Bill, (01)
We are ALL on your side, because we have all gone through this so many
times. We all firmly believe in the value and ultimate necessity of
Upper Ontologies -- because we have fought our way to this conclusion
the hard way. We just need to impress this experience on others who
have not yet undergone the baptism by fire. Teach them, not exorcise
them. (02)
Leo (03)
ps. So does this mean that relational databases don't already provide
everything that we need? ;)
_____________________________________________
Dr. Leo Obrst The MITRE Corporation, Information Semantics
lobrst@xxxxxxxxx Center for Innovative Computing & Informatics
Voice: 703-983-6770 7515 Colshire Drive, M/S H305
Fax: 703-983-1379 McLean, VA 22102-7508, USA (04)
-----Original Message-----
From: uos-convene-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:uos-convene-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bill
Andersen
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 5:36 PM
To: Upper Ontology Summit convention
Subject: [uos-convene] The value of ULO (05)
Just a quick comment on Mills' comment: (06)
Before continuing, let me first say that I am happy that Mills is an
advocate for ontologies in general. Ok... but... (07)
> Bottom line: I applaud and encourage the efforts of this UO
> community. By coming together, I hope they deliver value. At the same
> time, I'm reserving judgement (or, remaining agnostic regarding the
> value, pending evidence), and am harboring a supposition that in the
> next year or so, technology may be emerging that will obviate UO
> arguments by subsuming all of these disparate approaches and
> subjecting them to tests of efficacy. (08)
I am having a very hard time understanding this comment. Short of
HAL-9000, just what technology might that be that will subsume UO or
"obviate UO arguments"? (09)
One of the things that has been systematically overlooked in these
discussions is that almost all of the ULOs under discussion here are
at least in part philosophically motivated. This includes at least
SUMO, Cyc, DOLCE, and Matt West's 4D ontology and to a lesser extent
PSL. They are so because the philosophers have been at this business
for 2500 years, long before the advent of the W3C. The tools of
mathematical logic and later computational logic were what were
needed to make this 2500 years of work effective. (010)
As for efficacy, I have been arguing the need for this since my first
posts to this mailing list. One comment that I have made more than a
couple times in different guises is that the value of ULO lies NOT
ONLY in semantic interoperability but has engineering advantages as
well for building individual ontologies. Our experience at OW has
been that we build better ontologies much faster (and thus at less
cost) than those who take a tabula rasa approach, no matter what
formalism they work in. That we have done this, you'll just have to
take my word as the work was either classified or FOUO. (011)
The good news is you don't have to take my word for it. I suggest we
set up an experiment by which teams of comparable expertise in their
chosen formalisms, given the same domain description and a fixed
amount of time, one using a ULO and one prohibited from doing so,
build a domain ontology to meet the description. Then, given the
same data sets, both are subject to a bank of blind competence
questions based solely on the domain description by parties
unfamiliar with the logical formalisms employed. We repeat the
experiment several times on different domains. As an added bonus, we
then take the resulting domain ontologies and, using them as starting
points, ask each team (ULO, and non-ULO) to *extend* them to a
different, but related domain. Then more competency questions. (012)
I know on which team I'll place my bet. Any takers? (013)
.bill (014)
Bill Andersen (andersen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Chief Scientist
Ontology Works, Inc. (www.ontologyworks.com)
3600 O'Donnell Street, Suite 600
Baltimore, MD 21224
Office: 410-675-1201
Cell: 443-858-6444 (015)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/uos-convene/
To Post: mailto:uos-convene@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Community Portal: http://ontolog.cim3.net/
Shared Files:
http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/UpperOntologySummit/uos-convene/
Community Wiki:
http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?UpperOntologySummit
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/uos-convene/
To Post: mailto:uos-convene@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Community Portal: http://ontolog.cim3.net/
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/UpperOntologySummit/uos-convene/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?UpperOntologySummit (016)
|