RE: Call for vote on SUO Scope and Purpose
- At 07:01 PM 7/27/2000 -0700, WBurkett@pdit.com wrote:
- Adam:
-
- > I'm puzzled by some of your comments. Comments
below:
- You don't seem puzzled! You just seem to hold a different set
of opinions. :-)
Bill,
No, I was genuinely puzzled about why you were apparently arguing
for formal definitions in logic as the basis for the SUO when that's just
what is intended. We're in agreement on that point. I guess
the statement of purpose just wasn't clear in that regard.
- My comment to your below:
-
- -----Original Message-----
- From: apease
[mailto:apease@teknowledge.com]
- Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2000 5:49 PM
- To: WBurkett@pdit.com; 'Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I'
- Cc: SUO (E-mail)
- Subject: RE: Call for vote on SUO Scope and Purpose
- Bill,
- I'm puzzled by some of your comments. Comments
below:
- At 05:34 PM 7/26/2000 -0700, WBurkett@pdit.com wrote:
- <snip>
- (1) I believe that the objective of 1000-2500 terms is far too large
to be practical. In my experience, I've found that the practical
upper limit on the number of independent object/entity types in a schema
is ~300 types. Models larger than this simply cannot be
comprehensively understood by a single person. (One may argue that
it's possible to understand larger models with the aid of a meta-level
organizing structure - and I agree - but then *this* structure becomes
the upper level ontology.) (And there is the further question of criteria
for selecting and discriminating between ontological elements.)
- Folks in the HPKB project including Cycorp, Teknowledge and Stanford
used the Cyc upper model of 3000 terms successfully in several
tests. I take this as an existence proof that refutes your
assertion, or more gently, maybe it just refutes the need for an
individual to comprehend the entirety of a model for that model to be
useful.
- [William Burkett] But aren't these people professionals in this
domain that have a great deal of experience and education in the craft of
developing (for want of a better term) knowledge models? And tons
of experience with that one particular model? How is Joe Schlub
Java Programmer have any hope of understanding the SUO with 3000 items in
it? I still maintain that Mr. Everyday Schema developer will never
develop or use a model this large (and probably would never want to.)
-
- So, if we're serious about application developers using this SUO to
support application interoperability, it had better be simple and
comprehendable.
I believe that the SUO will in fact just be a start as to what is
needed for having shared conceptualizations of terms. If we have a
smaller model with say only 300 terms in it there won't be enough shared
semantics for two systems to be able to communicate. For example,
take the Cyc public upper ontology of #$temporallIntersects. The
semantics are very limited. Now travel down the hierarchy of
predicates in turn to #$actors, #$doneBy and #$performedBy. If we
needed to talk about a manager giving direction to an employee or a
customer giving an order to a clerk, just saying that they intersect
temporally is not enough. Just having the #$performedBy relation
without the notion that they intersect temporally could lead to some
erroneous conclusions.
- (2) I think the SUO should be specified in a formal language to
facilitate data processing. I don't think terms and definitions are
enough for practical applications.
- Specification in a formal language is precisely what is intended
"..An ontology is a set of terms and formal
definitions..." I've proposed KIF or some derivative thereof
which is a formal language.
- [William Burkett] Doing it in KIF would be fine by me, but my reading
of the Scope and Purpose made it sound like the SUO was a
dictionary. There was no mention of formal languages for declaring
the ontology. ("formal definition" <> "formal
language" - it could just be legalized English.)
Ok, maybe the new version of the Scope and Purpose that incorporates
everyone's comments from the vote can clear this up.
Adam
- Bill
-
-----------------
Adam Pease
Teknowledge
(650) 424-0500 x571