From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of John McClure
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2014 6:57 AM
To: ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] The tools are not the problem (yet)
On 2/2/2014 2:23 PM, doug foxvog wrote:
On Wed, January 22, 2014 02:51, John McClure wrote:
John,
Please look at the predicates referenced in slides
<From%20Textual%20Entailment%20to%20Knowledgeable%20Machines,Invited%20presentation%20at%20the%20Joint%20Symposium%20on%20Semantic%20Processing%20%28JSSP%2713%29,%202013,Download%20PowerPoint%20Slides>
in several of the presentations you cited. You will see that they all
use a verb and often a preposition, with one exception (part of, which
can equally be expressed as is-within).
It's a phrase that has a different range of meanings. The name
"isPartOf" would be a verb phrase.
[JMc] No, a 'verb phrase' by common definition includes direct and indirect objects, so "isPartOf" is not a verb phrase under that definition. There is a narrower definition (see footnote
4) but "isPartOf" fails to qualify there as well. You see "isPartOf" is a concept that cannot be found in any dictionary. It becomes anything you want it to be, depending on the day and weather. Thus freed of any anchor to an OED-based reality, you sanction
artificial constructs which imo leads to modelling and interchange issues.
It can be useful within a single system to have a naming standard.
[JMc] It is more useful to have the same design approach within both FOL/non-FOL worlds, with the latter conforming to the former since data scientists' worktops & toolsets are -- from your view at least -- the ultimate destination for
this information.
All RDF properties that I've seen
-- okay, there's the exception is-a in a few ontologies -- use nouns.
This system is often for predicates that mean "has <Noun>" (with
different meanings of "have" in different cases) but with the name
also indicating the intended range of the predicate.
[JMc] Sure that intention of the property's author is clear - but the 'name' ends up being a non-word, something not in a dictionary, a concept whose meaning is merely mechanical, a programmer's concept. I say this is why ontologies are
unnecessarily large, having a set of properties ill-designed because they are ill-defined.
The naming system has no bearing on the semantics -- although
maybe with the ease of a human reader to come to some level
of understanding of what was intended.
As long as the system of nomenclature is consistent for a given
ontology, that's fine.
It's no wonder that FOL'ers need to transform these models into
something more in accordance with what I cited originally in this thread
One may choose to change names from an adopted system to fit the
local nomenclature. Or are you referring to transformations that
add semantics?
[JMc] I am referring to translations of noun-oriented properties crafted in an RDF world to verb-oriented properties crafted in the FOL world. To the extent the FOL world adopts RDF properties (principally to avoid the work of said translation)
is the extent to which the FOL world is not following its own rule that predicates are verb-oriented. This is "impedance mismatch" in action (definition: a measure of the opposition caused by differences between two
paradigms, especially between
object-orien ted development and
relational databases ....
-
1997, Bhavani M. Thuraisingham, Data Management Systems: Evolution and Interoperation (ISBN 0849394937), CRC Press, page 33:
Some argue that having impedance mismatch is difficult for programming intensive applications.
-- which you deleted in your original response (the guts of the original
note) to my irritation:
There are two competing notions of the predicate in theories of
grammar <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar>.^[1]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicate_%28grammar%29#cite_note-1>
...
The second derives from work in predicate calculus (predicate logic
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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...
Note that the predicate *corresponds* to a verb. That does not mean
that it *is* a verb or *must be labelled with* a verb.
[JMc] Thank you for responding to a central part of my critique. Unfortunately you're using a manufactured definition for "correspond" ... The usual definition for "correspond" is to *have a close similarity; match or agree almost
exactly* -- yours is closer to "may/might correspond", that is, you're seeing words there that don't exist.
The matter of negation is a different, side issue in my mind. Please
comment on the fundamental criticism I am making here about the design
pattern for RDF properties: FOL's verbs vs RDF's nouns.
My comment here is "to each her own". It is good to have a consistent
system of naming.
However, that does not mean that one's own fantastic
system of nomenclature given by the deities and any other system is
blasphemy.
[JMc] It is NOT "MY" system of naming -- it is "YOURS". This prevailing definition of a predicate, specifically in the context of FOL and predicate calculus -- THAT IS "YOURS" my friend. Predicate calculus and FOL are the "deities" here
not me that is for sure.
Blasphemy? Ok here's an analogy. Predicate calculus is built upon the Triple Model; undoubtedly you'd cry blasphemy when presented data that accords to some weird non-conforming Unary Model. In the same way, predicate calculus is (said) built upon predicators,
as I've demonstrated by reference to published definitions. I'm saying it's the predicate calculus community that should be crying "blasphemy" at the non-conforming predicates developed within the RDF community. Yet you're not, and consequently we end up with
massive ontologies that SMEs (and others) find mystifying.
regards/jmc
On 1/21/2014 1:04 PM, John F Sowa wrote:
1. See the slides and publications by the Aristo Project at AI2:
http://www.allenai.org/TemplateGeneric.aspx?contentId=12
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 1/21/2014 11:16 PM, John F Sowa wrote:
On 1/22/2014 12:01 AM, John McClure wrote:
How can FOL'ers not be implicitly derisive of the work RDF'ers are
diligently about, when the first reaction is to THROW IT AWAY?
That's not the point I was trying to make. I'm sorry that I used
the phrase 'throw it away' because it was not clear what I was
rejecting.
First point: FOL is a small subset of English and other NLs.
Any language that has the words 'and', 'or', 'not', 'some',
and 'every' can express full FOL. We all speak FOL every day.
Second point: I wasn't rejecting what can be expressed in RDF.
You can use RDF to describe anything that you see, hear, or feel.
Every observation in science can be described in RDF.
But RDF can't express negation. You can't say 'not'. And if you
take RDF and add negation, you get -- guess what -- full FOL.
Some things you can't say in RDF:
1. Options: you can't say 'or' in RDF, because (p or q) is
defined as not(not p and not q) -- and RDF can't say 'not'.
2. Rules: you can't express an if-then rule in RDF, because
(if p then q) is defined as not(p and not q).
3. Generalizations: you can express 'all' or 'every' in RDF
because 'every cat is an animal' is defined as
'it's false that some cat is not an animal'.
My major complaint about RDF is that it makes simple things difficult.
John
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