Re: SUO: Program Semantics
On 3/30/02 11:09, "John F. Sowa" <sowa@bestweb.net> wrote:
Hi, John...
> What I am now recommending for SUO is based on another 18 years
> of the same kind of study of both theory and practice. And Cyc is
> one of the important projects that I've been watching over the years.
> My major complaint about your option A (adopted by SUMO) is that it
> is a warmed-over attempt to redo what Cyc has already invested 500
> person years in doing without coming close to their goals for 1994.
This may be correct. My gripe with SUMO is not its techniques (although I
certainly would proceed differently) but rather with the attempt to dip into
what I call "middle-level" territory, including natural kinds. IMHO, work
in this area should have been strictly verboten (except as examples) until
the high-level machinery (logic, organization principles, philosophical
principles, etc) had been agreed upon and a rump development environment
produced. Such work is too complicated and big to proceed without automated
help.
This is a real problem with Cyc - work proceeded for a long time until it
was discovered that some discipline was needed, as you point out.
> Some comments on your comments:
>
> BA> 1) A successful search for "a proper structure for doing ontology"
>> depends on achieving some agreement on what ontology is. I just
>> don't see that coming along any time soon. I see at least three
>> camps here:
>
> I think that we are very close to agreement. The major obstacle
> now is the SUMO group, which has been ignoring the evidence.
John, let them!!! It's not just their party - it's everyone's!! If enough
people felt the need to have firmer foundations, then they should have
stopped writing emails and academic papers and start writing some code.
It's not a matter of funding - it's a matter of commitment. If they
couldn't influence SUMO, then they have to make their case for something
else that's better.
> BA> Camp A: We'll call this Microsoft camp for convenience. Believes
>> that having a standard stock of categories of sufficiently broad
>> reach and functionality that users will be attracted to use it,
>> thereby achieving interoperability more or less by fiat. This
>> approach is completely pragmatic, laying no claim to, but willing
>> to borrow from theory in whatever field may have something to
>> offer.
>
> SUMO might be a better name for Camp A, except for the last line of
> your description. So far, I haven't seen any evidence that the SUMO
> group is willing to "borrow from theory".
As for the choice of name - I could have said SUMO. We all know that's what
I was talking about. So, you're right.
Wrt SUMO, I think you're being more than a bit unfair. It's not that they
don't borrow from theory, it's that they don't borrow from *your* preferred
theor(y/ies). I have said things critical of SUMO on this list, but I
haven't been a vehement critic or gotten personal because I value the fact
that they have the guts to propose something concrete and take the resultant
Flak. If you're right and they fail to borrow from you and like minded
folks, then they will hit the rocks. So, why worry about them so much?
This is why I keep begging groups and individuals with a strong vision to
start working on proposals, in code and on paper, that remedy what they see
the problems to be. I believe the WWW-community's "ontology" stuff to be
pretty bad, bordering on junk, and dangerous to the goals of the ontology
community in general. But it's there and gaining momentum, because they
have TOOLS and CODE and EXAMPLES and not just TALK.
This community had better stop playing academic one-upmanship and get busy
producing something before the referent of the word "ontology" gets changed
out from under us and we find ourselves in a W3C "re-education" camp, being
told the sky is really green in a ceaseless series of pop-up windows on a
big screen while our eyes are held open by toothpicks.
Anyway, that's all for now. Maybe some more later.
.bill