Re: SUO: 2000-7-26 example
Adam,
My first change proposal is the same one that I recommended
at the SUO workshop at IJCAI.
AP> Absolutely, what is your change proposal (stated as specific
> changes to the document)?
Merge Robert Kent's IFF document with the SUMO document.
The following point is fine, but my notion of feature is much more
than just an axiom or two here or there.
AP> I think my stance is simply the as you say that "anyone who proposes
a new
> feature has a responsibility
> to explain the importance of that feature and why it should be
> adopted".
I am writing up a more detailed explanation of the lattice of
theories and its implication for the ontology standards.
> I'm not defending SUMO, just requesting that whoever says
> something is wrong with it must say precisely what it wrong
> (in terms of its terms or axioms), and provide a revision
> to the document.
That parenthetical comment is the one I most object to. As I have
said from day one of the SUO effort, I believe that the methodology
for organizing the theories and axioms is far more important than
any particular axioms.
The urge to write axioms is very much like a programmer's desire
to write code when the overall architecture hasn't been done.
I believe that there is an important amount of work that has been
done on how to organize an ontology in the past 10 years and none
of it has been reflected in SUMO. I've been sketching out some
of the ideas in my comments, and Robert K. has been proposing them
in his IFF document. I realize that IFF is at too high a level
of abstraction for the underlying ideas to become apparent, but
I'm trying to bridge that gap.
John Sowa