Re: SUO: RE: About SUMO's Mereotopology
In reply to:
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg08107.html
which I will only sparsely quote in the following.
First, I will move upfront my quotation
(which probably you didn't notice)
from my message of Thursday, March 14, 2002 2:11 PM,
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There is no more blind man than one who refuses to see.
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> > My suggestion is not so much about "testing" than about "growing" by
> > having some kind of protocol to automatically merge in axiomatized
> > theories or ontologies fragments.
>
> What sort of protocol do you have in mind? Please be as specific as
> possible. Otherwise, it will be difficult to make any progress on this
> issue.
It has been discussed already in SUO:
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg06369.html
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> > Is this bravery or thoughtlessness?
>
> Let's see. So the criticism is that our approach is old-fashioned and that
> it requires a large investment of effort. I guess my response is that not
> everything old is outdated, and some things in life do require a lot of
> work.
Dumb and dumber! An *old* problem!
Here is a quotation (1983!!!) from:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=4187%40uiucdcs.UUCP&oe=ISO-8859-1
> A computer is merely a necessary weapon in this research. If AI has made little
> obvious progress it may be because we are too busy trying to produce useful
> systems before we know how they should work. In my opinion there is too little
=================================== (my underlining...)
> hard science in AI, but that's understandable given its roots in an engineering
> discipline (the applications of computers).
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More about msg08107.
> > Yes, but when it comes to the analytical part why take the bet beyond
> > consistency of, say, set theory axioms, upon which everyone has to
> > agree, however unprovable?
>
> I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you claiming that we've added
> controversial set-theoretic axioms to the SUMO? If so, could you specify
> which axioms you think should be removed?
I am not talking about fancy axioms but about consistency of following
lemmas etc...
I *did not* check the consistencey of SUMO, that's not my job
(I am only doing technology watch), but I object to the method
used to build the SUMO, and again, this has already been discussed:
http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg06373.html
Altough in that case only consistency of the axioms were discussed.
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> Could you explain the distinction between "formal" and "real world"
> concepts. In constructing the SUMO, we've tried to include every concept
> that is relevant to more than one domain of interest.
"Formal" is any concept derived from axioms (termed "analytical" in philosophy).
"real world" is about 'man and horse and kangaroo and whale'
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> > But I must have missed something, I would greatly appreciate
> > if you can tell
> > me of any "breakthrough like" stuff which makes you confident
> > that times have
> > come to tackle the "grand goal".
>
> This is a good question. Why do we think we're going to succeed this time
> around, given the failures of AI in the 80's? I think the answer is
> three-fold. First of all, there were some pretty spectacular successes in
> the 80's. There are many examples of expert systems that performed, with
> respect to their narrow domains, as well as or better than their human
> counterparts. Second, we're not trying to build expert systems on this
> list. We're trying to construct an ontology, which, among other things,
> will allow seamless interoperability between heterogeneous expert systems
> and database systems. As I recall, there wasn't much in the way of ontology
> construction in the 1980's, at least not in the AI world. Finally, I think
> we've learned something from the experience of the 1980's: that we need to
> maintain a clear distinction between procedural and declarative knowledge,
> that we need to be mindful of the relevant work of philosophers and
> logicians, and that we need to create artifacts that can be maintained by
> someone who does not have a Ph.D. in Computer Science.
Your 3 points seems to me to have little relevance to the question
whether we are in a better position to succeed today than in the 80's.
And where they have some relevance, it does not appear that the SUO/SUMO
approach is going along according the recommended directions.
Again, check from:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=4187%40uiucdcs.UUCP&oe=ISO-8859-1
and see where and what progress has been made since then.
The SUO/SUMO project is pointless. You will be trampled over by the
Paul Compton, John Sowa, Debbie Richard, Hendra Suryanto, Barry Drake,
Achim Hoffmann, Ghassan Beydoun & als bunch.
Best regards.
-- Jean-Luc Delatre
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The key to wisdom is not knowledge, but knowing how little you know.
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