SUO: Re: Industry takeover
Dear all,
Four points.
1. The IFF effort is an unfunded volunteer effort. While the corporate or
governmental world (big money) may want results yesterday, there is still a
research component to the IFF that takes some time to develop.
2. The next version of the IFF Ontology (meta) Ontology will have a
mathematical representation for the distinctions and interconnections
between (1) terminological ontologies (the Google/Applied Semantics
600-pound gorilla plus Ed Hovy) in terms of strict Information Flow (IF)
structures, and (2) axiomatic ontologies (CYC, SUMO, etc.) in terms of First
Order Logic (FOL) structures. The connections are four-fold in terms of the
fundamental concepts of language, theory, model and logic. And all four are
two-way connections: the IF2FOL direction is an embedding with each IF
concept embedded as an FOL concept, whereas the FOL2IF direction is a
coreflection (projection) that forgets the relational aspect, retaining only
the entity aspect.
3. The IFF group is completely in the ecumenical spirit of cooperation,
agreeing that all three efforts (IFF, CYC and SUMO) are valuable to the SUO
charter. Just yesterday there was IFF email on the importance for
establishing the connections between CYC microtheories and the IFF approach
to the "lattice of theories".
4. While applauding an ecumenical spirit for the SUO inquiry and effort, we
should not paper over the deep philosophical differences between the
monolithic versus the pluralistic approach.
Robert E. Kent
rekent@ontologos.org
----- Original Message -----
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@bestweb.net>
To: "Jean-Luc Delatre" <jld@club-internet.fr>
Cc: "Jim Schoening" <jim.s3@juno.com>; "Stand Up Ontology"
<standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>; <apease@ks.teknowledge.com>;
<rekent@ontologos.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 3:39 AM
Subject: Re: Industry takeover
> Jean-Luc, Adam, and Robert,
>
> The announcement that Google bought Applied
> Semantics means that a 600-pound gorilla has
> jumped into our little ontology wading pool:
>
> JLD> Too bad for you guys...
> >
> > Big money is going to tell you what a
> > "Standard Upper Ontology" is:
>
> http://www.appliedsemantics.com/ne/ne_pr_042303.html
> http://www.appliedsemantics.com/company/company_technology.html
> http://www.appliedsemantics.com/ne/ne_news_070102.html
>
> > No less monolithic, orwellian and conservative
> > than you could ever dream of! We all can rest now
> > and just buy it.
>
> Some observations:
>
> 1. The white papers on the Applied Semantics web site
> make it clear that they are not doing reasoning,
> expert systems, or anything remotely resembling
> what Cyc is doing.
>
> 2. What they call an ontology is what I called a
> "terminological ontology" in the glossary on my
> web site:
>
> http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/gloss.htm
> <http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/gloss.htm>
> Therminological ontologies are important starting
> points for more detailed axiomatizations. But they
> are not doing what the SUO is attempting to do.
>
> 3. Nevertheless, you can't ignore a big gorilla in
> your wading pool. Even if its intentions are benign,
> it can crush you in a playful embrace. So you must
> pay attention and make sure that you treat it with
> all due respect.
>
> This brings us to something that Adam Pease mentioned
> in an earlier note about IFF and its relevance to SUO:
>
> AP> Our charter doesn't address ontology mapping or
> > translation. IFF seems like a product that might help
> > one compose ontologies in order to create a proposed
> > standard for the SUO, but that it is not a relevant
> > proposal itself.
> >
> > In terms of John's proposal for a combined effort,
> > I could similarly see IFF being used in combining SUMO,
> > Cyc, or other ontologies, but the resulting artifact
> > would be the proposal to SUO, not the original
> > ontologies or IFF.
>
> The important point is that no ontology can ever be
> a static, stand-alone artifact. The terminologies
> used by Applied Sciences are overwhelmingly larger
> than Cyc in terms of the number of concept types
> (or word senses). Somehow, the SUO will have to
> be related to such things, and the methods for
> composing or relating ontologies must be part of
> any practical methodology for using ontologies.
>
> Whether or not the methodologies for using,
> relating, or composing ontologies are in the SUO
> charter or are implied by clauses that are in the
> charter is not clear. But if we don't address
> those issues, we are going to be crushed by
> the gorilla.
>
> AP> An additional concern that I have is that
> > the utility, as opposed to the mathematical
> > possibility, of employing IFF to that end is
> > also unsupported by any examples or practical
> > experience, at least so far as messages to this
> > mailing list are concerned. There are many folks
> > working on ontology mapping. What evidence is
> > there that a category theory approach allows one
> > to merge ontologies faster, or more easily than
> > other approaches, including that of emacs and
> > a human ontologist with no other tools?
>
> My brief justification: IFF is a structured
> framework for using logic to do theory revision,
> editing, merging, and comparison while ensuring
> that the results are consistent.
>
> The methods for "aligning" ontologies, which Ed Hovy
> and others have discussed, have only addressed the
> problem of relating the terminology. They have not
> gone to the deeper level of checking whether the
> associated axioms are consistent. That is the most
> critical part of the problem, and it cannot be
> solved without some serious logic-based tools.
>
> Note that I have not used the phrase "category
> theory". Robert K. cited the work on Specware by
> the Kestrel Institute, which also uses category
> theory. However, if you look at the Kestrel site,
> they don't mention category theory at all.
>
> Suggestion: Robert (or other people on the IFF
> project) must justify IFF based on its results,
> not on the theories it may use to produce those
> results. I happen to agree that category theory
> is the right framework to use, but they have to
> learn how to preach to the entire congregation,
> not just to the choir.
>
> John
>
>
>