Re: SUO: 2000-7-26 example
Adam,
This is just the tiny nose of the camel creeping under the SUMO tent:
> We can map domain-specific words to concepts in the SUMO much in the same
> way the WordNet mapping is being performed using synonymousExternalConcept
> etc.
Of course you can, but WordNet doesn't attempt to give the axioms.
That is where all the problems are.
> In SUMO Human is a distinct class from Group. We should add an axiom to
> Group though that constrains it to require more than one member and Ian is
> doing that just now.
Yes, but one has to add a thousand buts.... And I don't believe that
Ian is going to be able to handle them all. The lattice allows a
collaborative development in a way that a monolithic ontology can
never support.
Furthermore, in Ian's presentation at IJCAI, he threw out the categories
of Fistness, Secondness, and Thirdness (or Independent, Relative, and
Mediating). And those happen to be exactly the ones you need to define
what it means to be an executive. They also are needed to define what
it means to be a team, a business, a government, an institution, or
a society instead of just a simple collection.
I don't blame Ian for throwing them out, because he didn't know exactly
what to do with them at the time. But I blame you (Adam) for claiming
that what he has is sufficient (or will ever be sufficient if he
continues in the way he is going).
Bottom line: If you had a lattice, Ian could continue as long as he
likes working on his part of the lattice while other people could
develop other parts, such as the theory of social groups and their
interactions, and they could be merged at a later date.
John Sowa