Re: SUO: RE: CYC event vs. SUMO Process -- really different?
At 12:17 PM 6/16/2003 -0400, Patrick Cassidy wrote:
> I would like try to resolve the specific question of
>whether in our standard ontology a 3D Event will
>necessarily have a location in Space (it seems to be
>agreed that Events have a location in Time).
>In John's note he suggests inclusion of both 3D
>and 4D events in the ontology. I agree. But I am
>unclear as to John's position on the definition
>of the 3D Event.
BTW, I would stress that if we're trying to resolve differences between Cyc #$Event and SUMO &%Process the sticking point is *not* whether or not all events have some spatial location; in SUMO it seems that they do while Cyc appears to agnostic. (FWIW, I think that agnosticism is well-advised if we want to allow for Cartesian dualism, God acting outside of space and the plethora of other logically possible states of affairs that people seem insistent, for good reason I suppose, on leaving room for in the SUO. As a matter of fact, since many characterizations of God have God acting outside of time, and other cosmological "theories" presumably also allow for ex nihilo pre-temporal creation events, one probably needs a generic "Event" that is neither temporal nor spatial. Even if we all believe that all events occur in space and time it should be obvious that this does not constitute an argument for disallowing non-temporal events in our ontology. (After all, Patrick, wasn'!
t it you who wanted fairy tale ontologies to be supported by (contained in?) the SUO?) )
To my mind the more interesting point with respect to the differences between the two formalizations is that the Cyc #$Event is not a subclass of #$SpatialThing and hence is not related to its "location" (place that it occurs) with the same relation as an instance of #$SpatialThing-Localized would be. This is disanalogous with SUO &%Process.
Hammering out the issue you're discussing really amounts to asking whether #$Event and #$Event-Localized are coextensive and whether or not &%Process should be a subclass of something more general than &%Physical. However, it still doesn't help an awful lot with merging the two ontologies, if for some reason, people really want to do that.
In any event, I'm not sure what's going on here, Patrick. Is this question part of a merger effort? (an inadvisable waste of time to my mind; surely we don't really want to start hammering out every one of these possibly multitudinous definitional discrepancies between OpenCyc, SUMO and whatever else gets thrown in the mix. [ Insert Eric Peterson's observations about standards groups lacking resources here (and, better yet, explain to me why this would be a good way to use resources if we did have them)]) OTOH, perhaps we are now creating a brand new ontology out of whole cloth and revisiting each of these basic questions? (also a big waste of time, IMO).
Mike Pool
>John F. Sowa wrote:
>>There is no need to vote, when there is a much
>>simpler way to accommodate the options.
>> > What I suggest is that the group forces a vote on
>> > important definitions, such as that of "Event."
> . . .
>>To take the example of "event", there is no need to
>>force a decision. The ontology can simply include
>>three types: Event4D, Event3D, and a generic Event,
>>which includes Event4D and Event3D as subtypes.
> OK. These are important issues that we should
>proceed to soon. I am only hoping that we can
>resolve what should be a simple question before
>proceeding to those other issues.
> As to the 3D Event, we have an option: is the
>spatial location relation marked as "necessary" or not?
>If necessary, then every instance of Event in a
>knowledge structure will be marked as having *some*
>location. That location can be unknown, or default,
>or may be specified within the knowledge base.
>
> Can we have both "necessary" and "optional" locations
>in one logically consistent ontology? In this case,
>I think so, by creating a parent class of 3D Event which
>has only a time location ("TemporalEvent"), and a subclass
>that has both time and spatial necessary locations
>("SpatioTemporalEvent"). But the split 3D Event structure
>appears to me to make the translation to 4D more
>problematic and I think it should be adopted only if there
>is more than one person who thinks it desirable. Also,
>it seems to me to be inconsistent with my understanding
>of reality and the usual meanings of Events to imagine
>that they are not located in space. Even with
>spatial location marked as necessary in the SUO,
>individual users can still change that to optional
>for their own use if such a representation appears to
>them to be better, without imposing an unnecessarily
>complicated structure on all users.
>
> What I would like to know is how many participants in this
>discussion think that the SUO we adopt should have 3D Events
>which do not necessarily have some location in Space? Are
>there enough to warrant making the SUO more complicated by
>addition of an extra "TemporalEvent" class above the more
>common "SpatioTemporalEvent"?
>
> Pat
>
>
>=============================================
>Patrick Cassidy
>
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