Re: SUO: Vote 2001-02: IFF Foundation Ontology
Pat,
comments below
Josiane
At 12:23 17/08/01 -0700, vous avez écrit:
>>Robert,
>> One way to help show the relevance and accessibility of the IFF
>> ontology would be to give some examples of how to code the information
>> expressed in common English statements in IFF.
>> I did something similar in the series of "Hamlet" examples in the
>> message copied below, as well as the dialog with Josiane Caron-Pargue
>> also copied below.
>
>Adam, let me take you up on this, since you obligingly give concrete
>examples. You say that you are showing how to encode information expressed
>in common English statements. What I see, however, are some formal names
>(which are really only character strings as they stand) plus a few axioms,
>mostly just placing these in some kind of classification heirarchy (named
>with other character strings), plus some attached English text which makes
>some very bold statements about what those character strings 'mean'. What
>that English text ought to say is that this is what the formal strings are
>*intended* to mean. What they *actually* mean, if anything, is whatever
>can be inferred by a valid first-order reasoner from the axioms that are
>provided, and that is ALL. All the rest is hope and aspirations and
>hand-waving.
Well. An example on my data would be desirable for me.
>As documentation of the intentions of the ontology designers, and as a
>guide for those who extend the ontology in enough detail so that it might
>actually come some way to realizing the aspirations of its designers, such
>pieces of 'guiding prose' are valuable and indeed essential; I do not mean
>to suggest that writing these things is easy or pointless. But this
>process of documenting one's thoughts (no matter how precise they are) in
>English paragraphs is not in itself the creation of an ontology, and does
>not create any actual formal content.
>
>The problem with this particular area, as you may know, is that some of
>the best minds have conspicuously failed to come up with usable, broadly
>accepted, precise theories of what 'intentionality' is, or what 'content'
>might be when applied to things like works of fiction; so the gap between
>asserting that something means:
>
>"An instance of &%Physical that &%represents something else. Note that
>this is an intentional relation - instances of &%Physical that
>accidentally convey some meaning to an &%Agent would not be examples of
>&%Representations."
>
>and actually writing logical axioms that capture the English meanings of
>"represents", "convey meaning" and "intentional", is likely to be rather
>large. But without those axioms, to claim that one has 'coded the
>information' is just plain wrong.
>
>Pat
>
>PS. On another matter, you and Josiane may find it illuminating to review
>the writings of Melissa Bowerman, eg
>Bowerman, M. (1996). Learning how to structure space for language: A
>crosslinguistic perspective. In P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel, & M.F.
>Garrett (Eds.), Language and space
>(pp. 385-436). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
>but see also the website of the Nijmegen MaxPlanckInstitute (look under
>'space' in the annual reports)
>
>PPS. A few more comments/questions are inserted into the later text.
Thanks. I do not know the work of Melissa Bowerman. I will look for it.
Several people in my laboratory are more or less in touch with Nijmegen,
and I have not hear of any particular thing. But it is true that I could
gain to look at their reports.
>>>Folks,
>>> We had some discussion a few months back about how to represent and
>>>relate informational content of books and performances. Ian and I
>>>discussed this topic again, relative to the semiotics terms he sent out
>>>to the list recently. The examples I suggested below can now be
>>>formalized as follows
>>>
>>>Hamlet the fictional character
>>>(instance-of Hamlet Human)
>
>What distinguishes real humans from fictional humans? Did Hamlet have a
>(fictional) liver, for example? What about things like Peter Pan and Barney?
I suppose (and I hope) that the interaction between real humans and real
humans is a bit different from the interaction between real humans and
fictional humans.
