Re: SUO: Why is IFF and the Lattice of Theories good for SUMO
Matthew,
I agree broadly with these points, but the questions that remain are
1. What tools or methods can be demonstrated on a problem in mapping, and
what are the advantages of one approach (as shown in an example), over another
2. Where are the particular concrete proposals of different
theories? It's fine to mention that such may exist, and certainly
different theories have been described in the literature, but until a
particular one is proposed that replaces a defined portion of another, this
seems rather speculative for me. One could define an alternative module
for SUMO, but no one has done so. Has something of that sort been done in
EPISTLE?
Adam
At 01:17 PM 5/2/2003 +0100, West, Matthew R SITI-ITPSIE wrote:
>Dear Adam,
>
>I could of course have titled this note "Why is IFF and the Lattice of
>Theories good for EPISTLE" since we are in a similar position, having
>a single coherent ontology, though focussed on a different paradigm
>and problem set than SUMO as far as I can see.
>
>There are two pragmatic reasons why I support this approach:
>
>1. Version Management
>
>In the great scheme of things all our present day ontologies are
>immature, which means that they will change and improve over time.
>Even if they were mature, knowledge is expanding at an alarming rate.
>
>This means that we can expect our ontologies to change. The problem
>with this is managing the change in the ontologies so that you can
>track what version you used for some problem, and how the current
>version is different from this.
>
>The lattice of theories provides facilities for this. You can identify
>what theories were parts of what versions of the ontology.
>
>
>2. Using multiple ontologies/paradigms
>
>My personal view is that the "holy wars" about different sorts of
>ontology (e.g. 3D/4D) are largely misplaced. I expect that it will
>turn out that different ontologies/paradigms will have different
>strengths/weaknesses and that we will want to translate between
>these for more complex problems.
>
>IFF and the Lattice of Theories supports this. The support here is
>weaker, because in many cases you would need to do the mapping
>between at least core constructs of equivalent theories, but an
>environment that supports this is still valuable.
>
>
>Matthew West
>Principal Consultant
>Shell Information Technology International Limited
>Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA, United Kingdom
>
>Tel: +44 20 7934 4490 Other Tel: +44 7796 336538
>Email: matthew.west@shell.com
>Internet: http://www.shell.com