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[ontology-summit] The tools are not the problem (yet)

To: Ontology Summit 2014 discussion <ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: John McClure <jmcclure@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 14:28:44 -0800
Message-id: <52DEF49C.7030101@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
John Sowa et al,
<rant>I do agree SMEs' stakeholdership in an ontology is key to what ails us. But the problem is with the way we create ontologies; until we grapple with that, "better tools are the answer" is merely lipstick on a pig. SMEs certainly should recoil at stuff like:
<rdf:Property rdf:about="&p3p;purposeOptIn">
  <rdfs:label xml:lang="en">purpose(opt in)</rdfs:label>
  <rdfs:comment>
    Data may be used for this purpose only when the user 
    affirmatively requests this use.
  </rdfs:comment>
  <rdfs:domain rdf:resource="&p3p;Statement"/>
  <rdfs:range  rdf:resource="&p3p;PurposeClass"/>
  <rdfs:subPropertyOf rdf:resource="&p3p;purpose"/>
</rdf:Property>
No amount of tools, in my humble opinion, will ever hide this odiferous crap. I strongly suspect that I could pull equally useless *properties* from whatever ontology is being hoisted on a pedestal, and effortlessly mock it too. IOW the way we use the RDF is thoroughly corrupt. Why/how? Here's the nub.
There are two competing notions of the predicate in theories of grammar.[1] The first concerns traditional grammar, which tends to view a predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other part being the subject; the purpose of the predicate is to modify the subject. The second derives from work in predicate calculus (predicate logic, first order logic) and is prominent in modern theories of syntax and grammar. In this approach, the predicate of a sentence corresponds mainly to the main verb and any auxiliaries that accompany the main verb, whereas the arguments of that predicate (e.g. the subject and object noun phrases) are outside the predicate. [wikipedia]
If (1) rdf:Statement = rdf:subject + rdf:predicate + rdf:object, then to which of these "competing notions" does rdf:predicate refer? If you say the former, then I maintain the formulation should be (2) rdf:Statement = rdf:subject + rdf:predicate. If you say the latter, then WHERE ARE THE VERBS - why do we see predicates defined like
<rdf:Property rdf:about="&p3p;purposeOptIn">
And if you were to say neither, then I ask why on earth is this thing called a "Statement"? Can we not stop making words up that suit arbitrary purposes?

In short, the entire body of predicates defined by the "ontologist community" to-date are fundamentally flawed. It's small wonder SMEs look askance at ontologists and their gee-whiz ideas; in their gut, they know something is amiss. (Note: this perspective is completely scoped within the RDF, where many of us 'practitioners' must wallow, so replies of 'use CycL' are simply unresponsive to the needs of what, 95% of the people in this forum.)

</rant>


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