Re: SUO: Vote 2001-02: IFF Foundation Ontology
Adam,
(see the comments below)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Pease" <apease@ks.teknowledge.com>
To: "Robert E. Kent" <rekent@ontologos.org>
Cc: "SUO" <standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2001 3:03 PM
Subject: Re: SUO: Vote 2001-02: IFF Foundation Ontology
> Robert,
> I appreciate the very concrete message. This is exactly the sort of
> discussion needed if we're to create an actual standard.
>
> 1. I notice that you're using sorted quantifiers. That isn't in SUO-KIF
> nor the latest KIF group draft that Michael Gruninger has prepared,
> although they are in the version at
> <http://logic.stanford.edu/kif/dpans.html#6.3>. You don't appear to cite
> which version of KIF you're using in your IJCAI paper or proposal for
> SUO. Which version do you use?
Comment #1:
I am anticipating what will be in the new KIF. See Chris Menzel's comment
> Looks good to me. I like your restricted quantifiers (and descriptions)
> but the syntax for them is not settled. Most likely it will be
> something like (<quant> (<var>+ <sentence>*) <sentence>).
in a personal message to me. These restricted quantifiers can be taken as
simple abbreviations with the obvious expansions: conjoining for the
existential quantifiers and anteceding in an implication for the universal
quantifier.
> 2. You've shown below how a natural language sentence could be expressed
> in a way consistent with a version of KIF and the IFF. However, it's not
> clear (to me at least) what value is being added by IFF itself.
Comment #2:
The IFF Foundation Ontology defines a rather elaborate semantic mechanism.
This example gives an indication of how to translate an ontology expressed
in the new KIF to the very precise terminology of the IFF Model Theory
(sub)Ontology (to be released in version 3.0 of the IFF Foundation
Ontology). Although there are many IFF statements needed to represent the
KIF statement, these IFF statements are *extremely simple* (there are
neither quantifiers nor logical connectives, just membership assertion and
function application). As a result, the IFF representation can easily be
represented in standard programming languages. Once the KIF ontology is
internalized in IFF, it then corresponds to one particular formal concept in
the truth concept lattice indexed by that ontology's 1st-order language.
Meets and joins in this lattice allow us to automatically combine this
ontology with any collection of ontologies. For example, if the SUMO
were resolved into several meaningful component ontologies, and these were
individually translated to the internal IFF representation, then the meet in
the truth concept lattice would correspond to the IFF representation of the
whole SUMO. Note, a collection of ontologies are inconsistent when their
meet is the bottom formal concept. As a second benefit, once an ontology is
internalized in IFF, 1st-order interpretations allow us to translate between
various truth concept lattices. As a third benefit, we have the opportunity
to combine ontologies using colimits. This allows the summation and fusion
(quotienting) of ontologies. As a fourth, more conjectural benefit, Murray
Bent (Yang Yun) is interested in defining a lower metalevel module for game
semantics. This could possibly correspond to the game-theoretical semantics
discussed by John Sowa
[http://users.bestweb.net/~sowa/misc/mathw.htm#Model].
> You use
> the term 'event' in the formalization below but no such term appears in
> IFF. In contrast, SUMO does have notions of events (and times, roles of
> actors etc) which provide a definition for that term.
Comment #3:
I am assuming that this example is just a fragment within an ambient
ontology,
such as the SUMO, that has an "event' term.
> The problem (I would say) with this formulation as well as what you
provide
> below is that there is no upper ontology being used. The term 'event' is
> meaningless because it is just a token with no formal definition. In
> contrast, the SUMO formalization would be
Same comment #3.
> SUMO already has definitions for concepts like Eating, the stuff an object
> is made of ('material') etc. Instead of being just tokens, the concepts
> have some meaning by virtue of their associated axioms. That's why the
> list of statements prior to the formalization of the English example
> sentence is so small - all those concepts already exist in SUMO.
Same comment #3.
> So, in summary, what does the IFF version of the example provide us that
> the SUO-KIF-only version does not?
Same comment #2.:
Robert E. Kent
rekent@ontologos.org