Re: SUO: 21 May 2002 -- Unanswered Questions About SUMO Set Theory
On 5/22/02 13:06, "Pierluigi Miraglia" <miraglia@cyc.com> wrote:
> The interesting question can then be raised about whether similar efforts
> could be retooled and exploited to address such needs. Well, can they? I
> for one would be most interested in hearing while either Cyc or SUMO or
> IFF or... _cannot_ in your view be so retooled. This seems like a clear
> question, both theoretical and practical, which many (though not I, sorry
> to report) here seem well equipped to address, although not one that
> benefits greatly from polling imaginary customers, or so I feel.
>
> So let me try to reframe the issue: what is it about an ontology that
> _would_ make it suitable to address these needs? And what is it with
> existing ontologies that makes them unsuitable? I look forward to reading
> your opinions.
Hi, Pierluigi...
An excellent question indeed. And it's hard to argue with your logic wrt
the point I raised. Who let philosophers on this list anyway? :-D
First, let me offer a few initial points to address the "unsuitability"
issue, then I will try to offer some constructive opinions as to what might
serve to make ontologies "suitable"
* It is unclear to "real people" (by this I mean software developers,
DBAs, data modelers and the companies who build tools to support them)
just how to go about using this ontology stuff. This has been a failure
of the ontology community on the whole, most of whose members come from
an AI tradition, where such concerns have never been very important.
* Systems based in first-order logic suffer an "impedance mismatch" with
database and other systems (e.g. The semantic web) that will ultimately
be based in some kind of database or logic programming technology that
has the finite model property. It is a difficult problem to cast
first-order theories into a form that can be readily used in these
systems. Thus some fundamental work is required in this area.
* As you mention, such systems were not built with these sorts of mundane
applications in mind. This is one area where the focus of the W3C
"ontology" community gives them an advantage. One example of this would
be an axiom in a SUMO or Cyc such as the following:
(=> (and (parentOf ?x ?y)
(age ?x ?x-age)
(age ?y ?y-age))
(> ?y-age ?x-age))
Few would disagree that this axiom makes perfect sense, but from a
pure FOL standpoint it can be used (only) in the following ways:
1. To prove that ?y-age is greater than ?x-age
2. To prove that the age of ?x is not ?x-age
3. To prove that the age of ?y is not ?y-age
4. To prove that ?y is not the parentOf ?x
A database user, for example, is interested in NONE of these uses. For
them, this is an integrity constraint.
I promised to mention some things to help with the "suitability" issue.
First, it should be clear that the points above give some clues as to some
positive steps that can be taken. More concretely, my first step would be
to find some industrial partners who would be willing to act as "guinea
pigs" for some concrete applications of SUO, and to listen closely to what
they say. Beyond that I can't say much more - my company has invested a lot
of our time and energy addressing the points raised above and (I believe) we
have some good answers.
Hope that is of some help...
.bill