Re: SUO: 2000-7-26 example
Adam,
I think we are close to a reasonable compromise.
JS>And by the way, this is not a criticism of SUMO. It is only a
> >criticism of the claim that SUMO is (or will ever be) a complete
> >top level by itself.
AP>I don't know who would be making such a claim. I certainly haven't.
My
> belief is just that SUMO will address a very wide range of topics at a
> level of detail that can both be useful on its own as well as the basic for
> more domain-specific ontologies (such as our QoS ontology).
If that is true, then I believe that statement should be emphasized
right up front:
"SUMO is not intended to be a complete top level by itself."
I would be much happier with SUMO if its claims were more modestly
circumscribed by some such statement. On the other hand, I believe
that we do need an open-ended, extensible facility for including
the foundations for anything and everything that could ever be
expressed in any natural language. And that is why I have been so
insistent on making provisions for the infinite lattice.
JS> SUMO is a fine collection of theories, but
> >a lot more work is necessary to populate the lattice of theories,
> >and the sooner we recognize that as our goal, the easier it will be
> >to address it.
>
AP> More work is needed, that much we agree on! :-)
That agreement makes me happy. Then I want to add that in order to
accommodate everything and anything, we must also make provision
for the infinite lattice of all possible theories (which, of course,
will always be incomplete in its implementation, but which will also
allow anyone to extend it whenever necessary). SUMO will be one
component of that lattice. But the subcomponents from which SUMO
was derived will also be in that lattice, and they can be recombined
as needed to form other theories.
John