Re: Reflections on SUO-KIF Ontology
On Thu, Aug 03, 2000 at 12:35:03PM -0700, David Whitten wrote:
> 1) Do we want to have the vocabulary of KIF (or whatever
> notation we use to express the SUO) in the ontology ?
>
> It seems that this could be useful, but would need some kind of
> semantics similar to Kripke's language and cascading metalanguages.
Only if you want a truth predicate in the language as well. Simply
having apparatus to refer to KIF expressions is unproblematic. I have
suggested putting this capacity into a module that could be added as
needed by users to the basic FOL of the KIF core.
> 2) Will we have an element such as "Thing" or "top" as the uppermost
> element in the ontology ?
It couldn't hurt, but I don't have a clear sense of how useful it would
be. If we have identity in the language and the ability to construct
class terms (subject to necessary restrictions, then {x | x=x} will do
just as well.
> 3) Do we want to update the BNF at
> http://ltsc.ieee.org/suo/suo-kif.html to include the syntax: (forall
> ((?ANY !Class)) ...)
I don't understand the intended semantics. Could you elaborate?
If anything, such a construct could go into a module as well.
> 4) Do we want me make a distinction between being a member of a set
> and being an instance of a collection? This distinction does exist in
> the Upper Cyc Ontology. The argument in a nutshell is that a
> #$SetOrCollection would have subclasses, one for #$Set-Mathematical,
> which has no restrictions on membership, and the other #$Collection
> which requires that all members are of the same 'kind'.
Then the ontology would need a collection theory. But I wonder how
useful this distinction is.
> 6) What is the status of the simple axioms defining the meaning of
> numbers and strings ?
I had suggested these go into modules. Others might disagree.
> 7) Do we want to support predicates with a variable number of
> arguments?
KIF already does.
> 8) How do we want to handle statements that refer to other statements?
Carefully! :-) Again, there is no problem unless you want to introduce
predicates that are intended to express *semantic* properties of
sentences, notably, truth.
> 9) Are we going to have explicit quoting in the syntax for the SUO, or
> do we want to define this as part of the arguments restrictions for a
> relation ?
Can you restate this question? A quoting mechanism is an easy way to
introduce terms for syntactic entities (and is in the proposed ANSI
KIF; again, I've proposed we modulify it). But I'm not sure that this
is what you are asking about.
> 10) Do we want relations that explicitly refer to well formedness or
> the truth value of an Assertion ?
Well-formedness (and other syntactic properties) are easy. Truth is
not. But it will likely be essential that a variety of truth theory
modules be available to extend the KIF core for certain applications.
Cheers,
-chris m
--
Christopher Menzel # web: philebus.tamu.edu/~cmenzel
Philosophy, Texas A&M University # net: chris.menzel@tamu.edu
College Station, TX 77843-4237 # vox: (979) 845-8764