But nevertheless it is a good question, it raises the fact that one have to
define the level of information which has to be considered
>>>Hamlet an edition of the printed play
>>>(subclass-of Hamlet-FolgerEdition ContentBearingObject)
>>>(subclass-of Hamlet-ScribnerEdition Hamlet-FolgerEdition)
>>>(equivalentContentClass Hamlet-ScribnerEdition Hamlet-FolgerEdition)
>>>(instance-of Hamlet-ScribnerEditionOnMyBookshelf Hamlet-ScribnerEdition)
>>>(containsInformation Hamlet-ScribnerEditionOnMyBookshelf Hamlet-ThePlay)
>>>
>>>A performance of Hamlet
>>>(instance-of HamletPerformanceByRoyalShakespeareCompanyOnJune18-2000
>>>Activity)
>>>(instance-of HamletPerformanceByRoyalShakespeareCompanyOnJune18-2000
>>>ContentBearingProcess)
>>>(realization-of HamletPerformanceByRoyalShakespeareCompanyOnJune18-2000
>>>Hamlet-ThePlay)
>>>
>>>A performance of Hamlet captured on video and encoded as a bit stream
>>>(instance-of
>>>VideotapeOfHamletPerformanceByRoyalShakespeareCompanyOnJune18-2000
>>>ContentBearingObject)
>>>(refers-to
>>>VideotapeOfHamletPerformanceByRoyalShakespeareCompanyOnJune18-2000
>>>HamletPerformanceByRoyalShakespeareCompanyOnJune18-2000)
>>>(instance-of
>>>BitStreamOfHamletPerformanceByRoyalShakespeareCompanyOnJune18-2000
>>>ContentBearingPhysical)
>>>(equivalentContentInstance
>>>VideotapeOfHamletPerformanceByRoyalShakespeareCompanyOnJune18-2000
>>>BitStreamOfHamletPerformanceByRoyalShakespeareCompanyOnJune18-2000)
>>>
>>>The text of Hamlet as character strings
>>>(subclass-of Hamlet-CharacterStrings ContentBearingObject)
>>>
>>>What Fritz Lehmann has called a "conceptual work" - the timeless
>>>informational content of the play
>>>(instance-of Hamlet-ThePlay Proposition)
>
>Proposition??? (Is Hamlet true or false?)
It is true if the context make it true!
Generaly in context this question is obsolete!
>>>Note that these examples suggest four new semiotics notions, which can be
>>>defined as follows:
>
>Again, these aren't *definitions*.
>
>>
>>>(subclass-of Representation Physical)
>>>(documentation Representation "An instance of &%Physical that
>>>&%represents something else. Note that this is an intentional relation -
>>>instances of &%Physical that accidentally convey some meaning to an &%Agent
>>>would not be examples of &%Representations.")
>
>Intentionality is a VERY tricky concept; but in any case, if you are going
>to involve the intentions, shouldn't the person who had the intention -
>the composer of the representation - be involved in the definition somewhere?
Very good remark. It is for that that I have always looked for linguistic
cues before to do such interpretations. The way one have to interpret these
linguistic cues belongs to another theoretical and methodological problem,
a lot of work to do.
But of course, it is difficult and impossible to work and to talk at the
same time at the two levels. And always people who understand nothing are
asking questions at both levels at the same time as if it is one single level.
>>>(=>
>>> (instance-of ?OBJ Representation)
>>> (exists (?ENTITY)
>>> (represents ?OBJ ?ENTITY)))
>>>
>>>(subclass-of ContentBearingProcess Representation)
>>>(relatedInternalConcept ContentBearingObject realization-of)
>>>(documentation ContentBearingProcess "Any &%Process that expresses a
>>>&%Proposition. It is important to distinguish &%Propositions from the
>>>&%ContentBearingProcesses that express them. A &%Proposition is a piece of
>>>information, e.g. that the cat is on the mat, but a &%ContentBearingProcess
>>>is
>>>an &%Process that realizes this information. A &%Proposition is an
>>>abstraction
>>>that may have multiple representations: performances, sounds, bit streams,
>>>etc.")
>>>
>>>(=>
>>> (instance-of ?PROCESS ContentBearingProcess)
>>> (exists (?PROP)
>>> (realization-of ?PROCESS ?PROP)))
>
>Great. I was going to ask you what you meant by "realizes" in the English
>prose, and I find that it is an undefined term in the axiom as well. (What
>is to stop me understanding 'realization-of' to refer to, say, equality?
