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Martin,
While I agree with everything you've said, I am afraid that it sounds like we are ignoring a very real human behavior in language use: When someone wants to get a message across they will use whatever tools they have at their disposal to do it, which Matthew alluded to by a user shoving a value into a field. When something goes wrong, they are very unlikely to blame themselves for doing something outside the rules of the system and VERY likely to blame the system for being so rigid, inflexible, and unable to meet their needs. Therefore while your statement:
> It follows that a user deliberately uses a field contrary to the rules in
> the ontology at their peril.
...is true, I am afraid this sort of attitude will doom the SUO to being at best an interesting academic exercise. We need to stop telling users what they can and cannot do and listen to what they want and need to do.
Bill
> -----Original Message-----
> From: martin_king@UK.IBM.COM [mailto:martin_king@UK.IBM.COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2000 7:15 AM
> To: SUO (E-mail)
> Subject: RE: FW: Meaning: 'natural language semantics' vs 'formal
> semantic s'
>
>
>
>
>
> I suggest:
>
> 1. If we wish to build reliable and consistent systems, or reliable and
> consistent ontologies, we need a precise and accurate set of rules. For
> the Enterprise Ontology, these rules are contained in the formal KIF
> statements. For example there are rules about SALE and about DATE, and
> about how a DATE may be related to a SALE. These rules could be applied by
> a proof engine that processed KIF directly or translated into some other
> language that could be used to validate updates to SQL tables intended to
> hold data about SALES.
>
> 2. As and when anyone wishes to use the Enterprise Ontology definition of
> SALE and DATE, there is no formal way to ensure that what such a person
> chooses to assert is a SALE is what the authors of the EO would agree is a
> SALE. Informally, if the authors of the EO have done a good job of writing
> their natural language definition, most users will choose the right
> interpretation most of the time. If the user wishes to relate what he has
> chosen to call a SALE to what he has chosen to call a DATE, he may be
> prevented by the application of the formal rules, and hence the formal
> rules may assist users in conforming with the EO authors intentions, but
> there can never be any formal proof of the correctness of the
> interpretation.
>
> In summary, there is a vital role for both formal semantics (about how the
> formal concepts are related), and natural language semantics (about how
> users of an ontology should apply or interpret the formally defined
> concepts). Or, to comment directly on what Matthew has said below, the
> formal processing of a term defined in an ontology will always be as the
> ontology formally defines it to be whatever the meaning the user intended.
> It follows that a user deliberately uses a field contrary to the rules in
> the ontology at their peril.
>
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