SUO: X-Mailer: CWMail Web to Mail Gateway 2.7f, http://netwinsite.com/top_mail.htm
Chris and Jean-Luc,
I can interpret what Jean-Luc said in a way that I largely agree with,
and I can also interpret what Chris M. said in a way that I agree with.
I believe that what Jean-Luc has been criticizing is not so much SUO
as what some people (especially the SUMO group) have interpreted as the
SUO position. And I believe that what Chris is defending is a vision
of the SUO position that is quite different from the SUMO position,
and Chris's view is closer to a position that I have been
proposing and the IFF group is working on.
Jean-Luc Delatre wrote:
> Some of the "assumptions" that, to me, seem questionable and shared
> by most people involved in ontology projects (alas, not only SUO!) are:
>
> 1) There exist ultimately a *perfect* all encompassing ontology that allows
> describing everything, and we have to chase for it however distant it be.
Chris Menzel wrote:
> I certainly agree that that would be a dubious assumption, but it
> seems to me that the prevailing view among participants on this
> project is that (a) there is no all-encompassing ontology, maximally
> expressive ontology and that (b) there there could be multiple
> ontologies -- even "upper level" ontologies -- that reflect different
> ways of conceptualizing the world.
I am happy with this statement, and I wish it were part of the official
SUO charter. The charter is ambiguous on this point, and I would like
to see something along the lines of this statement in the charter.
CM> Exactly what evidence do you have that anyone involved in this
> project actually accepts the above assumption?
The major evidence is Adam Pease, who has been defending a monolithic
ontology despite all the evidence that a single monolithic approach is
doomed to failure. In some notes, Adam has acknowledged that there
might be different points of view, but he steadfastly refuses to allow
any of them into SUMO.
JLD> 2) There *must* be for each concept a *true* denomination ...
CM> Now that is completely bizarre. There are a number of legitimate
> concerns about the SUO project that can be, and indeed have been,
> raised, but that is surely not one of them. No one involved in this
> project (or any ontology project that I know of) thinks that the names
> of classes, properties, relations, etc are anything but conventional.
> Any push for one name rather than another is motivated only by
> pragmatic concerns, such as the avoidance of names with natural
> language connotations that might hinder a user's understanding of the
> ontology.
I certainly agree that such a position would be "completely bizarre".
Unfortunately, Adam P. has come very close to promoting such a position
for SUMO. In fact, I was never exactly clear what position Adam has
been promoting, and I would like to see a clarification. But I believe
that Jean-Luc's reaction to what Adam has been saying is much less
bizarre than Adam's arguments for a monolithic ontology.
JLD> and everybody have to agree to use it.
CM> Well, what would you suggest to people who want to use the concepts
> in a given ontology? That they choose their own terms for those
> concepts and then write programs that translate the axioms of the
> ontology into identical axioms that simply use their own lingo? How
> stupid would that be?
I suggest that you look at what Adam has been proposing: a single
monolithic standard, named SUMO, which he hopes that the IEEE will
endorse. I have been asking for a lattice of theories, which could
accommodate many subtheories adopted from SUMO, other subtheories
adopted from OpenCyc, others from IMPS, and any or all resources that
anyone would care to contribute to the IEEE. But Adam has fought
against that proposal as hard as he can.
CM> If you've got credible objections to the SUO that you can document,
> I'm sure the SUO participants will be happy to debate them. These
> objections are not remotely credible.
I believe that they are very credible as objections to SUMO. And some
people, Adam P. especially, have claimed that SUMO conforms to the SUO
charter, but other proposals such as IFF and my lattice of theories
do not.
John