 420 730
www.hypercube.co.uk
Registered in England and Wales No. 2461068

_________________________________________________________________
Msg Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontology-summit/   
Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontology-summit/  
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontology-summit-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Community Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/OntologySummit2012/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2012  
Community Portal: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/     (01)
<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
  • [ontology-summit] [Quality] The point of ontologies, Mike Bennett <=