Re: SUO: The Story So Far - Request for vote
Nicola,
I'd like to respond to the latter part of your message:
>In practice, my proposal is as follows:
>
>1. Let's carefully (and painfully) distinguish between axioms and
>primitives that achieve (reasonably large) consensus and axioms/primitives
>that do not;
>
>2. When there is no consensus, let's isolate the alternatives and ask the
>supporters to i) explain, ii) motivate and iii) formalize both of them;
>
>3. If enough explanation/motivation/formalization is achieved (up to a
>certain minimal degree) for both alternatives, then:
> 3.1 create a new branch in the ontology library
> 3.2 go on specializing the two branches in parallel, depending on the
> interest they
> receive.
>
>4. Else proceed by considering only the alternative that was best
>explained, motivated, and formalized.
I agree completely with this process. If there are theories that someone
is willing to formalize, and they prove to be incompatible with other
formalized theories then we'll be at a point where we can either get
consensus to adopt one or agree to adopt both "branches" as alternatives.
I have some disagreement with the points you make earlier in your message
but as long as we agree on the actual proposal, I should probably quit
while I'm ahead! :-)
Adam
At 05:41 PM 3/13/2001 +0100, Nicola Guarino wrote:
>At 4:13 PM -0800 10/3/01, Adam Pease wrote:
>>Nicola,
>> Neither the approach of a single common ontology, or a catalog of
>> related ontologies has been proven to be the right approach, so either
>> or both may turn out to be valid. However, I would say that a single
>> common ontology, to the degree practical, is the goal of this group, and
>> has been voted on when the PAR was approved. I have found that there
>> can be disagreement on wording that I thought was very clear, but the
>> sections that seem to indicate this are (with my emphasis by bracketing
>> with '*'s):
>>
>>"This standard will specify *an* upper ontology that will enable
>>computers..."
>>
>>"The SUO will play the role of a neutral interchange format whereby
>>owners of existing applications will be able to map existing data
>>elements just *once to a common ontology*."
>
>Dear Adam,
>
> I agree that - strictly speaking - the former statement above
> (but not the latter!) is incompatible with a non-monolythic approach
> (just because I assume that *an* ontology should be described by a
> consistent logical theory). I think however that the practical goal of
> our enterprise would remain mainly the same if we adopt a broader
> perspective, replacing "an upper ontology" with something like "A
> framework of carefully crafted foundational ontologies". In practice,
> such a framework would be a set of logical theories ordered according to
> a theory-inclusion relationship, as proposed (I believe) by Chris Menzel.
> The formal structure would be similar to that of the Stanford Ontology
> Library, or to the ONIONS ontology. Differently from these approaches,
> the SUO would explicitly account for a (hopefully limited) set of
> well-documented ontological alternatives, to be selected by the various
> applications that want to "plug in" the SUO.
>
> Ideally, the SUO interface should offer the new user a "menu" of
> i) well-documented, ii) reasonably formalized, and iii) sufficiently
> agreed on ontological choices to choose from. On the basis of this
> choice, the interface would select the right set of SUO modules.
>
> In my opinion, this approach would be perfectly consistent with
> the latter statement above: the goal is to have a standardized semantic
> framework to be used to understand and relate each other the intended
> meaning of data elements, not so much to force data elements to commit to
> the same semantics!
>
> Moreover, the non-monolithic architecture is the only way to
> guarantee the high coverage of our initiative, which otherwise would
> necessarily exclude important players. For example, consider the
> community of so-called "linguistic" ontologies, explicitly "dismissed" by
> the recent Pat's messages... I believe it would be *essential*, for the
> purpose of the SUO, to be able to include linguistically-motivated domain
> ontologies in the SUO framework. In some cases, this may imply to adopt
> ontological commitments that are just incompatible with those useful for,
> say, nuclear physics ontology...
>
>>I would say that Cyc falls somewhere in the middle on this issue and I
>>suspect that will be the result for the SUO as well - a largely common
>>ontology with a context mechanism that allows for a few different,
>>although compatible, approaches in limited areas.
>
>I believe that an alternative could be a "minimal" common ontology with a
>few main branches, which in turn may have more specialized branches in
>limited areas. Of course, the less branches the better.
>
>In practice, my proposal is as follows:
>
>1. Let's carefully (and painfully) distinguish between axioms and
>primitives that achieve (reasonably large) consensus and axioms/primitives
>that do not;
>
>2. When there is no consensus, let's isolate the alternatives and ask the
>supporters to i) explain, ii) motivate and iii) formalize both of them;
>
>3. If enough explanation/motivation/formalization is achieved (up to a
>certain minimal degree) for both alternatives, then:
> 3.1 create a new branch in the ontology library
> 3.2 go on specializing the two branches in parallel, depending on the
> interest they
> receive.
>
>4. Else proceed by considering only the alternative that was best
>explained, motivated, and formalized.
>
>Note that this proposal obviously reflects a top-down approach, but I
>believe it can be adapted also to the middle-out approach advocated by
>Mike Uschold, as long as we are ready to create a new upper-level branch
>while generalizing from a certain middle-level view that turns out to be
>incompatible with the previously developed ontology.
>
>-- Nicola
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
>
>Nicola Guarino
>National Research Council phone: +39 O49 8295751
>LADSEB-CNR fax: +39 O49 8295763
>Corso Stati Uniti, 4 email: Nicola.Guarino@ladseb.pd.cnr.it
>I-35127 Padova
>Italy
>
>http://www.ladseb.pd.cnr.it/infor/ontology/ontology.html
>(***updated 22/2/2001 ***)
-----------------
Adam Pease
Teknowledge
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