Bravo!
Ontologies are designed to help computers, but human beings need to be
involved in building and maintaining them, and these human beings will
make mistakes if ontologies contain counterintuitive terms.
One good rule is:
for any
term 'T', 'T' means T
Thus 'rabbit' should mean: rabbit, and not, for example: possible rabbit,
or information about a rabbit.
BS
At 09:02 AM 3/1/2006, you wrote:
> MW: Lets not get hung up on
terms. They can mean what we define them
to mean.
Strictly speaking, this is true. You can define an elephant to be a
giraffe, and be logically correct, but it will be virtually
impossible
to expect the reader to do the mental gymnastics required to keep
translating the familiar term to a new meaning to understand what is
going on.
The value of getting good terms is effective communication. Most
terms
will be problematic to some extent, due to multiple meanings from
different communities. Wherever possible, we should use terms
aligned
with their most common meaning, thus reducing misunderstandings.
Mike
-----Original Message-----
From: West, Matthew R SIPC-DFD/321
[
mailto:matthew.west@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2006 1:14 AM
To: Upper Ontology Summit convention
Subject: RE: [uos-convene] Other Approaches Too.
Dear Michael,
> The term 'common upper ontology' is ambiguous.
>
> It suggests an agreed standard.
> It can also mean an ontology that [happens to be] used by more than
> one application.
>
> Hence, it is ambiguous.
>
> Perhaps we can use the term 'shared upper ontology' for the latter,
> and use the term 'standard upper ontology' for the former.
>
> The problem with the term 'standard upper ontology' is that it could
> imply ONE standard, rather than one of a number of alternative
> standards.
MW: Lets not get hung up on terms. They can mean what we define them
to
mean.
>
> There is another distinction:
> * multiple independently developed and unrelated standard upper
> ontologies.
> * a group of standards that is a coherent package, with the
> relationships between the different ones clearly identified.
> Whether or
> not they were originally developed independently is a matter of
> historical interest.
>
> WE are in the former situation now, and would like to move to the
> latter one.
MW: This is the important bit, and I agree this is what we (well I
at
any rate) want to do. (leaving aside that not all the ontologies are
actually formal standards).
>
> Mike
>
>
>
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