>That would make your (sole) axiom true.)
For me it is the same kind of problem, we have to construct the criteria.
But IFF (and SUMO) offer some possibilities. And it is possible I think to
construct every justification (criterion) of the materials before to put
them inside.
>>>(subrelation-of equivalentContentInstance subsumesContentInstance)
>>>(instance-of equivalentContentInstance EquivalenceRelation)
>>>(nth-domain equivalentContentInstance 1 Representation)
>>>(nth-domain equivalentContentInstance 2 Representation)
>>>(documentation equivalentContentInstance "A binary relation between two
>>>instances of Representation. '(equivalentContent ?OBJ1 ?OBJ2)' means that
>>>the content expressed by ?OBJ1 is identical with the content expressed by
>>>?OBJ2. An example would be the relationship between a handwritten draft of
>>>a letter to my lawyer and a typed copy of the same letter.
>
>How about a translation of the letter into Spanish?
>
>>>Note that
>>>'(equivalentContentInstance ?OBJ1 ?OBJ2)' implies '(subsumesContent ?OBJ1
>>>?OBJ2)' and '(subsumesContent ?OBJ2 ?OBJ2)'.")
>>>
>>>(instance-of subsumesContentInstance PartialOrderingRelation)
>>>(nth-domain subsumesContentInstance 1 Representation)
>>>(nth-domain subsumesContentInstance 2 Representation)
>>>(documentation subsumesContent "A binary relation between two instances of
>>>Representation. '(subsumesContent ?OBJ1 ?OBJ2)' means that the content
>>>expressed by ?OBJ1 contains the content expressed by ?OBJ2.
>
>??But what does that mean? I have no idea what it means to say that one
>content 'contains' another. Do you mean 'entails', ie the subsumed can be
>inferred from the subsumer?
Some of these relations depend of the knowledge stored in memory, some
other ones depend of the contextual situation.
Without speaking for all that about the difference between automatic
process and controlled of access to memory as I was brought to do it in my
verbal protocol analysis
>>>An example is
>>>the relationship between a handwritten poem and one of its stanzas.
>
>You mean between the handwritten text of the poem and the subtext of one
>of its stanzas, right? But that's an easy case, since you have divided the
>physical thing in a way that corresponds to a conceptual division. What
>happens if I tear a letter into strips, rendering each piece illegible:
>does the content of the letter subsume that of one strip?
>
>It would be better to come up with a kind of simple mereology *of content
>itself* (ie what it means for one piece of content - proposition? - to be
>'part' of another), I think, and then define the physical relations in
>terms of the induced content relations.
that is the way I am used to work at enunciative level, not with
propositions but with relations. But I thought that IFF system and SUMO
could be very interesting to show some other properties.
Mereology is interesting, sure, but I am not sure that simple or not it
could solve everything. It could be interesting to try several systems.
>You could probably get a long way with a very simple theory of content as
>a kind of abstract stuff, and apply simple mereology to it. It would
>differ from the stuff described by normal mereology only by having no
>physical properties but a special relationship (being 'about') to parts of
>a possible physical world.
A logician can imagine a lot of possible physical worlds. A novice placed
in a situation of problem solving has generaly a lot of difficulties for
imagining them. He has to construct the possible worlds.
>Pat Hayes
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>(650)859 6569 w
>(650)494 3973 h (until September)
>phayes@ai.uwf.edu
><http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes>http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes
></blockquote></x-html>
Regards
Josiane
_________________________________________________
Josiane Caron-Pargue
Laboratoire Langage et Cognition LaCo, UMR 6096
Maison des Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société, MSHS
99 Avenue du Recteur Pineau, F-86022 Poitiers cedex
tel bur 05 49 45 46 23, fax 05 49 45 46 16
tel secr. 05 49 45 46 10, 05 49 45 46 13
http://www.mshs.univ-poitiers.fr/laco/
josiane.caron@mshs.univ-poitiers.fr
_________________________________________________